How to Pitch Your Content Submission

Shopify SEO Course ↗️ > Unit 5 > Lesson 5 > How to Pitch Your Content Submission

Once you have your topic idea or your content ready to go, you are ready to contact the blog owner or editor. There are a few extremely crucial things you need to do in this email that will make the difference between getting your post published, getting rejected, or simply never receiving a response.

Address the Recipient by Name

Nothing says spam like emails that start out with just hi, dear admin/webmaster/blogger/sir/madam, or no intro at all. Don’t assume that the last person who wrote a blog post is the person you want to contact either. Refer to the tips mentioned in the Finding and Connecting with the Right People section earlier. Or look on the guest post guidelines or contact page to see if there is a specific person that your guest post submission should be submitted to.

If you absolutely can’t find a name for the blog owner anywhere on the blog, on their social media networks, or the Internet at large, then start your email with an apology. Let them know you would have preferred to address them by name, but you couldn’t find it. Don’t start using a template apology for every blog you contact, however, as you’ll probably email someone whose name was easy to find, and they will therefore regard your message as spam.

Stop Using Bad Templates

Speaking of templates, don’t send the same email to every blog you come across without reading their guest post guidelines. As a blog owner, there is nothing like taking the time to create guidelines that specify a minimum word count of 750 and receiving dozens of emails from various people telling me they will submit 100% Copyscape protected content between 500 – 600 words.

Tell the Recipient How Much You Love Their Blog

Don’t just say how much you love their blog. Prove it. Tell them you’re a regular reader who loves to share their content with your audience. Assuming that’s true, do a Twitter search for @yourusername blog.com and send them a link to their content that you’ve shared with your followers. Hopefully, they will recognize you.

If you do regularly read their posts, but don’t share them on Twitter, switch it up and say you especially loved a particular post on their blog and why you loved it. Maybe say you learned a specific lesson and then say that you want to be able to help their readers learn something valuable in return.

Tell the Recipient Why Your Content is Great for Their Audience

Your goal is to sell your guest post to the blog owner or editor you are contacting. Tell them why the topic you are submitting is the perfect fit for their audience. Tell them that your guest posts usually receive a lot of social shares and engagement. Tell them that you will be promoting your post to everyone on social media. Make them want to publish your post.

Include Links to Your Content

It never hurts to brag in this kind of email. If you have published similar posts, send a few links to the most popular ones – preferably the ones with the most social shares and comments. But don’t send a post you wrote about car insurance when submitting a guest post about gardening. Make the credits relevant.

If you don’t have relevant guest posting credits, then share the most relevant, popular links from your own blog. You really just need three tops.

Tell Them You Will Participate and Promote

The two things that are important to bloggers when it comes to guest authors besides the quality of their content is their willingness to participate in community discussions for their posts (the comments) and their willingness to promote the content with their audience. If you have a significant following on social media, the promotion alone may get you the opportunity.

Let Them Know You Are Open to Being a Regular Contributor

Not all blogs want regular contributors, but some blogs do. Let the blog owner or editor know that you would be happy to submit more than one guest post. In the SEO world, the goal of guest posting is to build as many links as possible. Hence, the goal is to get guest posts on as many sites as possible. But if your goal is to ultimately connect with your target customers to make sales, then you might want to consider regular contribution to top blogs instead.

Why is becoming a regular contributor more valuable? People tend to forget a one-time author, no matter how great their guest post is. But if you become a regular face on a blog that has a loyal audience, more and more of their subscribers will begin to notice you as you continue to produce great content for them. It’s as simple as that.

The alternative approach that has been used by lots of successful guest bloggers -is to get your content on as many blogs as possible within a close timeframe. People who are into a particular niche tend to subscribe to a lot of the top blogs within that niche. If someone runs into 5 of your posts in the same week across their favorite blogs, they will definitely notice you.

What’s the best frequency for a regular contribution on top blogs in your industry? Monthly is usually the best in terms of your ability to keep up with producing content for your own site as well as the others. If you think about it, if you were a monthly contributor to four top blogs, that’s going to be two posts a week, assuming you only do one post per week for your own blog. Depending on what you do and how much content you like to write, that could be good enough.

Capitalize on Golden Opportunities

Looking for the perfect time to strike, so to speak? If you are featured in a post on the blog, then you might want to contact the blog owner or editor shortly after – regardless of whether it was them or another writer who featured you.

This is how I gained my spot on Social Media Examiner. After I was voted as one of the Top 10 Social Media Blogs of 2010, I reached out to them to thank them for the recognition and see if I could contribute to their site as well.

Even if another writer on the blog mentions a post or guest post you’ve written, you can use it to your advantage to contact the writer, thank them for the mention, introduce yourself, and see if you can get them to provide an introduction with the blog owner or editor.

What Not to Say to Editors and Blog Owners

Last, but not least, there are a few things you should avoid. For starters, don’t talk about SEO. If you’ve done your research, you know whether they allow authors to have links in their bio, therefore there is no need to mention that all you require is a dofollow backlink with your anchor text.

Also, don’t be pushy. Most blogs have an editorial schedule they follow whether it is formal or informal. You can casually mention that you would love it if your guest post goes live around a specific time for a specific reason, but don’t sound demanding. If you’re promoting a product launch, be transparent about it – just don’t expect anything. It’s better to get published a few weeks late vs. not at all.

Following up about a guest post if you haven’t heard back is not a bad thing, but again, be nice about it. Maybe ask if there is anything else they need to go along with your guest post, or if they need any edits.

How to Craft the Perfect Author Bio

Your author bio is the thing that will help you build links, drive traffic to your website/blog/landing page, and grow your social media audience. Hence, it needs to be just about as perfect as you can make it.

You will need to put yourself in the blog audience’s shoes. What will they most likely want to click after reading your post? If you wrote about Twitter tips, for example, then they’ll probably want to read more articles you have written about Twitter on your blog, try a demo of your new Twitter tool, and/or follow you on Twitter.

Next, you will need to look at other guest author bios on the blog. How long are they on average? How many total links do they include? Do they have links to your social profiles that are separate from your main bio and, if so, to what networks. You will want to take advantage of the ability to promote yourself but not go overboard.

You don’t want to be the jean enthusiast who blogs about fashion that also likes photography and hiking. You also may not want people to follow you on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, and Pinterest.

You see what happens here. Readers won’t know what to click. Instead, you will want to think focus on the things that are most important – your website and a social channel that you know generates sales. It should look a little like this.

Jane Smith is a fashion enthusiast and owner of AZDenim, your one-stop source for the best vintage women’s jeans online. See what ensembles make her list of favorites on Pinterest.

Again, depending on the audience, you may need to decide whether they are more likely to click on a link to your business vs. a link on your blog that can lead them into learning more about your business. You may also want to try a bio like this.

Jane Smith, owner of AZDenim, is a fashion enthusiast. If you struggle with choosing the right jeans for a specific occasion, be sure to read her free guide on The Perfect Fit: Jeans for Women.

Google doesn’t like for you to have tons of links with the same anchor text, so be sure to switch it up. You can link directly to your business name or a description of your business, such as vintage women’s jeans online. Note that when you link to your business name, you will want to link to your main homepage (such as azdenim.com) and when you link to a specific type of product, you will want to link to that product category.