How To Cold Pitch Your Next Guest Blogging Opportunity

How To Cold Pitch Your Next Guest Blogging Opportunity Guest blogging has had a tumultuous life cycle. Hot one day, and then cold the next–no one seems to know if they should really be guest blogging or not. Wait, didnt Matt Cutts say that it was dead? Yes, for SEO, but that doesnt mean that it is really dead, does it? Matt Cutts called it, or did he? Heres the thing.  Since the beginning, there has always been two different kinds of guest blogging. There is the lame kind that Matts Cutts has declared dead. These are the spammers, the folks that see guest blogging as a tool to build linkbacks to their website and nothing else. Let me remind you about some of the methods they use. They look like this: Free content? How could this be? These arent really guest bloggers. They are blog hijackers. Their emails are lame, their topics are weak, and the writingOh, *od the writing. Matt Cutts is right in that blog hijacking needs to be dead, but did he really have to go and throw all guest blogging into the mix? Guest Blogging Can Be Good. Right? The second kind of guest blogging, as you can imagine, is the good kind. This is the kind of guest blogging that you do. Right? (Right?) This form of guest blogging is about a lot more than a simple linkback to some sketchy site. It is about audience, respect, and the genuine sharing of information that the web has made possible. These writers appreciate a link to their blog, but it isnt why they get up in the morning. They are trying to build an audience, and blogging on someone elses blog helps them do just that. Who can blame them? This kind of guest blogging isnt dead. It is the ideal form of guest blogging, and Matt Cutts is actually saving it. How Matt Cutts Saved Guest Blogging With every good thing there is at least one bad thing that comes with it. Life is full of tradeoffs. With email, we got spam. With the browser, we got pop-ups. With Twitter, we got direct messages. For every channel that can be used for good, there is a way to abuse it and use it for something bad. There are always opportunities for spammers to spread their spam. Matt Cutts is trying to scare them off. He is doing exactly what we need him to do. Since the beginning, spammers have been using and abusing guest blogging because Google was telling them that it would help. Linkbacks were so obviously tied to search rankings, and guest blogging was an easy way to get those linkbacks. Google was, essentially, enabling them. In January, Cutts put a stop to it. He told them that rather than helping them, guest blogging was going to start hurting them. He was trying to scare spammers off, not you.   He was trying to tell you to keep going. He was secretly whispering to you guest blogging isnt really dead, I am just fixing it for you. By scaring away the riff-raff, he is creating a panacea, a solution to the endless emails promising free content for links, a solution for an endless supply of poorly written posts. The spammers will go away, and we real bloggers can finally get back to work. All I can say is thank you, Matt. Thanks for killing guest blogging so that we can finally start fresh. Learning How To Guest Blog, Again So, if the death blow from Google is really more of a starting point rather than an ending point, where should we go next? It only makes sense that we redefine the rules and learn how to guest blog all over again. Rule #1: Guest Blogging Is For Serious People The first step is to realize who guest blogging is for. No longer is it for semi-pro SEOs and link builders. Instead, it is for those who want to better establish themselves as experts in their field. It  is for bloggers who take what they do seriously, and do it for the love of creating and sharing great content. Rule #2: Guest Blogging Is For Building Your Reputation Guest gives us a chance to write in front of a new audience. This gives us the ability to earn their trust and respect directly, by appearing on a blog they already trust. If we blog well, we may be able to keep their attention over the long term on our own blog. Guest blogging isnt about SEO anymore (although  there are still benefits). Now, it is about building trust and reputation. Rule #3: Guest Blogging Is For The Audience The beauty of the guest post is that we are able to take someone elses audience and make it our own. It is the perfect give-and-take. As writers, we get attention and exposure to a new audience, and as blog owners we get fresh content that will hopefully engage and excite our audience. My own guest post about  long-form content,  over on the Spin Sucks blog,  is a great example. I was able to establish my role in content marketing while encouraging a lively debate and discussion. It was a win for everyone. Rule #4: Guest Blogging Isnt For Links If you are only worried about links back to your stuff, then guest blogging simply isnt for you. Move on. Rule #5:  Guest Blogging Should Come With Simple Expectations If we are going to be participating in guest blogging, we need to know what to realistically expect from the experience. Huge traffic? Probably not. Fame and fortune? Certainly not. Trust and value? Yes please. Guest blogging is no longer about the quick win (with super-sized links!!!!). It is now a long-term tactic. It is really about personal brand building more than anything else, and that means that we need to go into it with simple expectations instead of grandiose visions of traffic and Google juice.