Blog Tip Tuesdays ~ Guest Posting

Good morning everyone! I hope that you all had a wonderful 3 day weekend!  We went to Santa Monica with family which was fun, but now my boys are sick.  And that is so not fun.  Looks like movies, naps, relaxing, and more movies for us for the next few days!

Well it is time for another Blog Tip Tuesday!  I hope that you all know that I don't at all assume that I am some kind of professional blogger.  I just happen to enjoy it and find that I learn new things every day.  So as I am learning these new things, I would love to try to share them with all of you.  And if you have thoughts or insights into what I post about on a particular day, I would love to hear those too! That is why I started Blog Tip Tuesdays.

So the other day I was thinking about how to market my blog and more specifically my sponsors and I thought about guest posting.  I am not sure there is any specific right or wrong way, I just thought I would share some pointers from my experiences.

We all love to have traffic to our blogs.  Some of us write for personal reasons, business reasons, or just for an outlet,  but most of us write to be read.  And there is nothing wrong with that.  So we, as fellow bloggers, need to think about proper 'etiquette' if you will, when giving and receiving guest posts. 

When Submitting:

~ Think about how your post will relate to the readers of the blog you are writing for.  If you are writing for a craft blog, you might want to think up your craftiest moment and throw it out there.  If you don't know how to work a glue gun, you might want to stick to submitting posts for blogs within your niche.
~  After you post, make sure on that day you are able to mention it on your blog, tweet or Facebook about the post.  You want to help draw readers to the post and to the host blogger, and therefore to yours as well.  Everyone wins!  The better you become at this, the more people will want you to post for them.
~ Do your best to read the comments and reply.  You can reply in the comments section on the host's blog or actually find their blog and answer it there.  This is a great way to meet new people as well. 

When Hosting:

~  Try to find or only accept submissions that are revelvant to the topics that you write about.  The people that come to read your blog are coming for a reason and if the content isn't what is interesting to them, they won't read it.  Simple enough!  
~  Make sure you are able to tweet or facebook the post as well.  Sometimes this just isn't possible if the whole reason you have a guest poster is because you are on vacation, then you can't.  But if at all possible, get it out there.  You will also have more people wanting to do posts if it benefits them somehow.
~  It is considerate to put the post up at the beginning of the day, midnight or 1 in the morning wherever you are and let it be there throughout the day.  If the poster doesn't even get a full 12 hours or so, it might not be that interesting to post for you.

And now just a basic how-to.  Go to your New Post page and write the post just like you were writing for your own blog.  Add links and pictures to the post the same way you would normally.  After you have finished editing your post (make sure you proof read!) You click the Edit HTML tab right next to the compose tab at the top of your post.  

Look, I spelled actually wrong! LOL

Then you click Control+A or Command+A depending if you have a Mac or a PC and then copy it.  Control or Command+C.  You then paste the entire HTML code in the e-mail.  When writing a message to the host, write it above your pasted HTML text.  If it is written after, the host might not see it.  Also make sure that it is clear which text is included in the HTML.

There you have it ladies!!  That is what I have learned so far on writing a guest post.  I hope you all enjoy.

Could you take a second to vote for me on Circle of Moms?  I am looking pretty pathetic there, people who signed up after me are beating me.  And since my husband just won his championship (whooooo hooooo!) I thought I would want to win something as well.  That way he won't be the only champion this summer!

Just click below and click the thumbs up.  Thanks!