If you have thought about guest blogging for a while, but you still haven’t tried it yet because you keep all your pillar posts for yourself, I’m hoping the following article will inspire you to revisit your position on the subject.

I recently virtually met Mehdi from StrongLifts.com, Mark from My Tropical Escape and Monika Mundell from Blogging Web 2.0 through Maki’s (doshdosh) Team Marketing Network I’ve joined recently. I started exchanging with them on guest blogging, a subject on which I am considering writing a series, and found really inspiring stories from all of them.

Guest blogging is considered one of the best way to bring quality traffic to your blog. The term “quality” is important here. While it is fairly easy to get hundreds of Stumblers rushing to your site, your strategy should not reside in getting more hits, but instead on how to attract quality visitors and convert them into RSS subscribers or else, frequent readers.

The Mehdi’s Story, from StrongLifts.com

After reading Mehdi’s story, if you still doubt that guest blogging can help you find blogging success, then I really don’t know what else to say to help you change your mind.

Mehdi’s blog is 6 months old, and he has close to 1500 RSS Subscribers. Although he comes from an IT background, his blog is far from covering IT related subjects. He’s into strength training. And trust me, you wouldn’t want to mess with him

Guest posting is what helped him the most at one point he got inspired by Zen Habits founder:

“Leo babauta, from Zen Habits, has 23500 RSS Subscribers & started his blog September last year. His secret is also partially guest post (that & hitting digg front page a lot).”

Here’s an overview of Mehdi’s debut in the Blogosphere

• First 2 weeks: 20 RSS Subscribers;
• He then participated in a contest on ProBlogger that got him some great exposure. RSS jumped to 70;
• One month later Mehdi gets a gig on Zen Habits. Turns out his guest post made it to digg’s front page and his RSS counter displayed a nice: 200;
• Convinced guest posting was very efficient for him, he freelanced on Get Rich Slowly and once again, his article made it to digg’s front page. The orange RSS rectangle of hope was now showing 450. The post got Stumbled, and he was now reaching 650 subscribers.

As you can see, guest posting allowed Mehdi to get great exposure in a relatively short period of time. And on high traffic sites, articles get inevitably more chances to be submitted to digg, StumbleUpon and other social media sites. Once you have used guest posting efficiently and you have your own large group of readers, submission to social sites now occurs in-house.

• That’s how Mehdi’s got his third front page on digg. His feed was now burning to 800 readers;
• Another guest post on Zen Habits, another digg front page - no, I’m not Copy/pasting “digg front page” - and he slammed the magical and most wanted 1000. He now had 1100 RSS fans.

Here’s what Mehdi has to say about guest blogging:

“If you can guest post on a big blog, that often hit front page, great. Hitting front page on digg turned in 25k visitors to my blog. The last guest post for Zen Habits that hit the front page got me 7k visitors. Include links in the guest post to your blog (relevant links, no spamming). Also include your keywords at the bottom of the post for Google.” … “Make your guest post better than if it was for your own blog, this is key. I always feel much more pressure when making a guest post for another blog than mine.”

As you can conclude from Mehdi’s story, guest blogging has numerous advantages and the power to radically change your blog’s rank. There’s no reason for you not to start being active as a guest blogger.

Blogging on a small island is rarely what bloggers are aiming for. While producing excellent content is vital for your blog’s future, how can you tell the world you are good at blogging if the world doesn’t even know you’re blogging in the first place. And while I have lots of respect for social media sites, there are better ways to increase your readership than auto-submitting your own posts.

8 Reasons Why You Should Consider Guest Blogging

1. Increase RSS Subscriptions
   Should I say it again? Guest blogging has proven to be a very efficient way to increase your RSS subscriptions.
2. Free Publicity
   Writing on a popular blog in your niche is one of the best publicity you can get. And sometimes, you even get paid for it!
3. True Good Linking
   There’s no doubt about it, getting links from a blog that has a higher PR than yours is good for you.
4. Building Relationships
   While you are guest blogging for other bloggers, your are somehow becoming friends with them. They’ll most likely become readers of your blog and who knows, link to a future post of yours sending you tons of valuable traffic.
5. Say Hello to Other Pro Bloggers
   It’s well known, pro bloggers are reading each other’s blog. But hey, this time it’s not them, it’s you!
6. Social Media Love
   Ok, if your guest post gets submitted and make it to the front page of digg, understand your site will not be getting the traffic avalanche. But Mehdi’s story proves that many readers are following links. If they connect with your writing style, they’ll check who signed the article because they’ll be looking for more.
7. Experience
   Writing on other blogs, even small ones, gives you relevant experience and improves your blogger’s resume. When you’ll go for a gig on a 10k RSS blog, all previous experiences will be considered. If you have a long list of guest posts, the blogger will feel confident that readers will be in good hand.
8. You’ll Improve Yourself
   Posts you’ll be writing for guest blogging must be nothing but your best material. Every athletes will agree, when you push yourself to the limit, you improve yourself.

My next post in this Guest Blogging Series will cover the stories of other guest bloggers, I will also focus on tips and how you should prepare for guest blogging gigs.

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