9 Great Guest Posts Ideas

Guest posting –writing an article for someone else’s blog – can be a very effective way of establishing yourself as an expert in your field, and helping to market your business. Posts can seamlessly incorporate keywords to benefit the blogger’s SEO efforts, and they often generate industry discussion, get shared on social networks such as FaceBook, re-tweeted (RT) on Twitter, and linked to from other blogs.

Using the example of an online travel gear retailer, here are some ideas to help you generate great guest posts.

1. Research the guest blog
Familiarise yourself with the host blog to understand the types of blog posts that work well and who the blog’s typical readers are, then craft your article around this. Consider getting in touch with the blog owner to pitch your idea to them or, if they invite submissions, read and follow their guest blogger guidelines. For a blog about independent backpacking adventures, for example, there would be no point in blogging about the best travel accessories to pack for a package beach holiday to Mallorca.

2. Interview someone inspirational
Ray Mears might be an ideal interviewee for a guest post on ‘travel survival tips’ or ‘bushcraft’. Unfortunately, however, it’s not always easy to secure time with well-known celebrities. If your dream interviewee remains out of reach, try to find a non-celebrity industry expert instead – in this case, a survival training provider would be ideal as they could offer you top quality answers, give your article weight, and ensure it has ‘sharing’ power within the travel community. Or even better, perhaps you are the experts or celebrity in your industry?

3. Use ‘celebrity’
So, you may not have managed to secure a one-to-one interview with a top celebrity in your field, but you could still touch on the subject of celebrity to help generate interest in your post. Perhaps a celebrity has recently shopped at your travel store, or been seen using a particular product that you stock? As long as your name-dropping is honest and valid, the chances are it will add value to your guest post.

4. Break news
Anything ‘newsy’ tends to attract attention simply because it’s fresh and hasn’t been seen or read before. If you or your company has some genuine news to announce, such as becoming an exclusive supplier of an innovative new travel product line, a high profile blog can be a great platform from which to shout about it. But less commercial content tends to do better on blogs, so perhaps you can break some news that will be relevant and interesting to the bloggers readers.

5. Give your opinion
If you offer your opinion or ‘commentary’ on a topical issue that’s currently in the headlines, you might get quoted in other news stories on the subject, and your post may attract links. Controversial opinions often generate maximum publicity, but remember that you usually only want good publicity! Before you spread the word, consider the potential impact of your views on how your business is perceived, e.g. encouraging travellers to visit a destination that’s experiencing political upheaval could be deemed irresponsible. Copyblogger are the experts when it comes to magnetic headlines ideas.

6. Generate magnetic headlines
If you can stop people in their tracks with your headline alone, you’re well on your way to achieving the perfect guest post. You could tempt readers in by offering them a secret, for example: “Secrets to avoiding the world’s worst travel scams” – or ask a question to which readers will want to know the answer: “Who are the world’s best travellers?”. It does still need to be backed up with a good, solid article, however — you don’t want to disappoint readers with a weak post after reeling them in with an eye-catching headline.

7. Highlight a new trend
If you’ve spotted a new trend in your industry, whether it’s destination-focused or travel theme-focused, this can make a great hook for a post. Perhaps you have conducted an online poll or travel survey on your site, and can use the results to create an interesting post topic. E.g. 80% of travel insurance claims are made in the last 20% of a holiday.

8. Use film and TV references
References to popular culture – especially TV and film – can help you to connect with many audiences. For example, for a guest post that will be published while the X Factor TV series is running, you could write a travel blog about how “Destinations of X Factor Judges’ Houses inspire holiday searches’ – or something similar.

9. Capture ideas and incubate them for a rainy day
If you have a moment of inspiration while you’re sat on the train, or wolfing down your lunch, jot down your thoughts before you lose them – whether you use your iPhone, a MindMapping software (I use MindJet), start a rough draft post in WordPress, or scrawl it on a piece of paper to develop later.

Bonus Point. Show you care…
It’s likely the passionate blogger will already have lots of great posts. Use Google to search their site (site:theirsite.com topic keywords) for related keywords to your topic. And link to these where relevant in you guest post. And as the fairly new phrase goes ‘Sharing is Caring’, so do you bit to promote the post on sites like twitter and be sure to answer any comments that are asked afterwards.

Guest blogging is a great and natural way to gain more attention. If you have a blog, you may find you get more subscribers to it. Having a blog also makes guest blogging easier to do as there is a voice that already exists that people can connect with. Also, you will likely get a link form the blog itself, and possibly further links in the future either from the content you wrote being further referenced or by the awareness gained from the post by other key bloggers.