An Interview About Guest Blogging 30 Oct. 2014 Benny Malev and Henneke Duistermaat [0:00:00] Hello, I'm Benny Malev, and I'm interviewing Henneke today about Guest Blogging. Hi Henneke Hi Benny. Good to talk. Yeah. So how did you start guest blogging, what did you start from? Yeah, I really started guest blogging a few years ago before I launched Enchanting Marketing because I was looking at online marketing and was quite confused by all the different techniques you could use like social media, SEO, pay per click, guest blogging and while looking into it I really felt that if I wanted to set up my own blog that guest blogging would be the best way to grow traffic and grow an audience. So I decided to ignore all the other bits for a while, really learn how to blog well and to do guest blogging to build an audience. How were you introduced to guest blogging? I really learnt about it from Jon Morrow's guest blogging course. So once I had figured out that guest blogging was my chosen tool, my chosen marketing tactic I found his course and I read his reviews and I thought that he would really be able to help me. So I took his course and really used that to get my first guest post written; his course is his highly recommended. He really explains the whole process, which we will discuss briefly today as well. But he goes through the whole process of which blogs to select for guest posting and how to study these blogs so that you can find out what would be a popular blog topic, how to then pitch with editors and including writing a blog post as well. And that s He has been a big influence on my writing. Yeah that s good. We have exactly questions regarding of that. Great. How do you decide which blogs to target for first guest post were there big or small following of the blogs, how about Ezine Articles, Hubpages or should we focus on blogs that have more specific topic? Enchanting Business Blogging Page 1
[0:05:07] Yeah so you really select a blog based on its audience so I wanted to target small business owners, so I was looking at blogs that would be read by people running a small business and I found that blogs like Copyblogger, KISSmetrics, Unbounce and even Shopify which is more focused on small ecommerce stores but that still fits my audience reasonably well. So you really start reading blogs and try to find blogs that are read by the same people that you want to read your own blog. So I forgot what other questions were? How important is the size of the following of the destination blog? Yeah, I think that is quite important. If you really want to do it to grow your own audience then it's not just about the size of the readership but also how engaged they are and often you can get a feel for that by looking at the number of comments, it's not a strict rule but in the main if you have a blog that receives quite a lot of comments then the audience is usually quite engaged and you have a better chance of them clicking through from your author bio to look at your site. But I also find it important to find blogs where I feel at home you know. It's also about connecting with those bloggers and it's a kind of networking and if you don t like the people or don t like their approach then they are probably not the right people to guest blog for. So if you have a choice between a reasonably sized blog and a bigger size blog, with a bigger size blog you think like whoa I don t like their approach there, I don t know maybe too pushy or you don t agree with their view point, then I would go for the slightly smaller blog. You can start smaller just as a confidence builder and to build up a little bit of a portfolio maybe but you get most out of guest posting for the biggest blogs. So when I took Jon Morrow's course, I really saw it as an opportunity to use his network to get on Copyblogger because he used to be assistant editor at Copyblogger and he said that if he has vetted the post and he was happy with it, he would pass it on behalf of the students of his class to Copyblogger and that s exactly what happened. So my first blog post was for Copyblogger but that was thanks to Jon Morrow. But how does someone that doesn t know Jon Morrow start, do you pitch for smaller blogs because you have more chance their or the chances are pretty much the same. It's really -- you can't pitch without networking first. So you have to build a little bit of a relationship for us. For instance I wanted to write for Mark Schaefer's blog which is called Businesses Grow and I really liked his approach, so I thought I just want to post on there at least once. So what I did is I started commenting on the blog -- on a semi regular basis and when I commented I always made sure it was a really valuable comment. I mean there is commenting and commenting, you can see from a comment whether somebody is just rushing to leave a mark or whether they really have considered the post, thought about it, have something Enchanting Business Blogging Page 2
valuable to add or to ask, comments like awesome post, thank you for writing are quite useless for building connections but a considered comment where you say, I love this point, have you ever thought about this as well -- that s that a way to engage. So it's really being interested in the blogger and once you email them with a pitch they should recognize your name in the inbox. And with Mark Schaefer I emailed him as well when there was a problem I had noticed on his website, I sent him an email and said, I'm not sure you've noted this but there is an error here. So when he saw my name with the pitch I wasn t an unknown person to him. And what I had -- what I did to my pitch his blog comments use Disqus, which is a system where you can leave comments and people can vote on comments and reply to comments. And I had left a comment on one of his blog posts and he replied to it saying oh I love this comment. And one or two other people replied to my comment as well saying I love this comment. And it receives quite a lot of up votes as well. So I knew what I had said there resonated with his audience. So when I emailed him, I said look I really enjoyed that post and I left this comment, you might remember and it received a lot of up votes. So I think it's something your audience is interested in and I wonder whether you would interested in reading and publishing a guest post about this topic for me. Of course if you are not sure I am happy to write a draft and we can take it from there. And he was quite interested. So it's always about building a relationship first so that when the pitch email arrives in somebody's inbox they already recognize your name, and I have an advantage of course with my strange name. So it's easier to remember. [0:10:10] So on the first pitch, did you have your blog running already? How many posts did you have on your blog and also what should you have before you start networking, before you start your pitching? I didn t have a single blog post on my blog, I didn t really have a website live. All I had is a landing page, so that I could get people on my email list and the landing page was very simple because at that stage I wasn t really sure what I was doing yet and what my blog would be about. I was just sort of using guest posting to test some ideas and I then initially wanted to write about content marketing but then later decided to scale back and just write about copywriting. So because I didn t know exactly what I was going to write about, I just had a landing page saying something like: Did you enjoy my post on Copyblogger? You'll love Enchanting Marketing too, launching soon, don t miss out, just leave your email address below. It was as simple as that which is not a perfect landing page but it worked and it got me subscribers. So by the time I launched my blog I had 300 Enchanting Business Blogging Page 3
people on my list and I knew that when I was writing for my blog I was writing already for a small audience. You know it is very encouraging because it means we can start right now, we don t wait -- we don t have to wait for anything, we just can start. Yeah you can start, you can really start with looking at maybe three blogs on your list that you think would be good targets and start reading the blog every time, every post and read the comments of people, so you gather better feel for their audience and you can read all the popular posts, most blogs have in the sidebar a list of popular posts. So you can really start studying to get a feel for what would be popular and that s really useful because once you know what will be popular you can write a much better pitch. Because when you write a pitch email, you want to be sure that you show to the blogger that you already know the audience and you give them a feeling that your blog post will be very popular. So you want to do really two things, one is write a very, very good headline because that will make the blogger curious as well and that what you are all learning already. That will be fine. Yes, yes. And then the other thing is when you are researching the blog for popular topics, then you want to make a note of blog posts that might inspire you to write something in a slightly different way and when you write your pitch you say I know this blog post received a lot of comments or this blog post received a lot of tweets and was really popular with your audience but what I noticed this point wasn t quite covered and I think your audience would really like it. So you always want to add some proof why you think your pitch will be popular with the audience. Do we have a chance to succeed in the first pitch or does it require many tries? If a blogger knows you already, if you have studied the blog well, if you have a good headline and good reason why think the blog post will be popular then you have a really good chance to be accepted. Okay, right. A really good chance. And I think it's worth putting a lot of effort upfront because people will immediately notice when you have not done your homework. I sometimes -- it's crazy, but I sometimes get guest post pitches from people and I just know they are not reading my blog and they start with I love Enchanting Marketing, you know. They flatter me because they think -- [0:15:17] Enchanting Business Blogging Page 4
-- that will make me excited and then they pitch a guest post but I just know if they have just be reading my blog for only one month they would have known that I don t accept guest post because you never see a guest post. So it's really easy to trip yourself up by not doing your research well enough and assuming things that are wrong. Right. Do you generally write the post before you pitch or just the headline, the idea and after you are accepted, you write the post itself? I write just the headline and the idea. I usually describe very briefly in three or four bullet points or just even one sentence what the post will be about. And then I get it accepted first and then I write it. I think some people write it first but I don t really want to run that risk because then I am writing something and people might say, no I don t like it. And then I spent a day writing a blog post and what do I do then? Yeah. So I think it is better to pitch it first because sometimes it has happened to me as well that people said oh, we have had a post about this six months ago and we don t want to cover that point so quickly again. Okay. Maybe you partially already answered this question but I am going to ask it anyway okay. Yeah. What types of post did you write for the first guest post and how did you decide on the topics? Yeah, so my first guest post for Copyblogger was a long list post about writing and I knew that long list posts tended to be really popular on Copyblogger because when I did my research, I noticed they received loads of tweets. And the topic writing was also popular. So that s what I wrote about. And then I thought I could use the same approach on KISSmetrics and I had seen some posts there as well that were long list posts that were popular and I had also noticed that posts about landing pages were popular but they didn t really have a single post covering all the different aspects of landing pages. So that s why I pitched to them a long list post about landing pages. Which did fine but not as well as the Copyblogger one. And then I saw maybe the long list post isn t the best option for KISSmetrics and the next one I post -- pitched to them was a post about writing sales copy like Apple because I had seen in my research -- there was a post about Steve Job's presentation skills and another one about Apple I think and they were really popular. So I thought well this audience seems to really like famous brand names. So let me try this for copywriting and that post became really very popular. Enchanting Business Blogging Page 5
[0:20:12] So your study should focus always on the target blog and what's missing there and you can fill? Yeah you can fill that gap what's not quite there or use a slightly different angle, yeah. But it's not every blog is the same, some blogs have a very clear format of the way the posts are written others are more open to different formats, like I said Copyblogger, long list post that are more like checklist with soundbite after soundbite. You know these long list post with just one or two sentences per point and then they link to another article. That works on Copyblogger but doesn t necessarily work on KISSmetrics. My long list post there was already more expanded with a few lines for each topic and comments about a study about conversation rate and picture with an example. So, if you look at Copyblogger they hardly ever use pictures in the post, they just have a picture at the top but some of the popular KISSmetrics posts have quite a few pictures maybe five or six spread throughout the post. So really you need to get into each blog and really understand what makes their audience tick and there are differences. What can you ask for in return when you write a guest post? Should you always aim only for expanding your email list or can you ask something else maybe money for return? Yeah I've -- I've been paid for some guest post but for me the growing my list is always the main thing. So -- the other thing I think, it's also about the connection and getting to know people and what Jon Morrow says is if you have written five guest posts for somebody you can ask a favor. So when I had written five guest posts for Jon Morrow, I asked him to provide a testimonial for my blogging book and he did that for me. I waited far longer before I asked Brian Clark at Copyblogger for something. Are you still there? Yeah, yeah, I am listening. Okay, I thought it was -- the connection was gone. Yeah so I waited two years before I asked him for a review for my website, so I don t think there is a one rule about what you can ask. Some people ask people to tweet. I don t ask that so regularly because I don't think the value of a tweet is that big. So I rather wait for another opportunity to ask for a favor. Okay. When you started how often did you guest post? I think initially I didn t guest post a lot because I was still doing my 70 hour a week job, and it took me a long time to write a blog post and to come up with ideas. When I quit my job I started to post a little more regularly maybe once a month and then when I got more confidence and things started to speed up a little and I got more ideas, I started guest blogging twice or even three time a month sometimes. And then when I Enchanting Business Blogging Page 6
launched my Kindle book especially the first one I had like eight guest posts within that week of launching my Kindle book. At the moment it's more like one or sometimes two a month. [0:25:00] Should you always give priority to your own blog? I think in the beginning it's a little bit of a mix. I think because in the beginning it's important to build up an audience so -- in the beginning I would prioritize guest blogging even if that means that you can only post once every other week on your own blog. So yeah in the beginning I would prioritize guest blogging but then once you have an audience then your own blog becomes more important. Okay. Were you surprised by the response to some of your posts either they got greater attention than you expected or less attention and has the observation helped you choose a more popular topic? Did something that happened in Copyblogger when you started with your first list post, did it happen lots of times what -- or was this an exception? Yeah, that first list post was quite popular, so I wrote them more often and actually one of the long list posts I wrote last year in 2013 then became the most shared post on Copy logger. So yeah you do -- you do learn every. And sometimes you think like is this something people really want to hear or not? Then you are really surprised that the post does really, really well. And sometimes you think it will do well and it doesn t do so well. You can't always get it 100% right. So yeah you keep learning. But do the comments really help you focus on and choose your topics or are they just helping you a little bit and not more than that? The comments I receive on Enchanting Marketing helped me a lot, they really often help me come up with new ideas. I mean in the beginning when I started writing for Copyblogger they still had comments as well and that was helping me a lot as well to see what people enjoy to what people enjoy less and sometimes people might really give comments as additions or they stress that they really loved a certain point I made, and I thought oh, I didn t think that was that important you know and it made me think I can write more about it. I mean unfortunately there is no comments on Copyblogger anymore, which is from my guest writer point of view, is a real pity because you don t get that feedback anymore. You can only look at the tweet counts. Or Google Plus but there is not so much interaction on Google plus. Yeah, but from what I read you can't really count on that s right? So what can't you count on? Enchanting Business Blogging Page 7
[0:30:00] On how many times your post was retweeted or shared on Facebook because it's pretty much meaningless from what I understand. Yeah, I mean it does give an indication but it doesn t necessarily translate to more subscribers for instance. A few of my Copyblogger were recommended in the buffer app, so a lot of people started tweeting them but that doesn t translate to subscribers, so yeah it's only some indication but not everything. What are the usual deadlines once you have been okayed to write a guest post? That really differs per blog. So with Copyblogger for instance I write for them nearly every month. And what we usually do is agree a series of topics and then already fix dates for me in the editorial calendar so I have deadlines for each post. Other editors will just say okay just get it to me whenever it's ready. And they will only plan it in once they have it. So there is no deadline. If that s the case what I usually do is still tell them I will get you the post by a certain date because that makes me accountable so I kind of have to do it. Can you recommend some specific sources for guest blogging like any specific blogs or posts on anything that you think that that might be really helpful? Yeah the only thing I really, really know is the Jon Morrow's guest blogging course and that was the main resource that I have used. I don't know any other specific resources. I mean you have sort of these -- what are they called like -- my blog guest or something like that where you can exchange guest posts but I wouldn t recommend that. Okay. Yeah the only one I really know is Jon's Course. So the next step after we start blogging we should look at there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Or just try it yourself based on my suggestions and people can ask some more questions if they want. Yes. I think from you suggestions like starting networking and such is the great way to begin with. Enchanting Business Blogging Page 8
Yeah, I think so. You can already start doing that now and once you have finished the course then you can -- you can pitch the post. How did you request the testimonial for a guest post, I would say that you have many big names on your web page, did you ask them specifically to write something to recommend you or did they approach you, did they want to do it. I asked them, and I even wrote examples for them so as to make it as easy as possible for them. So I told them I am redesigning my home page and I would love to have your recommendation, I am looking for something very brief for example three sentences and in some cases people just edited that slightly and said yeah this is perfect or sometimes they rewrote it. But I gave them a clear indication of what I needed to make it as easy as possible. I approached them directly, yeah. But was there any problem doing it or were they happy to write it? I mean Brian Clark I didn t know very well but I had met him briefly at the Copyblogger conference last year and I knew he had to be happy with my posts because my recent posts were all doing extremely well. So, I was sort of thinking I would be surprised if he wouldn t want to do that. And I knew Neil Patel was a fan of me because he loves my post about Apple copy and I had had some email conversations with him, I don t know him very well but I had some email conversations so I thought he would do me a favor. And Sally Hogshead is just somebody I have worked for so that was somebody I knew better than the other two. Yeah. And I of course wanted to have a lady in there. And do you recommend any particular blog platform or do you think they are all pretty much the same. I just use WordPress Why did you choose the WordPress? I think WordPress is just easy to use, you can adjust it with plugins. I think the Rainmaker platform looks interesting but it wasn t there when I started and I think it is a little restrictive still at the moment, there are things I'm doing on my blog now that I wouldn t be able to do with Rainmaker. So I might move at some stage but not now. You have also HubSpot but I don t think that s something I needed, I don t know them very well, they are more a solution to complete inbound marketing. But for me WordPress is fine and I just used a theme based on the genesis framework which is also from Copyblogger. And that s absolutely fine with me. I wanted to keep things as easy as possible. Enchanting Business Blogging Page 9
[0:35:11] Do you handle the design yourself or did you take someone to do it for you? I designed most of the website, I chose my colors, the fonts and the only thing I hired somebody for was the logo because I have no Photoshop skills whatsoever and yeah I wanted my logo to look professional and I use it on my business card as well. So I hired somebody to design my logo and now recently I hired somebody to redesign my homepage because that was beyond my skills as well. Should we put endeavor into doing all the technical things or should we focus more on writing and try to outsource the design and other technical parts? I think it's useful to have at least some technical skills so that you can make some minor adjustments without having to go through somebody and be delayed but really depends a little bit on how much time you have and what your budget is like. To be honest if my business is going to grow it will be the first thing I will outsource all the IT stuff but at the moment I am doing almost all IT stuff myself. I didn t build the course website myself because that was more complicated with the forum and the secure access. So I did hire somebody to do that for me. Thank you very much. Well it was a pleasure, great talking and if anybody has any other questions of course they can pop them in forum. Okay thanks. [0:36:30] End of Audio Enchanting Business Blogging Page 10