As an author, you've dedicated your heart and soul to crafting your book, but now it's crucial to focus on book marketing.
You've heard of guest blogging and how it has significantly boosted book sales for many. However, you're unsure about where to start.
Creating unique post ideas for your own blog is challenging enough, let alone discovering enticing guest blog post ideas. When it comes to guest blogging, you might be unsure about:
- Which ideas will attract influencers' attention?
- What style of writing do influencers prefer?
- What ideas will hook influencers and their audiences?
Many people tackle this by pitching numerous generic guest blog post ideas to their target blogs, hoping that at least some get accepted.
Unsurprisingly, the results of this strategy are often poor. Sometimes, people might get one or two guest blog posts accepted; sometimes, none.
Many get frustrated and abandon guest blogging, while others start doubting themselves, wondering if their content is good enough.
To prevent this, in this blog post, we'll explore:
- How to swiftly find the guest blog post ideas your target blogger seeks
- How to immediately understand the blog you're pitching without spending months or years reading all their content
- How to effortlessly adapt your guest blog post ideas to each blog you pitch, making them irresistible to your target blogger
Sounds good? Great!
But first, let's discuss why guest blogging for authors is essential.
The Importance of Guest Blogging for Authors
Guest blogging allows you to tap into an existing audience interested in your niche. It's a fantastic way for authors to expand their reach and forge relationships with other writers, influencers, and experts. By providing valuable content, you can establish yourself as an authority, attract new readers, and enhance your online visibility—ultimately helping you sell more books and even promote your other offers.
Finding Suitable Blogs for Author Branding
The first step in guest blogging is locating blogs that have an audience interested in your subject matter.
But your research doesn't stop here. To uncover the most irresistible guest post ideas for influencers, you must delve deeper into the blog.
Analyzing Blogs to Uncover Irresistible Guest Blog Ideas for Authors
After identifying potential blogs for guest posting, examine the blog's voice, and consider the needs and challenges of its audience.
During your research, consider the following:
- Blog's voice
- Blog's audience
- Blogger's expertise or time gap
Now let's discuss each of these factors.
Fit with the blog's voice:
Ensure your content aligns with the blog's style, tone, and overall theme. However, that's not the only aspect to consider, even though it is where most people stop. A blog's voice goes beyond that. For instance, just because a blog is about event planning doesn't mean it will accept every post on that topic.
The blog's voice includes its preferred:
- Content type: Does the blog favor list posts, "what" posts, "why" posts, "how-to" posts, or a combination?
- Ideal post length: Are most posts <1000 words, 1000-2000 words, or 2000+ words?
- Images: Are these included, or do they prefer text-heavy posts? If they do include images, do they have a preference for the type of image? Do they prefer stock images of people, vector graphics, or infographics.
Fit with the blog's audience:
Most people assume a blog's audience refers to its demographics, such as female business owners, introverts, or corporate professionals. Demographics are a starting point for understanding a fit with a blog's audience, but you may miss the mark if that's where you stop.
As Zig Ziglar famously said, "You can have everything in life you want if you will just help other people get what they want." With that in mind, you need to understand the audience's problems and goals, ensuring your content resonates with them.
Wondering how you'll ever figure this out for a blog audience without spending months reading the blog? Don't worry; we'll show you how in an upcoming section.
But first, let's discuss the final fit bloggers are looking for a fit with their own gaps as bloggers.
Fit with the blogger's gaps:
No one person can be an expert in everything. The same holds true for your target blogger. Their expertise gap might leave them unable to help their audience with a problem they know they have. For example, a blogger may be an incredible expert at helping their audience negotiate a job raise or a promotion. But that same blogger may be unable to help their audience negotiate paid time off or work-from-home days. Your chances of getting your guest blog post accepted are higher if you pitch an idea that falls within a blogger's expertise gap.
Another important blogger gap to consider is their time or interest gap. Sometimes a blogger may have the expertise but not have the time or interest to blog about an idea. Bloggers are more likely to accept your guest blog post idea in that case too.
The #1 Secret to Finding Guest Blog Post Ideas for Authors Fast
Concerned that figuring out fit will take you months or years of reading? Don't be. The truth is, finding guest blog post ideas that fit with what bloggers are looking for is much faster than you think.
The secret lies in examining the content already performing best on the blog.
One of the best ways to quickly determine fit is by looking at the content that is already performing well on the blog. This content usually best represents the blog's voice, audience, and even the blogger's gaps, though you need to look at the latter with an eye toward what's not covered.
These days, we have many tools that provide quick summaries of the best-performing content, usually within minutes. One of my personal favorites is Buzzsumo.
Let me show you how it can give you powerful information about the content already performing best on a blog. I'll use the blog introvertdear.com as an example.
Blog voice
The best-performing content type on introvertdear.com at the time of this post is "why" posts, followed by "what to do" posts.
The ideal content length is around 1000-2000 words.
They prefer text-heavy posts, as evidenced by the top pieces of content by engagement for the site in Buzzsumo, which have no images other than a single featured blog post image.
Blog audience
A good place to find a blog audience's specific problems or goals is the comment section of a blog post.
For example, looking at the comments of the popular article on introvertdear.com called "Telephonophobia Is the Intense Fear of Talking on the Phone, and It's Real," I came across this comment:
This indicates that one of the problems this audience could be having is not job hunting due to a fear of phone calls.
Similarly, looking at the comments of the popular article on introvertdear.com called "Just Because I'm Quiet Doesn't Mean I'm Stupid," I came across this comment:
This suggests the blog's audience wants to be liked at work. They also want to be perceived as someone who cares about victories and successes.
If the blog has an associated social media presence, the comments there are another place to find its audience's problems and goals. And if all else fails, you can also look at comments elsewhere on the web. You'd be surprised at the gold mine public social media posts, other forums like Reddit, etc., can be.
Blogger’s gaps
Now that we know one of the audience problems, we can take a quick look at the blogger's bio to guesstimate their expertise or time and interest gaps:
The audience problem of job hunting with Telephonophobia doesn't seem to be an area of expertise (the blogger is a writer according to their bio). Neither is it an interest fit (she left corporate to become a full-time writer based on the second blog post).
Ask the blogger
If you still can't find a guest blog post idea that the blogger will find irresistible, you can always ask the blogger. Now keep in mind, you cannot do this out of the blue with bloggers who do not know you. If you do that, you will probably get ignored.
What you should do is first get on their radar. You can do this by getting introduced to them (which we have talked about here). If you can't find someone to make the introduction, get on their radar by interacting with them a few times first. This could be by commenting on their blog or social media posts. If you really want to make sure you stand out, promote their ideas to new audiences first (we have talked about here).
You would then follow up by sending an email. Here, you would introduce yourself and tell them what you are working on. Then, you would ask if what you are working on is something they think can help their audience.
Here's an example of how I did this myself a while ago:
Asking the blogger’s audience
If you are still at a loss on how to find irresistible guest blog post ideas, you can always ask the blogger’s audience. Typically, this is easiest to do in a social community around the blog, like a Facebook group.
Here is an example of a post where I asked the blogger’s audience what they needed.
Now in this case, I had already gotten accepted for the guest blog post before asking the audience. But asking the blogger’s audience what they need help with also works even if your guest blog post has not been accepted yet. Here is another example where I did that:
In fact, I used the responses to convince the blogger for a guest posting opportunity.
Creating Captivating Book Promotion Blog Post Ideas for Guest Blogging
At this point, you should have a short list of everything you need to brainstorm an irresistible guest blog post idea for guest blogging for authors. You have a sense of the:
- blog's voice
- blogger's expertise + interest/time gaps
- best-performing content on the blog
- blog audience's problems, goals
In a sense, the content type has already been chosen for you. Remember when we looked up the content type that performs the best on your target blog via Buzzsumo? That’s the content type your post must fit in.
Now you just need to choose the audience problem or goal where you can provide value and within the blogger’s expertise or interest/time gap.
Pretty simple, right?
Validating the Freshness and Relevance of Your Blog Post Ideas for Author Promotion
Before pitching your guest blog post ideas in the publishing industry, ensure they haven't been covered by the blogger or elsewhere. Use the blog's search bar or Google's site search feature to quickly confirm the originality of your ideas.
Bring it all together in an author-branded guest post pitch
Use the information you gathered to find your irresistible guest blog post idea to craft your irresistible guest blog post pitch.
Here is something you need to do in the pitch:
- sell the audience's goal or problem as an unmet need
- tell them you will address that need with your blog post
- show them you can provide value because of your expertise and interest in that area. You want them thinking the ideas is in their expertise or time/interest gap).
Wrap up and next steps
Congrats, you made it to the end!
I hope you found this post helpful for content marketing in the writing tips niche. I’ve used a paid tool Buzzsumo to accelerate how fast I understand a target blog, but you don’t have to. You can certainly do this all for free; it will just take a tad bit more time. Remember, the tool doesn’t make or break your ability to find an irresistible guest blog post idea for author platform building. Knowing what to look for does. And that is exactly what you learned in this post.
In this post, we covered:
- How to rapidly find the guest blog post ideas your target blogger is looking for
- How to immediately understand the blog you are pitching without spending months (or years) reading all the content they have ever written
- How to effortlessly adapt your guest blog post idea for online visibility to each blog you are pitching so that your target blogger finds them absolutely irresistible
But you and I both know that all this knowledge will only help you if you put it into action. Once you find your own irresistible guest blog post ideas, pitch them!
To help you pitch your guest blog post, I have shared my entire system in the How to Guest Post Like a Pro Checklist.
Don't hesitate to put yourself out there—the potential rewards are well worth the effort.