One of the simplest, yet most powerful, do-it-yourself PR hacks is guest posting on relevant and high authority websites.

Also known as guest blogging, or a guest article submission, this technique allows anyone to build their brand, establish their social proof and become an industry thought leader.

But it’s not only these slightly opaque benefits that guest posts provide. They also drive direct referral traffic and build backlinks to your website.  

The actual process of writing a guest post is the easy bit – as you’ll base it on a topic that you’re an expert on. The tricky bit of the process is pitching a guest post and getting it accepted by an editor. I’m going to walk you through how to write a guest post pitch, based on years of experience.

But before we get started, there are loads of other ways to win media coverage, besides guest posting. Read the Publicize guide on pitching to journalists if you want to learn about other PR techniques.

What are you trying to achieve with this?

In order to reap the benefits that I mentioned in the intro, you need to approach guest post writing strategically. So ask yourself – what do you want to achieve with this activity?

This could be one of more of the following:

• Build awareness of you and your company with your target audience
• Generate referral traffic into your website
• Increase your brand’s credibility by building your digital footprint
• Get high quality backlinks into your website
• Reset the narrative on a topic within your industry

So how do these goals influence your approach to guest post pitching? Well, they determine which publications you target and the topics of your guest posts.

For example, if your primary objective is to gain some backlinks from a few high authority websites, then you may look to approach publications like Forbes, Entrepreneur, and The Next Web. All these publications accept guest posts, are all very high authority sites, and all include a “follow” backlink to your website in the author byline.

Or let’s say you’re trying to build awareness of who you and your company are. If this is your primary objective, then you want to reach out to websites that are read by your target audience, so industry publications may be your best bet.

Once you have an idea of the types of websites you want to target, this will influence what you’re going to pitch. For example, a pitch to Entrepreneur will need to be about a topic that’s more general than a pitch to an industry publication.

Identify your target websites

Now that you’re approaching the task with some strategy in mind, you can start identifying target websites.

The first thing to do is make a list of all the websites that come to mind, based on your objectives. If you’re struggling to think of any, then search for something like “top tech blogs.”

With your list in hand, the first thing to assess is whether or not each website actually accepts guests posts. Always check this first, otherwise you’ll probably just end up annoying the editor if they don’t.

The quickest way to do this is to google the website name, followed by “guest post”. Here’s the result when you do this for VentureBeat:

So as you can see, they do accept guest posts. Perfect! Now it’s time to go a little deeper and determine if a website is relevant to your goals.

If your objective is to gain a valuable backlink, check on the domain authority of the website using the MozBar. If you’re looking for some high impact backlinks from a few high authority websites, a score of 90 or above is a good target to have.

In this example you can see that VentureBeat has a domain authority of 92, so is a good candidate.

Or if your objective is to build awareness in the eyes of your target market, then you need to determine whether or not your target market read this publication. In this case, It’s often more effective to aim for more niche publications within your industry, rather than more general mass market publications.

Read the guest post pitching guidelines

Once you’ve selected a few websites that accept guest posts and which are relevant to your objectives, it’s time to read up on the guest post pitching guidelines. These will usually explain how to submit a guest post pitch.

Google the website name followed by “guest post guidelines” or hunt it out in the sitemap. Sticking with VentureBeat as the example, here are it’s guest post guidelines:

 It’s vital that you read these guidelines as they will determine how to approach a guest post pitch with each publication. And the rules can differ massively from one publication to the next.

The VentureBeat guidelines are fairly unrestrictive, but some publications will list the guest post subjects that they’re interested in. So if you were to pitch a guest post unrelated to these topics, it would end up being a complete waste of your time.

Also – as per the above example, it’s inviting contributors to submit full articles, while also giving them the option of pitching a short summary. Unless you have the time to spend hours writing a guest post that may not get picked up, our advice is to always pitch a summary first.    

Read some previously published guest posts

Spend some time exploring articles that have been written by guest contributors. These articles will be clearly marked as “guest contributor” in the author bylines.

Take note of the topics that these articles cover:

• Are they generalist in nature, assuming that the reader has no great knowledge of the subject? Or are they in-depth pieces that the layman wouldn’t understand?
• Are they practical “how to” posts that offer takeaways and actionable insights? Or are they more like thought pieces about the industry?
• And what about the tone of voice? Are they written from a detached point of voice, or are they deeply personal, relating to first person experience?

Assessing this will help to get you thinking about guest post ideas of your own, which is the next step of the process.

Coming up with an idea for a guest post    

There are two very important pieces of advice here:

• Avoid anything that could be considered promotional – editors will sniff this a mile off and your pitch will just end up getting deleted
• Start with what you know. Ask yourself, what are you an expert on? This is the starting point for all guest post ideas.

My expertise and profession is SEO, and when I’m brainstorming ideas for guest posts, my thought process goes like this:

• Who’s the target audience of this publication? Do they have an expert knowledge of SEO, a working knowledge, or no knowledge at all?
• What’s the relationship of this subject with the target audience? Are they marketeers looking to sharpen their SEO knowledge? Are they startup founders trying to figure out where to start with it?
• Is there anything I’ve written recently on owned media channels that I could use as a basis for a guest post?
• Where’s the conversation currently at with this subject? What are the big SEO news stories that have happened recently? Can this be tied into a guest post idea?

Once you’ve come up with a few ideas, go back to the analysis in the previous step. You need to decide whether it should be a practical guest post providing actionable insights, or if it should be more of a think piece.

And of course, once you’ve come up with an idea, always search the website to make sure it hasn’t been covered before! 

How to write a guest post email pitch

Quick tip – always pitch two or three ideas, rather than just the one. This way you get more rolls of the dice.

When it comes to writing out the guest post email pitch – keep it short and sweet. Here are the points you should try and hit:

• Personalize it – Call out the editor by name in both the subject line and the email body. Try and reference one or two recent articles that appeared in the publication that are relevant to your guest post idea, to show you’ve done your research and that you’re not just sending a bulk mail merge.
• Include your social proof – You need to demonstrate why you’re qualified to talk about the subject you’re pitching. This could be a very brief summary of your resume and a hyperlink to your LinkedIn profile, as well as links to any other media coverage you’ve had in the past.
• Demonstrate its value – Explain what the website’s readers will gain from it. If it’s about something topical, add some links to stories that have reported on this and explain the additional insight and value your guest post will provide on the subject.

Guest Post Email Template

Here’s a guest post request sample email that you can use as a basis.

SUBJECT: Hi Guest User, regular contributor pitch for [PUBLICATION NAME]

Hi Guest User,

[YOUR NAME] is a [YOUR UNIVERSITY] grad with over 20 years of experience in brand management, technology marketing and innovative business strategy. His passion has led him to drive the go-to-market strategy and monetization efforts for successful startups in different industries, including [STARTUP NAME 1], [STARTUP NAME 3] and [STARTUP NAME 3].

[YOUR NAME] has been a mentor at [PROGRAM NAME], [CITY NAME]’s leading tech startup accelerator since its inception, over 7 years ago. He ran the digital thought leadership practice for creative advertising agency network [AGENCY NAME], raised funding and ran a marketing consulting startup in the past. In addition to this, he’s also a seed investor and advisor in several startup syndicates. Additionally, he’s an advocate for diversity in the entrepreneurial space.

[YOUR NAME] is interested in contributing articles to [PUBLICATION NAME] on a regular basis about topics on early-stage entrepreneurship and tech startups including:
In-depth analysis on startup and funding trends
Background and “founder journey” stories of dynamic startups that are dominating headlines and also flying under the radar.
Entrepreneur profiles from underrepresented groups (e.g. women founders, Black founders, Hispanic founders, immigrant founders, etc.)
Q&As with prominent angel investors, venture capitalists and corporate development leaders

Some of the titles he could immediately start working on include:
Three women-led startups you need to know about
What’s an oracle and why it (and not Bitcoin) is the killer app for blockchain
Five Black venture capitalists changing the game
Why it pays to be an early adopter (of tech platforms)
Six reasons not to raise venture funding

Let me know if this would be something you’re interested in. Looking forward to hearing from you.

All the best,

So now you know how to set guest post objectives, how to identify target websites, what type of things to look for on each website, how to come up with a guest posting idea, and how to write a guest post email pitch. And feel free to copy-and-paste the guest post email template, so you can save time and energy when pitching to websites!

This post was written by Rudi Davis, Senior SEO & Content Manager at Publicize, where it was originally published on Publicize.co. Conrad Egusa is the Co-Founder & CEO of Publicize, and is a Mentor for the New York Founder Institute. 

Publicize is a startup aiming to disrupt the PR industry. The company was founded by Eddie Arrieta and Conrad Egusa, a former VentureBeat writer, when they realized that the PR industry’s business model was broken for startups. Publicize offers cost-effective PR solutions to entrepreneurs priced out of a broken PR industry.