One of the aspects that has been talked numerous times about guest blogging is obviously the exposure it gives your blog but I also look at this activity as one of the most important means of building a support system in the community. I have noticed majority of the times people ask for guest bloggers when they themselves are not able to post on a regular basis. Someone providing you the content and allowing you to continue to provide your readers what they expect from you, I think is the biggest support any blogger could ask for.
On the other hand, the opportunity to be able to write for someone who has proven their worth in the blogging community, is something every new blogger should actively seek out! I have been fortunate to have experienced both facets of this process and would like to share how it worked for me!
Inviting Guest Bloggers
If you look at my top posts or most recent posts at the bottom of the blog, you’d find that I have been finding it hard to focus and one of those days I asked RT Cunningham of untwistedvortex if he would agree to write for my blog and he was nice enough to agree to do so and wrote a mini tutorial Pings and Trackbacks. The article
was very well written and since I submitted his article to Darren’s 31 days to building a better blog to share with others, the article got so much exposure that my Alexa rank broke the top 100k mark! Of course I had never experienced this before so it didn’t even occur to me to check my traffic rank until RT wrote to me about it and even had to tell me how to check one day’s traffic ‘cuz I was still looking at the three months’ traffic displayed on the widget…:) Thanks RT!
Writing for Other Bloggers
When in just the second month of blogging, I ventured into guest posting, I had no idea about promoting the blog. My main purpose was to get to know some people and develop some relationships in the blogging community. I had been reading Freshblogger for quite some time and when Ray announced he was looking for guest bloggers I took a chance and asked him if he would accept my article. He did and I was pleasantly surprised to get positive feedback on writing tips for good blogging. Thank you Ray!
Guest posting on Freshblogger not only gave me more confidence to do better, I was also able to make new friends like Peter who liked what I had written. Peter continued to give me support by always writing encouraging comments on this blog, introduced me to Blogging To Fame, and even famed my blog to push it ahead!
Peter was kind enough to also suggest to me that I should write for Ilker’s the thinking blog when Ilker was busy during exams!! Of course, by this time I had gotten to know a whole lot of new bloggers and became good friends with them, exchanging regular emails and chatting up via IMs! So all this time I had been wondering how meeting our virtual friends in real life would be like! The comments and reactions to that article were fantastic with everyone talking about what they thought about virtual friends vs real life friends!! Check out the article if you haven’t and voice your opinions! Thank you Peter and Ilker!!
I know some bloggers have been lucky to be meeting at blog conferences and other meet ups and I am sure the experiences are great. I hope I get to meet some of the people I’ve gotten to know via blogging some day!
So, blogging (and guest blogging in particular) is not just about building links and driving traffic, its about making friends, building associations and a huge support system that extends beyond geography and time! So, if you have not yet participated in guest blogging, go ahead and either approach someone you always wanted to write for or invite them to write for you. You have everything to gain for in both of the scenarios!!
Technorati Tags: Guest Blogging, Writing, Community
Nirmal
Great points mentioned here. Guest blogging is always good.