Blog Influence for Beginners

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Step by step, I’ll explain how my guest post got published on Darren Rowse’s top-10 Problogger blog – reaching an audience of over 35,000 readers.

As a blogging beginner seeking influence, your biggest worry is often that your words of wisdom aren’t likely to be read by many people. You could use effective blog marketing to build up a readership, but that takes time and effort.

Here’s a quicker way to short-circuit this process. Though it also involves work and effort, it’s ’smart’ work instead of just ‘hard’ work – and can get you more blog influence faster than many other methods.

Phase 1 – Build up credibility

For weeks I visited Problogger (and many other blogs too, this isn’t a one-shot wonder thing) and read many posts. Wherever I could join the conversation and contribute meaningfully to it, I posted comments.

The purpose of such comments was NOT to get a link back or funnel traffic to my blog – it was to catch the eye of the blogger who moderates them! Thanks, Caroline Middlebrook, for first pointing out the distinction in a lovely guide to blog commenting.

Phase 2 – Get attention

This isn’t always easy, as top bloggers are busy and pulled in different directions. It helps if you already know them – by being a customer, supporter, donor, fan or groupie.

Establishing communication isn’t always easy due to technical problems. Email goes missing. Private messages are ignored. IM may not be an option.

Fortunately (or by sheer chance) I found Darren on Twitter – and made contact. It led to an exchange of messages. You can do it on any other social network too – which is another good reason to frequent these watering holes where people you want to meet hang out.

I also used some of the other methods to get the attention of an A-list blogger.

Phase 3 – Offer to write content

By now, you have established enough of a relationship to be able to make an offer. But make sure that

• the blogger accepts outside content in the form of guest blog posts
• is in need of content at the moment (I did this over the Christmas holiday, which perhaps is a ‘lighter’ period than others) and
• your content is relevant to the blog

There are different ways to make the approach. I first asked Darren via Twitter if he’d like me to write for his blog. Then, I drafted out a post and put it on a private section of my website for him to see – and let him know about it.

Darren took a look and suggested some changes. I made them and showed him the revised version. He liked it – and published this article on Problogger…

Lessons for Bloggers From The ‘Death of 2007?

Phase 4 – After getting published

It doesn’t end there – at least, not if you want to continue the relationship!

When the post was published, I told everyone I knew about it. I emailed my lists of over 4,000 subscribers. Posted on my favorite forums. Tweeted multiple times on Twitter. Mentioned it in email messages.

Why?

Because I liked showing off (yes, really!)

And because I could help Darren in return – it gets more people to visit Problogger.

And the message was relevant to my readers – only it’s published on another blog instead of mine.

Now, if you were a blogger and published a guest post… and then I did all this to promote my post on your blog -

Would You Ask Me Back?