Your Blog Accepts Guest Posts ?

Guest posting is a popular way for bloggers to increase exposure to their blogs. It can be beneficial to both parties as the blogger can gain new subscribers to their blog and the owner of the blog the post is published on gets free content.

If you choose to accept blog posts on your blog, you should take steps to improve the guest posting experience for both yourself and the guest poster.

Must read: How to Generate Blog Post Ideas (A Beginner’s Guide)

Promote the Fact You Accept Guest Posts

Bloggers are not psychic. If you want to accept guest posts on your blog, you need to let bloggers know about it.

You will only get a few requests for guest posts if you do not advertise it. In order to increase guest post requests, you should display a message on your blog advising people that you accept guest posts. This can be placed discretely on your contact page or in a more prominent area of your blog, such as your sidebar.

If you really want to increase the number of requests you have for guest posts, I recommend advertising on a blogging job board such as ProBlogger or BloggingPro.

Formatting Rules & Writing Guidelines

Every blogger has their own writing style. If you do not set any formatting rules or writing guidelines for authors, all of your guest posts will look very different. Some will be short, some will be long. Some will have images, some will not.

Remember, it is your blog they are publishing on, therefore you set the rules. I recommend creating a dedicated guidelines page that advises guest posters what you expect from them for their guest posts. This will help ensure the average quality of guest posts that are submitted is higher.

Accept Guest Posts

Email is one of the most common ways of corresponding with guest posters and accepting their articles. This process can be time consuming.

If you want to automate the process of accepting guest posts on your blog, you may want to consider allowing people to submit guest posts directly on your blog. There are a number of WordPress plugins that allow you to do this.

• Guest Posts – Features a basic form for guests to submit guest posts
• TT Guest Post Submit – Allows visitors to submit guest posts, assign posts to categories, and upload featured images
• Really Simple Guest Post Plugin – Provides a basic form for accepting guest posts
• WordPress Guest Posting Plugin – Available for $18, this plugin allows you to charge people for submitting guest posts to your blog – it has support for custom post types too

If you receive a lot of traffic, you may want to test one of the above solutions. It could greatly reduce the process of accepting guest posts on your blog.

Author Bios

The author bio is traditionally displayed at the end of blog posts. Bios give a description of the author and a link to their website and/or social media account.

A good bio area is important for guest posters as it gives the guest blogger exposure. This, in turn, encourages more people to guest post.

Modern WordPress themes usually have a bio area built into the single.php template. However, there are a number of WordPress plugins available that enhance the bio area. This includes Sexy Author Bio, Fancier Author Box by ThematoSoup, Author Bio Box, and WP Biographia.

Ask Guest Posters to Promote Their Article

Guest posters are generally proud of the fact that they have published an article on a popular blog. You should therefore encourage them to share their article to their own readers and social media followers. Most will be happy to oblige 🙂

Do you have any tips for accepting guest posts on your blog? If so, I encourage you to share them in the comment area below.

Thanks for reading.

Kevin