The traffic the guest posts drives is usually targeted, rich and converts well. However, you need a combination of creativity and marketing-mastermind to achieve results. So many bloggers who write guest posts do not derive huge benefits from it because they’ve missed the 4 essential elements.

And because you’re here, I’m going to reveal the 4 vital elements, that would catapult your write-ups to the sky and cause you to experience a surge of fresh readers, instant do-follow backlinks and increase in your pagerank.

If you’re ready to learn, let’s do it…

1. Research Your Topic Properly

My first 4 months of writing guest posts was a mess. I don’t even research topics and although, my work was published, the highest traffic I could get was 100 or less. But all that have changed now. You need to research the topic you want to write. Get in tune with the kind of content the blog owner likes. You also need to read several posts from the archive to know which ones got the highest comments.

When you write your guest article having this in mind, you automatically increase your chances of getting social love from the readers. One of your goal whenever you write a guest post is to make sure it attracts the social environment. If no one tweets or shares your article, that’s an indication that you did not interest them. Avoid this by making your posts sticky, interesting and full of uniqueness.

2. Pitch First – Write Second

This element of guest posting is very important. I see a lot of writers who complain that their article was rejected. One way of getting published is to pitch your opponent first. Let them know about the topic, the title and a little about the description. If you’ve been successful with your posts on a few blogs, rant about it on your email message.

No one is going to call you an expert, until you let them know you’re one. Pitching helps to soothe the receiving end, so that when you eventually submit the complete article, the spirit of rejection is out of the way. Creating first impression is very important, and writers know this like the back of their palm. A perfect pitch helps to create that first impression – resulting in a “YES.”

So, don’t write your guest posts before contacting anyone. Contact them first with what you have in mind; topic, title, description, your name, blog and skill. It makes a lot of difference between articles that made it to the homepage and those that didn’t.

3. Write With Your Own Voice

Everyday, I receive over 15 guest posts from bloggers across the blogosphere, and about 10 would be rejected. If this have happened to you before, I know the problem. Even though your article is great, keyword rich and informative, experienced writers don’t count this.

Instead, what matters is your writing style. We all know about the top 10 ways to drive traffic to blogs, why should I get your post published when I already know it – even my readers do too? What we need is your voice.

How would you present a common topic in an extraordinary way? You can’t please blog readers by simply writing about common ideas, you need to protrude your voice. It’s your uniqueness, how you see the problems they have and what you’re doing to solve it.

Your voice makes the difference. So, when you need to get your guest article accepted, don’t be like the desperate writers (beginners), take your time and coin those words. Success begins with attributing time to events, and watch them unfold. This is the underground secret to featuring your guest post on A-list blogs. Make sure you utilize this secret today.

4. Keep Abreast Of Hot Trends

We are living in an ever-changing world and the internet is at the top of it all. Human wants are insatiable and so they long for greener pastures. These pastures are information that have not been before.

They are hot trends. As a blogger, one thing that readers are desperate for is “the latest happenings around.” No matter the field you are in today, there are events unfolding every passing day. Glowhost and hostgator released some of their coupon codes recently and it became popular. Hot trends work!

Writing a guest post on these hot trends is the surest path to a positive answer. For instance, when the recent Google panda updates went out a few months ago, websites were hungry for contents in this regard and several fresh contents made it to the frontpage of authority blogs.

Stay off the radar and watch. You would discover amazing blog posts ideas to help you enhance and increase your chances of featuring your best works on high trafficked blogs. As a side note, hot trends tends to bring more traffic than archaic trends – you know what to do in this regard, don’t you?

Marketing Takeaway

All in all, what is your success so far with guest posting? We all have 24 hours every single day to spend. Some are going to waste it, while others are going to invest it. If you must invest in anything worthwhile on the internet, draw your scale of preference and make sure guest posting is at the top. See you at the top!

An Understanding of Social Media

Social media is not merely a medium of staying in contact, it has now become an essential part of search engine optimisation, creating viral pieces and also informing a target audience of your blog. Social networks such as Twitter, Facebook, DiggIt and even the likes of Google+ offer a new and ever changing way to connect with your audience, as well as create a new one. Google+ and its new circles feature will change the way this is done, allowing bloggers to place certain articles of interest to particular groups of people into certain groups or Circles. This will mean a new and more specific
way of interesting people in your blogs.

Encourage and harvest message and comment boards

After you write a blog, pay particular attention to your message boards and use them to stimulate discussion on your site. Understanding what will get people involved and engaging them through your boards is a great way to get people to read your blog on a regular basis and this sort of interaction is essential. Harvest and use what they say to come up with more ideas for future blogs, this means you are giving the audience what they want.

Know your audience

Understanding your audience and what makes them tick is essential for blog writers. Researching other similar blogs, the people who read yours and all the ins and outs of the industry or topic you write about is of essence when blogging. This is also essential afterwards, as you can gather from out previous tip, you need to keep people engaged and understand them to get them coming back for more.

Use Media

Varying the means with which you communicate can make your blog far more attractive for readers, as well as giving them something a little different. Videos and podcasts offer different opportunities for bloggers to explore and use. These mediums can give your site something different and offer more potential than the written word alone. Understanding the basics of these media mediums can be very easily done – look it up on YouTube or in your library.

Tech Stuff

Having a basic understanding of HTML, SEO and some other programming languages can have its benefits. Knowing how to tag or finding out the best keywords for your article is essential in the rankings game. Knowing how to lay out pages properly is also essential. Blog readers want certain things such as short paragraphs, bold sub headings and a number of other things. Read up on these and increase the readability of your text online.

About The Author

Nicky writes on behalf of an urgent printing company that specialises in brochure printing . She loves design, art and spends her spare time learning how to use Photoshop.

If you need ideas on the types of blog posts you can write, the following are some tips that can get you started.

‘Quick Tips’ Blog Posts

These are usually between 150 and 250 words. They share ideas which are relevant but that don’t justify writing a lengthy blog post. Quick tips posts are great because they are simple, brief and to the point.

‘How To’ Blog Posts

These blog posts offer more details in an expanded format compared to quick tips blog posts. Such posts provide information on how to do specific things within your niche.

‘Review’ Blog Posts

These blog posts involve writing a service or product review to help readers make a choice in the buying process. When you write such posts, make sure you include affiliate links so you can have the opportunity of making commissions on the blog posts. I use review blog posts frequently to help customers make a choice when purchasing ediet coupons and weight watchers discounts from my blog.

‘Resource’ Blog Posts

This type of blog post is basically a resource list. In many cases, blog readers would love to see lists of resources. Therefore, make sure you provide such lists occasionally.

‘Interview’ Blog Posts

Blog readers usually love interview posts, especially those which interview a person they admire and would like to know about. Such posts can be very useful for directing traffic to your site.

‘Best Of’ Blog Posts

Such blog posts are ideal for wrap ups at the end of the year. If you read a lot, list your favorite guides, books or articles which you have enjoyed in the past one year. Alternatively, you could highlight your own outstanding articles in the wrap up.

‘Personal Story’ Blog Posts

Most blog readers appreciate personal stories. Your readers will appreciate such blog posts since they relate to both you and your niche. Talk about seminars that you attended, new products you have tried, mistakes you have learned from, and so on.

‘News’ Blog Posts

Every single niche has vital news and related events that you could write about. Keep your eyes and ears wide open so that you can write about events in your niche as they happen.

Author Bio

Charles is a technology lover who also blogs about special coupon and discount offers such as weight watchers discounts and ediet coupons. Recently, he shared weight watchers online coupon codes and ediets coupon in CouponTriumph, a coupon blog.

So, no matter what your blog covers, you will indefinitely have tons of competitors. And you have to make yourself known to people for “some unique thing” so that people can notice you in the midst of the crowd.

In this situation, the simplest thing you can do is to find your unique blogging voice and express it. Since it is your voice, it will be different from any other blogger (your competitor). It is easier this way to stand out from the crowd.

Your blogging voice does not necessarily have to be a reflection of your personality; but if it is so, then things are much better and easier to relate (both for yourself and your readers).

There are various ways to finding your very own blogging voice. There is no strict route or set of steps to finding your voice. After all, blogging still remains primarily a creative process. However, I will give you some handy tips to jump start your thought process.

Inspiration

This is the prime factor that adds to your blogging voice. Contrary to popular beliefs, getting inspired from any good blog or a particular writer’s style is not copying. Unless, of course, you actually do pick their topics, words and sentences.

In fact, most of the popular blogs have been impressed by some of the already existing blogs. The idea is to not emulate but strive to present your own take on the idea.

Remember, readers will always be interested to know about your personalized opinion (provided you prove to be of value to them) and information on a topic that already has too many blogs structured upon it.

Exclusivity

Now, coming immediately after the first point, this might seem a little difficult to grasp. However, being exclusive certainly makes you unique.

So, if you chose a topic like “10 of the most interesting website designs”, try to write about what particular elements captured your interest first. Then move on to talk about a websites’ generic popular design elements.

The focus should be on letting the reader look at the designs from your impartial but exclusive point of view.

Jot down your ideas

This is a necessary step; in fact, it can be considered the fuel for finding your blogging voice. Ideas for blog posts might come to you anytime or anywhere. Make sure that you capture those ideas effectively.

More importantly, some of these ideas might require further cultivation and polishing before you can include them in your blog. Jotting down all of your ideas immediately might help you to take note and focus on identifying your style.

Study your previous posts

Always learn from your mistakes and your successes. Every once in a while study your older blog posts. When you look at the popular posts, try to capture the mood and the tone of the posts. Clearly, this particular style and tone worked for you, so you might incorporate it in your newer posts too.

Also, look at the posts that were not so successful and try to decipher exactly what might have gone wrong with them. Avoid those mistakes in the future.

Do not dwell on competition

Your blogging voice is your identity but do not make the mistake of completely ruining your creativity by getting too hung up on the competition. If you have a blog on a particular niche, concentrate on your voice and opinion on the niche topics rather than dwelling upon other blogs based on the same niche.

You must follow them to place a finger on the pulse of your niche. However, do not get to the point where you stop getting your own ideas and just reproduce their posts. That is non-creative and might even come close to plagiarism.

Above all, your blogging voice needs an authentic ring to it. It is actually quite easy to do so, once you get fairly acquainted with the technical process and give a free flow to the creative side of the issue. This way you can rightfully enjoy creating and developing your blog.

Have you discovered your blogging voice yet?

Author Bio:
This is a guest post from Jane Sheeba. Jane owns two blogs, Find All Answers and Tech Buzz Online. She also writes at Coupon Triump, a site that shares Bistro MD and Diet to go discount coupons. Here are a couple of them for you to grab: bistro md coupon, diet to go coupon.

Over the years, I’ve had several friends faced with the same dilemma. Working with them, I was able to help them identify a topic and now they are all running profitable blogs.

One of my friends is a dental student, and was trying to find a topic he could blog about. He really likes baseball and cars. He was leaning towards blogging about cars until I sat down with him in a brainstorming session.

By brainstorming we found the perfect niche for him focused around his interest and specialized knowledge. It was writing about the topic of dentistry. Being a student the topic is fresh in his head and he can add a unique twist to his blog based on his current experiences in dental school.

You can do the same, but it is important you find a topic you can stick with. The number one reason bloggers fail is topic selection.

When you create a blog you’ll want to have a topic you love. Not just some everyday topic but a topic you are really passionate about. It’s that simple, and that’s the key to all successful blogs.

Remember your not just blogging about your topic. Your building friends on social networks, joining groups and engaging yourself in the topic all over the web. If it’s a topic you don’t like then everything from writing to building relationships will seem hard.

To provide a huge boost to ensure success, try to select a topic around your hobbies, interests, and particular experiences. Everyone has some passion or hobbies that can be used to build a blog to earn money online.

Here are some questions to ask in helping you find a topic:

• What sports do you like?
• What non-work related area do people ask you about at work?
• When just surfing the internet for pleasure, what sites do you visit?
• What job related skills do you have? Any specialized skills?
• Do you have kids? What experiences do you have?
• At a party if you have to speak with a person what topic would you prefer?
• What type of books do you like to read?
• Do you have firsthand experience with health or medical conditions ?
• If you asked your best friend, what would he or she say you are most knowledgeable about?
• What is your favorite hobby?
• If you retired today what would you do all day?
• What volunteer activity would you do if you had all the time in the world?
• Are you knowledgeable or experienced with finance, home improvement, travel, relationships, photography, cars, or anything in your daily life?

It’s that simple. Just sit down and brainstorm and find that one area you are super passionate about. That will be the first step for you starting a successful blog that can make online income.

Perhaps one of the biggest reasons blogging rules, is viral traffic. The simple fact is that it is much easier to drive viral traffic to a blog then other types of sites.

Blogs integrate extremely well with social media since blogs are conversational and the core of social media is all about conversation.

Also, there is no shortage of viral traffic methods for your blog to use.

Some of the common viral traffic sources include:

1. Twitter
2. Social media sites (Facebook, Stumbleupon, Diggs, etc…)
3. Writing link bait
4. Swapping blog posts
5. Competitions with other blogs (i.e. A competition between two blogs to see who can get the most twitter followers in 2 weeks).
6. Giving away a free report
7. Video posts
8. Article marketing

While all of the above are great viral traffic strategies, in this post I want to highlight Blog Contests a viral traffic strategy commonly overlooked.

A blog contest is simply a way to engage your readers by letting them participate in a contest.

Blog contests are great for building loyal relationships with your readers and helping your blog generate a buzz.

When you are ready to start a blog contest you have a couple considerations. First off you need to select a nice prize for the winner(s). I recommend a 1st, 2nd and 3rd place prize.

Next you need to plan the contest qualifying requirements and how the winner is determined. This is where things get interesting.

If you plan your requirements correctly it can have a huge viral traffic impact for your blog.

I recommend you consider some of the following requirements for your contest. Each requirement must be met before a reader can be selected as a winner.

1. Write a blog post promoting the contest.
2. Promote the contest by adding it to at least 5 social media sites (stumbleupon, facebook, digg, etc…).
3. Subscribe to your blog feed.
4. Add five quality comments at least 5 times on any of your posts.
5. Tell at least 5 friends about the contest (Note you’ll need a tell-a-friend form on your blog.)

The above are commonly used requirements. You can add as many as you like, but I recommend using 3 or 4 that will drive viral traffic to your blog. If you use more then 4, it may be difficult to get readers to participate unless the winner’s prize is of very high value.

After you have your requirements firmed up, you’ll want to set how the winner is determined. It could be at random, but it is much better if it drives an action that helps your blog. One example may be to select the winner based on the reader that completes all of the 5 requirements above and has posted the most quality comments on your blog. It can be anything just be creative and try to drive an action that makes sense for your blog.

One last recommendation. Blog contests always work better when your blog already has a base of readers. So if you are a new blogger you’ll probably want to focus on other viral strategies before a blog contest.

Is blogging in you? Do you need some inspiration on blogging? Take a look at this New York Times story about a blogger’s success: Click Here

Quote for Today: “Don’t aim for success if you want it; just do what you love and believe in, and it will come naturally.”
-David Frost

The search engines love frequently updating content and will rank your blog higher because of it. The content management features of blogging systems make it very simple to update content frequently.

So what do you do if you hate to write? Well here are five options to update your blog with minimal writing.

1. Dragon Naturally Speaking: It’s been said that the brain is closer to the mouth then the fingers so for some people it can be more efficient to speak then type out your blog posts. Dragon Naturally Speaking is one of the top voice recognition software’s that will take your voice and transfer it into your text editor. It can even be trained to recognize your voice to prevent errors. A great solution if you hate writing.

2. Screen Toaster: Screen capture is a great way to update your blog with training. Screen toaster is a free software that allows you to easily create videos of your computer screen. You can do live training or simply speak about a PowerPoint you created.

3. Video: If screen capture doesn’t fit then do a short video of yourself speaking about a subject. This will create a personal relationship with your readers and help you save time writing. With today’s technology it is very easy to create a short video of yourself. In addition to your blog you can also post this on YouTube and other video sites to drive additional traffic.

4. Free Conference Call: Allows you to hold a teleconference and record it for free. The recording can easily be placed on your blog as content or transcribed to make a written post.

5. Guest Posts: Build relationships with other bloggers and allow them to guest post on your blog. This will provide you benefit and them as well.

If you are not blogging because you think you have to be a writer, it is best to stop fighting it. Just get to work and start your path to success. No matter which opportunity you select to make money online, you will likely have to produce new and interesting content or your site will be dead.

I have five core reasons:

1. Conversion: Building a relationship by adding value is one of the highest converting ways to make money online. Most people fail online because they do not spend the time building a relationship, they just go directly to convincing people to buy a product.

Blogging is conversational which makes it perfect for building relationships with readers. This will drive high conversions and help you build a long term business/brand.

Certainly you can build a relationship via e-mail by throwing up a landing page and capturing email addresses. But why would you want to publish all the content via email when you could have that content rank in the search engines and drive traffic to you?

2. Traffic: With a little work, building relationships with other bloggers will reap you traffic benefits for years and grow your subscribers. You want to associate yourself with other blogging experts in your field, which intern helps your brand evolve.

Getting out from behind your computer and picking up the phone can really help you build relationships with other bloggers. Also attending events is a great way too.

3. SEO: The SEO benefit is huge with blogging. By far the biggest factor that influences your blog’s search engine raking is links from other authority sites in your niche. By other bloggers linking to your blog it will make it much easier for your blog to consistently rank in the search engines.

Authority sites are not going to link to your 1 page affiliate site. Plus if you are marketing via PPC you can still build a landing page off your blog. Google will reward you with a much better quality score since your blog has lots of authority.

Updating content is another huge factor in your search engine placement. Blogging makes it easy to keep your content fresh which will have the search engines loving your blog.

And don’t forget about the SEO for WordPress plug-in that makes on page SEO for your blog a cinch.

4. Feeling Proud: Statistics show when you feel proud about your work you will be more successful. Blogging provide you the perfect opportunity to build a long term business and brand you can feel proud of.

You have a choice online, build a long term brand or jump from one short term affiliate opportunity to another. Either way you will spend lots of time. The difference is with building a blog you can create a long term business versus just a short term money making opportunity that will get copied by affiliates.

5. Technical Hurtle: I have noticed many people online fail because they get caught up with html and technical issues when creating a business website online. With blogging systems like WordPress, the technical hurtles to succeed are significantly reduced. This is a great reason to start blogging especially if you are not a techie.

I hope this helps you see why blogging is a great method for building your online business. Sure you have to write a bit, but in the long run building a long term business is much easier then jumping from niche to niche trying to make short term money!

Here are 3 reasons.

Blogs Are Free and Easy To Update – Since open source blogging software (like wordpress) is completely free there is little reason not add a blog to your ecommerce store website. 

You can set up a blog in as little as 5 to 10 minutes and adding content to a blog is as simple as pushing a button.  This provides you considerable benefit to easily keep content freshly updating on your site which will have the search engines frequently coming back indexing your site which can help you improve your search rankings.

Search Engines Love Blogs –   Yes that is right search engines do love blogs.  But do not misunderstand that search engine ranking is as easy as just throwing up a blog and getting a top 10 rank.  You need frequently updating quality content and income links to your blog. 

Now you may be saying that is no different than my ecommerce store website.  If I update the content and get links I will rank.  True you can rank, but blogs provide you some great advantages that can be difficult to achieve with an ecommerce website.

Here are 3 advantages:

First there are hundreds of quality RSS and blog directories with lots of page rank  that can be passed to your blog if you get listed in the directory.  You can not get your ecommerce store website listed in many of these blog directories so having a blog provides some additional seo benefit to help your site rank. 

Secondly, blogs are a great way to focus on long tail keywords in your industry.  You probably do not want to optimize a product page on your ecommerce website for the keyword coleman 17 x 10 red canyon tent sleeps 8.

But it is easy to create a blog post optimized for the keyword coleman 17 x 10 red canyon tent sleeps 8 which then cross-links to the appropriate product page on your ecommerce store website. Your blog can be used as a strategic advantage to suck in long tail keyword traffic from the search engines. Then you will lead this traffic to your ecommerce store product pages. 

Once your blog grows in size and you have hundreds of posts created around long tail keywords, you will see your traffic explode.  It will be kind of like fishing for sales with diatomite versus a fishing pole.

Thirdly, since you will write your blog posts in a more relaxed perspective the content will appear very natural and likely intertwine semantically related keywords.  This will help give your blog a boost in the search results since search engines love content that is naturally written with semantically related words.

Brand Yourself As An Expert And Communicate With Your Customers –  Since blogging systems already have built in ways for your customers to comment and ask you questions they offer an easy way to start building a relationship and brand with your customers. 

In your blog post you will be writing about your industry, news, and products from many different angles and that will stimulate interest and comments.  You can take these comments and questions to open the dialogue between you and your customer so that you can improve your business.

Many blogging systems have plugins that will allow you to take a poll of your customers.  If you have a hot issue with your business this is a great way to see how your customers feel about it.

Also, since you will be blogging about many different angles of your industry, it will brand you as an expert.  If you are selling tents talk about how they originated, how they are manufactured, different materials, the market share in the industry and tips on how to set up a tent.   This way if the press is looking for an interview, you will be a prime option which will give you some free exposure.

While the above 3 benefits can give your business a competitive advantage, don’t just add a blog to your ecommerce store if you’re not willing to consistently invest time and effort updating it.  An outdated or inactive blog will reflect the opposite image of whatever it is you want potential customers to know about your company.