Guest Post Guidelines

If you do or plan to accept guest posts, it helps to have guidelines before you start reviewing requests. Too many folks have abused guest posting privileges. Besides that, guidelines help you ensure your blog has high quality, integrity and relevancy also known as “keer” or QIR. OK, I made that up 🙂

Bridge
Photo by sxc.hu user linder6580

These guidelines will be updated as needed.
Posting Guidelines

  • Read the blog before you contact me. The most unbelievable guest post request email came from someone who explained “guest post” to me. This happened within a week after I wrote the Dark Side of Guest Posts article.
  • Will there be a similar post out there? I had one guest blogger who had an almost identical post published the same day as it ran on my blog. My blog is not the place for rewritten articles. It’s not just about my credibility — but you and your site’s too. One guest blogger said she planned to publish the article on her site a few months later. I had no problem with that as long as it wasn’t word for word.
  • The article must have substance. Not just be a list of the top X whatever. One list type post described each item, but used very generic terms. The article turned out 75 percent edited. It took very little to expand on each one, so obviously the guest didn’t invest more than a few minutes putting it together.
  • Agree to let me edit as I see fit. Ensure silky smooth writing, fix typos, limit keyword links, verify substance, etc.
  • Targets business owners, marketing managers, techs and writers. Not very narrow, is it? This is the audience I work and interact with the most.
  • Teaches at least one new valuable thing. I’ve seen guest posts that fly at 30,000 feet sharing stuff everyone already knows like the sun is the closest star.
  • 500 to 1,000 words. Any longer and most of us will tune out. It’d have to take something special to justify 800+ word posts. One guest submitted a 1,300-word post. We turned it into a two-parter.
  • Solid bio. Yes, we’ll include a link back to your site / blog, but it also must include sentences about the author.
  • Discuss topics before writing. Why waste your time on topics that won’t fit the blog? The sooner we nail it, the fewer edits the article will need — saving time for everyone.

Feel free to steal them and modify them for your needs. Please don’t copy and paste them into your blog and turn it into a blog entry. It hurts both of our sites when people do this.
What other items would you add to the guidelines?

3 thoughts on “Guest Post Guidelines”

  1. Hello Meryl,
    Excellent post! Guest posting should be a win/win for both blogs.
    A guest poster should not have competing content on their blog the day they guest post. My thought is that the guest poster should have a special post welcoming your readers and telling them why they should stick around.
    I’m sure I can come up with more, but your list is where everyone should start!
    Kindly,
    Sara

  2. Thanks for stopping by and commenting, Sara. Unfortunately, “spam” type sites don’t see it that way. But it’s getting easier to weed them.

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