Andrew: This is a course on guest blogging. Leading the session is
Annabelle Candy. She's a writer and teacher with an MA in Design for
Interactive Media. Her writing has been featured on Pro Blogger, Copy
Blogger and Zen Habits and she created the book Successful Blogging in 12
Simple Steps to help other small business owners and writers to have
instant power of blogging. Annabelle shares her blogging tips at Successful
Blogging and writes travel stories and personal writing at Get in the Hot
Spot. I'll be facilitating. My name is Andrew Warner. I'm the founder of
Mixergy, where founders learn how to build knock-out companies.
Annabelle, welcome. Thanks for leading the session with us.

Annabelle: Hi, Andrew. That's (?) great to be here.

Andrew:  Thank you. So do you have an example of what our listeners will be
able to do after she starts guest blogging or as a result of listening to
this session?

Annabelle: Absolutely, yeah. I really recommend guest blogging to people
because when I set up my blog I started doing all the things you're
supposed to do to get traffics to your blog. For example, leaving comments,
joining forums, going on Twitter, going on Facebook, and they would get me
a handful of readers, but it was very hard work. So eventually I decided to
try guest posting and I think you can see (?) on the screen, this is my
blog Get in the Hot Spot. I set up in August and I'll just show you the
analytics. What happened was here in the beginning I didn't get any
visitors. Basically it wasn't set up yet. Then I set it up and I was
getting about 50 visitors a day and that went on for about three months
with me, as I say, doing everything, forums, comments, everything I could
to get readers.

Finally I tried a guest post and I got a guest post here, I think this one
was on Zen Habits, and you can see the massive difference that made to the
number of visitors to my site. That's very exciting for a new blogger. I
actually thought that my statistics had broken when I saw that and I had to
get my husband to check it for me. I'm not very technical but he said "Oh
no. You're getting all this traffic from Zen Habits" and then I had a look
and sure enough I had a guest post up there. So it really is targeted
traffic because a lot of those visitors will stick around and they will
subscribe to your blog. So it's definitely the best way to go.

Andrew:  I remember actually in the early days of blogging for me. It was
just like that flat line for so long I didn't even recognized the value of
guest blogging, and I always thought it was for people who were established
with big audiences. Is that true? It doesn't seem to be based on what
you're showing us here.

Annabelle: Absolutely not. I think everyone should get into it. You really
need to make sure you've got your blog set up before you start guest
blogging. Make sure that you've got a really nice blog design. Make sure
that you've got plenty of good content on there, because the people who you
are going to ask to host a guest blog for you will be looking at your blog
and when they host your guest post they're really making a personal
recommendation for you, so they want to recommend something good. They're
not going to recommend a website with a bad design or bad content. So it's
really crucial that you take the steps to design your blog well and write
some really good content on your own site first. Once you've done that,
after two or three months of having good content, really you should just
launch into guest blogging if you want to build up your readership fast.

Andrew:  I see. OK. So first improve your design on your site. Make sure
that the content is good, not boring content, format it well, get it all up
and running, and then it's time to talk to other bloggers about putting
content up on their site as a guest poster.

Annabelle: Absolutely. I'm not sure what level, what kind of level your
Mixergy Upstart (?). They sound like a great bunch, so I'm really excited
to talk to them about guest blogging, but I just want to make sure, for
example, in my book, this is the 12th step, the guest posting, when
everything else in your blog is in play. That's when you're ready to start
guest posting.

Andrew:  Do you have a screen shot of your book? It's true that I am kind
of skipping over a lot of chapters in the book and a lot of steps here,
just to focus on the one step of guest blogging. But if people do want to
go back in and fill in the gaps they can get your book right here and
that's when they'll find out about how to do what actually?

Annabelle: Well, the book covers everything from how to plan and set up
your blog through to writing and formatting the blog post right through to
promoting it which is what we're talking about here.

Andrew:  OK.

Annabelle: There are other ways to promote a blog, but I believe guest
posting is the best way. I haven't got (?) but I don't know if you can see
the concept of the book here, sorry.

Andrew:  Oh yeah. I can see it up there right on the screen.

Annabelle: What I'm trying to do is make it not technical. So I really want
to help other small business owners and write it for people like me who
don't know that much about computers and aren't that confident because
these are all things that we really can learn quite easily.

For example, formatting blog posts is very simple. Anyone could do it, but
a lot of people don't do it. No matter how good your writing is and how
good the information you've got, if it's not formatted well, people won't
read it. So I just want to make sure people have got these very simple
steps in play so that when they get their guest posts up they're really
going to convert that traffic into subscribers or clients.

Andrew:  OK. And I'm looking here at the table of contents. For my
audience, I don't mean to be underestimating and undervaluing the first 11
steps. Of course it's all important and you can get the book to learn more
about the other steps, but my focus here is once you've got that all up and
running and you need to get people to your site and you need to expose
yourself to a bigger audience, how do you do it using guest posting and
guest blogging? So, at the first step is, and we'll talk more about the
book and how people can get it, but the first step to guest-posting I
imagine is finding the right blogs to go on. How do I do that?

Annabelle: Well, what I did in the beginning was I just started looking
around for blogs, big blogs in my niche. I'm sorry Andrew, let me back
track a little bit.

Andrew:  OK.

Annabelle: When I first realized I needed to guest post, I actually started
guest posting on small blogs, people like myself who maybe hadn't been
blogging very long, and what I discovered was that the first two guest
posts I did, it actually bought me no traffic whatsoever. The first person
I wrote a guest post for, and the content was good, but the first person I
wrote a guest post for, I think she didn't have much traffic on her blog
either, so, of course, it didn't get me any visits. The next person had a
much bigger blog and I was really excited about that one, but he, I think
either he forgot to put in the link to my blog or his RSS feed wasn't
working, so again I got no visitors, and there's a lot of work in writing a
good blog post, so that was very disappointing.

So after that I decided to stop focusing on small blogs and start focusing
on the really big ones. I just tried to aim as big as I could basically
Andrew, and that's really my tactic now. You can always go for smaller
blogs if your guest post isn't accepted, and I just looked around for the
biggest blogs in my niche. At the time Get in the Hot Spot was more about
personal development and living your dreams, so (?) was the really big one
and I decided to try and guest a guest post on (?).

Andrew:  I'm really glad that you said that because a lot of people
understand that they need to guest blog in order to get traffic to their
sites and what they end up doing is playing it safe by going to smaller
blogs and then when that doesn't work they wonder why guest blogging
doesn't work in general and maybe think that they've been cheated out of
mislead by bloggers. It's not that. It's as you said, small bloggers are
basically trying to get traffic for themselves and if you go to them they
can't send you much traffic. So then how do you find-

Annabelle: Yeah, that's true.

Andrew:  I'm sorry. Go ahead.

Annabelle: That's true, and there is a lot to be said for guest posting on
smaller blogs. It's a good way to build relationships and network with your
other bloggers which is also important. People might want to do a guest
post swap with other bloggers so you don't have to write any extra content,
you just give them your blog post that week and they give you theirs.
You'll each be helping each other out and building up maybe a little bit of
traffic on that. Yeah, at the end of the day, you might as well, if you're
going to write a really good guest post, and all your blog posts should be
as good as you can make them, but you might as well aim to get them on the
biggest (?) blog you can.

Andrew:  Yeah, I want my audience to go after the big sites that are going
to send them massive traffic, get them massive attention and help them
really leave their marks on the world. How do we find the big bloggers in
our niche?

Annabelle: I think that people should really know what the big blogs in
their niche are. I know that your audience, some of them, might have
technical products, some of them might be online retailers. I'm thinking a
lot of them might say "Well, look. There's only one or two huge blogs in my
niche". One thing that I do want to say to people is don't be afraid to
also get outside your niche. For example, you might be able to write a
guest post on a huge financial blog. Somehow stay on topic to their
audience and put a bit of a financial spin on it. So you've got to be
creative because you're also going to run out of huge blogs. There aren't
that many of them, so if you need to, definitely be creative with your
ideas and think about how you could tailor the content and information
you've got to the audience that those big blogs might have.

Just, I know I haven't answered your question properly, but one thing you
can do to look for big blogs on a topic if you're not really sure is to
just use Google basically, and I tend to search for, after I've searched
the Top 10 Blogs, so it might be top 10 business blogs, for example. And
again, just be creative and try to think of what lists people might be
writing about on their blogs is going to help you connect with other big
business blogs for example. So there might be top 10 business blogs or best
business blogs or 20 big business bloggers, for example, and that will help
you come up with lists of business blogs that you might be able to get.

Andrew:  Let's take a look at that. Can you bring that up on Google right
now?

Annabelle: Do you want me to?

Andrew:  Yeah. Let's do it. Now you and I are on different continents.
You're in Australia. I'm in North America. There's a little bit of a lag on
the screen, but there, I just popped up on the screen. So yeah, top 10
business blogs and why they're successful, 50 best business blogs and what
we're doing is we're going through this list and looking for blogs that we
can contribute our articles to. And it's as easy as that?

Annabelle: Absolutely.

Andrew:  No, there are more ways to prune this list down. What else can we
do?

Annabelle: Well, it's as easy as that. And I quite enjoy a little bit of
detective work. But basically that's what this is today. I'll probably be
opening up all of these websites and having a look. I'll be looking
especially for overlap. I've already got a bit of Bingo here because the
social media example happens to be a huge business blog so that's
definitely going to be on my radar. What I tend to do when I'm looking
through the blogs is that I want to see how many people they've got
subscribed to them because that's a real key for me to find out how big a
blog they are. The other thing, I'm just trying to load up the Social Media
Examiner now just to see whether they do that. A lot of people display
their RSS feed, so that's a great clue, but another thing that I want
people to be aware of is that numbers of subscribers aren't everything. So,
for example, are you able to see my screen now?

Andrew:  I can. You're still on the Google tab and I see that you clicked
over to the lifehack.org tab and now it popped up. I see it.

Annabelle: Just having a look at Life Hack. Some of these blogs like, for
example, Life Hack which is kind of a productivity and personal development
blog, they have pretty big readership, but they don't have very engaged
readers. So the way I can tell that is by looking at the amount of
comments, guest blog posts, and if a blog is that big but it gets hundreds
of comments you can tell that they've got very engaged readers and those
readers are much more likely to want to find out who wrote a guest post and
actually click on your link and visit your blog afterwards. People on these
types of blogs where there's big readership, very personal blogs, so they
really aren't that interested in who actually wrote the guest post.
Obviously some of them will come and visit, but there's two things that you
have to worry about there basically Andrew. I hope that makes sense. You
know, big numbers of subscribers or visitors are good, but also an engaged
community is very good as well. If you get both of those-

Andrew:   I notice also that you have the Alexa toolbar up on your Firefox
screen. I hope you don't mind that I'm looking around and checking out what
you're doing. How does the Alexa toolbar help you discover the right blogs?

Annabelle: That's good. You're doing your detective work as well. So I use
Alexa, because, oh, we didn't look at the Social Media Examiner, but a lot
of people notice that RSS feed on the number of subscribers, they focus on
that, so that's when I have to start doing my little bit of homework and
I'm actually going to try this with Mashable and I use Alexa to just search
for the website. Are you able to see that now Andrew?

Andrew:  Yeah. I see it. I see now you're about to hit the search button
and then it will come up.

Annabelle: Yep. I go to Alexa.com and I just copy and paste in the name of
the website that I'm interested in guest posting on, and it comes up with
very different Mashables. Once you've chosen the right ones, you click
'Details'. What happens is, you come up with some charts and graphs. Now,
I've told you I'm not that technical. I understand exactly what all these
charts and graphs are. But, basically, it's very easy for me to tell what's
a big blog and what's not, just by looking at the differences between, you
know, say, my blog, a blog that's brand new and Mashable. You can easily
tell which one's got the most readers. I tend to concentrate on the page
views. That seems to be the best indication to me...

Andrew: Mm-hmm.

Annabelle: Although, the elector traffic rank is a very good indicator as
well. That's a much simpler...

Andrew: OK.

Annabelle: ...metric for people today. [TD] impression of. You can see
right here it says 'Mashable [TD] elector traffic rank: 197'. Which makes
it the 197th most visited blog in the world, so that would be definitely a
good one to have a guest post on.

Andrew: Yeah. That's one of the first places where I did my guest blogging
and it was incredibly helpful, beyond the fact that they sent me traffic,
the feedback they gave me on my article helped me to understand how to
write better for the web. I mean, these are people whose whole job is to
figure out which articles are going to grow virally [sic], which ones are
going to spread and how to communicate quickly in a blog-post and so that
feedback was very helpful, and then the credibility, of course, that comes
from being published on a big site or being published on another site, not
just on Eurosite, and especially a bigger site, helps a lot. OK, so
we're...

Annabelle: Absolutely. I think that's a really good point. It's not just
about traffic. You really do start to establish yourself as an expert.
You've got to get noticed by the big bloggers because, if you're published
on Mashable or Problogger or Copyblogger, people who are huge in social
media or in business will notice your name and they'll start to think, 'Oh.
Who's that woman? I'll go and check out her blog.' and, you know, next time
you write to them and ask for a guest post, they'll be much more likely to
agree.

Andrew: It's true, and I've got to tell you too, Annabelle that when David,
Mixergy's course producer and I, were looking at the list of people who
applied to teach a session here, the thing that stood out for us right way
was the Problogger, Copyblogger, the Zenhabits. We said, "Oh, not only is
she going to teach this, but she's actually been affiliated with these big
brands that we know that we respect. They must have vetted her, and let's
do it. Let's find a way to have her on, so it absolutely does work. OK, so,
we're going through. We're collecting this list.

[??]

Annabelle: Yeah. It's social proof.

Andrew: Of course. We started spying on you soon. I mean, we want to make
sure that we get good people here.

Annabelle: [laughs] Yeah. Well, it's social proof, isn't it? And a lot of
bloggers also use the fact that they've done guest posts on their blog in
their map section, or even on their home page, they'll stick up the logos
for Copyblogger or Problogger or Mashables to show people that they've been
featured on them. You know, it tells people that you're not just a fly-by-
night blogger. You're an established blogger and you're well-respected.

Andrew: And I'll tell you this too, that a lot of companies struggle to get
bloggers to write about them and they keep working and working on it.
Instead, I think what they should do, is what you're suggesting. Instead of
trying to one article on a blog about the launch of a company, what they
should do is, offer to be a guest blogger and be the expert on a whole
topic that includes their business, and that way they can get written up
over and over and over again and not be at the mercy of some editor who's
trying to figure out whether they should be blogging about this company.

Just, you be the blogger, and do it for bigger companies than your own and
do it on bigger blogs than your own so that you can get a lot of attention.
OK, so, you've shown us now how to collect a list of...you've shown us how
to find the top sites. Your last suggestion under this category is to do
what? To put a list of these people, and be able to contact them, right?

Annabelle: Yes. I have got that list open for you now. I showed it to
Andrew, and, what I've got is basically a word document. If you're doing
this from the beginning, I would recommend you probably put these things in
a spread sheet, because my word documents are eight pages long. Because I
blog on different topics and as I said to you, I recommend people blog
outside of their niche as well, it's divided up into blog niches, so, for
example, there will be a list of personal development blogs, financial
blogs, blogs about blogging, blogs about travel and within each of those, I
will put in the domain name of the website, the number of RSS subscribers,
if that's available to me, the elector rank, the name of the blogger who
actually owns that blog and sometimes there will be a link to information
how to submit a guest post. I'll put that in there as well. So it's
basically a very valuable document. It's like a [??]. I just send straight
to that document. I can look through that list and see which chapter [??].

Andrew: Yes. I see it here in the notes that I've got that you and David
put together. It's called GuestPostManagement.odt which tells me that you
used the Open Source Word document reader. And we don't need to see it. In
fact, I don't want to tax our system much more than just having a browser
and Skype open.

But the basic idea I get. What you do is every time you see a blog that
fits within your niche or within any niche that you think would be
interesting for you to contribute to, you add it to your list. Yours is 8
pages long, my listener right now is probably going to start off with 5
lines but you build and you build and you build and then when it's time for
you to get traffic, when you have a new idea for a post, you go through
that list and you see where can I contribute that, where can I put it.

But actually, I get a lot of people who ask me to post on Mixergy. And if
it's a stranger who's asking to do an interview, it doesn't come across as
well as if it's someone who I know. And I know the same thing happens with
bloggers. I was able to get them to Mashable quickly because I was friends
with Pete for a while.

How do you build those relationships that get your emails answered? Even if
it's a no, I want my audience to get a "no, but..." and more likekly, I
like them to when they send an email, I want them to get their emails
returned with a yes. So how do you first connect with the bloggers?

Annabelle: I agree with you. I want to make sure these people get a guest
from the very beginning. I can't guarantee it but I would definitely
recommend that they call these people. And by that I mean, don't just send
them your guest files or just send them an email saying "Can I do a guest
blog?". Even they, my blog [??] but I get weekly emails, you probably do as
well, of people asking to do guest posts and they'll say they like my blog
and they'd love to do a guest blog and I've never heard of them. I don't
know if they really do like my blog.

Andrew: You can't even tell if it's a real person or if it's just a company
that's just spamming bloggers left and right. And so it's not because we're
in a little click and if you're an outsider you can't come in. It's because
unless we know you have some contacts or have someone who's introducing us
to you or have something of a relationship, we can't tell whether it's a
real request or not, whether it's a quality person to have on the side or
not. So what do we tell the listener right now who wants to guest post? How
does that listener start networking and building relationships with
bloggers? What's the first thing they should do?

Annabelle: First thing you should do is start leaving comments on people's
blogs. Once, say you got your list together and you decided you want to
guest post on social media examiner, for example, start leaving guest
posts. Most people are going to notice you and you'll get on their radar.

I would also recommend that you start retweeting or sharing your blog posts
on Facebook or on Twitter and, if you have no time to leave a comment, even
if it's just a very quick way to let people know that you visited that blog
and appreciated it. I usually do just give a straight retweet on my
Twitter. Absolutely essential reading, for example. Let people know about
[??] read it, not just [??] and some people don't allow comments on their
blogs. If that's the case, you're gong to have to stick with Twitter or
Facebook.

Andrew: Can we see your twitter account and see how you've done this, maybe
for Zen habits? I think it's someone who you Tweeted at recently. Just to
get a sense of it.

Annabelle: Yes. I set this up actually yesterday because I wanted to show
David...

Andrew: Your Twitter account?

Annabelle: Generally, you got to be very careful because you don't want to
be a pain in the bum to people. You want to show them that you're friendly
and helpful and hopefully I am that actually, friendly and helpful. Let's
start tweeting people everyday. You need to, a relationship is build slowly
and over time. Once a week is probably enough but this is kind of the
typical tweet that I send at Zen habits. Yesterday [??]

Andrew: There it is. I see the reading from [??].

Annabelle: So, there we are. I went and I read that blog post by Zen Habits
and it was a very personal blog post so I went and I added a personal
comment (?) joy (?) when I had my kid. His article was about having kids,
so I was able to show him that we've got a bit of a common bond. Leo knows
who I am anyway, but the reason he knows who I am is because I started
sending him tweets like this as soon as I started reading his blog and
enjoying it.

Andrew:  OK.

Annabelle: And again, I hope I don't come across as being a bit of a
stalker here. I wouldn't recommend you do this if I don't like someone's
blog because what's the point? You want to target blogs or bloggers that
you really enjoy reading yourself, you know? Do you like them? Most likely
your customers, your potential clients and readers are also going to enjoy
them. So that's why it's pretty easy for me to do this kind of thing. I
enjoy reading blog posts by Leo, so it's very easy to network with him.

Andrew:  OK. All right, so you find them, you tweet at them, you comment on
their sites. I've got a list here on my screen of some of the comments here
you've written and some of the formats that you've used to comment on
people's blogs. Can I give people the notes that you gave me? Can I include
that with the kit that we give people at the end of the session or, in
fact, with the session?

Annabelle: Yeah sure.

Andrew:  OK. All right. The reason I wanted to do that is sometimes it's
just easy to get a swipe file and learn from the way that you do it and
they could replace your words and your links with their own language or at
least get a sense of what works for connecting with people.
You also say connect with them on Facebook.

Annabelle: Yes. I'm much better on Twitter. Facebook isn't so hot for me,
but some people are much better on Facebook. So I would say to choose which
one works best for you. I think most bloggers prefer Twitter.

Andrew:  OK.

Annabelle: But some people are a bit scared of it.

Andrew:  I would prefer it too. OK. So now we've started a relationship
with the blogger. We've connected with them on Twitter. We've connected
with them in the comments of their own site. We've gotten to know them.
What's the next thing that we do?

Annabelle: Well another very powerful way to connect with them is to buy
their products obviously, and that's really going to get their attention,
especially if you write a review about it or write a blog post about it, or
even, again just (?) a tweet saying "Just bought this book by Zen Habits"
for example. He'll notice that. He'll appreciate your support. So that
would be another recommendation.

Andrew:  I'm amazed too by how much that works. People who have huge
followings, who sell tons of books, when someone in my audience will email
them and CC me after they've seen them in an interview and say "Hey Guy
Kawaski. I just bought your book" I can see the guy's flattered by that.
Even though he's sold tons of books over the years. Even though he's got
lots of fans. I can see from his emails back to them but also from the pre-
interview conversations that I have with him that it's a flattering thing
to see that someone's buying your book, that someone is a customer of yours
and not just a fan. OK.

Annabelle: Absolutely.

Andrew:  So buy their books, what else do you do?

Annabelle: So networking.

Andrew:  Yeah, is there anything else or now do we go to the next step
which is to start thinking about what to write?

Annabelle: I think we've pretty much got it covered. It would be nice to
think that they would go and visit your blog as well, some of these
bloggers. You want them to know that you've got a good blog or that you do
good writing, so every now and then, maybe once I month, I might tweet them
my very best blog post and say "Hey, Leo, this might interest you". About
80% of the time he ignores me. Maybe he reads it, maybe he doesn't.
Sometimes he'll re-tweet it, so that's why I say keep kind of trying. Don't
be a pain in the ass and do it too often, but I don't see a problem in
sending people your best blog post every now and then.

Andrew:  OK. You know, by the way, a pet peeve of mine is people who just
want to write for my site and they say "Here. I've written this article" or
"I'm going to write this article. Take it" and they don't even look to see
that the site is really a collection of interviews. It's not this post that
you've just written or are proposing to write. And I know that that's the
next step here in your notes, to think about the kind of content that the
site has before you start writing for it.

Annabelle: Yes. Well you've got to make sure that people accept guest posts
first. Some might say they really don't accept guest posts even though they
do, which to me is interesting. The reason for that is probably because
they get so many requests from people they can't cope with it. Let's just
go back to Google a moment and I'll show you an easy way to find out if
people will actually accept guest posts.

Andrew:  OK. I like that.

Annabelle: I have to copy and paste it from my document though. I can never
remember the exact code, but hopefully you can pass this on to your readers
as well. Sorry, I've lost it now Andrew. There we go.

Andrew:  By the way, I see you're organized, because a lot of other people
have given me an outline of where they want to go with some details. You've
actually written the questions to help guide me along. You say, "Andrew,
I'm going to make sure that this is really structured for people".

Annabelle: Oh, look. I like what you say that you do in your seminars about
giving people actionable tips and I used to be a teacher, so I think it's
really important to get people to act on these (?) if someone actually
follows through on these ideas and got (?) guest post up on a big blog,
that would be the best example.

Andrew:  Wait. I want to see the post that they put up.

Annabelle: Yeah.

Andrew:  OK. So send it to me. To whoever's listening to us, guest post,
tell them Andrew sent you and then send me the guest post when it's up. OK.
So now I'm looking at Google. What you're trying to do is do a
site:zenhabits.net guest post by and that way you see that he's accepting
guest posts.

Annabelle: Yes.

Andrew:  Gotcha. Actually, is that syntax right?  Want to hit the search
button and let's see if that works because I think it's supposed to be
without the quotes in front of the site. I think it needs to be site: no
http://, just site: then domain and then the quotes would go around guest
post by.

Annabelle: Yes.

Andrew:  See I'm a micromanager also.

Annabelle: It's searching now very slowly. Yes I put it in quotes on my
document but it doesn't need to be in quotes on Google.

Andrew:  Oh, I see what you're doing now. OK. Let's see it. See, waiting
for Google.com.

Annabelle: It's just where I live, Andrew, here in Australia, so the
connection's slow. That's why.

Andrew:  That looks beautiful. So that's the view in your neighborhood.
Probably not outside your window, but where you are.

Annabelle: No, sadly not from my house, but that's where I live. And
Google's not loading, but basically you can very quickly find out for any
website whether they accept guest posts, whether they've had any guest
posts, which is going be very useful for you. Just to move on, while this
caravan may be loading is to say yes, once you've decided to know you're
going to target this specific blog and you've seen that they actually
accept guest posts, have a good look around their site and see if they
actually have any guest posting guidelines. I have some guest posting
guidelines at the bottom of my blog here. Here it says (?). Very few people
actually ever read those guidelines. More of them send me an email saying
"I want to put a guest post on your blog" so it doesn't take long to look
for those guidelines and a lot of people have them.

The second thing to do is to start studying their blogs, really having a
look at their blog posts, see how long they are. See what kind of content
they've put up there, whether it tends to be personal stories or success
stories, whether it's supposed to be more information based, and you're
really thinking about who their readers are because you're going to have to
write a guest post which is very specific to those readers and the best way
to find out that then is to read the comments. So I've been looking at (?)
and I'm trying to put a guest post on, really having a look at the comments
and getting to know a little bit about those readers, maybe looking at some
of their blogs even and (?) it takes less time. It probably does but it's
well worth it.

Andrew:  So you want to show Mashable as an example here? And then I've got
another one that I'd like to show as an example.

Annabelle: Yes.

Andrew:  And a lot of sites, like you said, if you look around you see that
they have an invitation for guest posts. That they're asking for either
with a direct link at the top of their site or maybe next to some guest
posts. Let's take a look, Mashable I don't think invites people. There it
is.

Annabelle: Well if you have a look on Mashable because I was saying today
there's things we were talking about but I need to get a blog post on
Mashable. I've never tried to get one up there. So I had a quick look
yesterday, and right down at the bottom they've got a submit stories. It's
not exactly the same as a guest post, but I'd probably be using that link
and trying to get in touch with whoever that person was.

Andrew:  Right .

Annabelle: I mentioned before, don't cold call. I think it's pretty
hopeless if you haven't got a name for someone. So one thing you can do,
they've got a form here which is going to load up, it just goes to (?) at
Mashable, so I don't know who's going to actually be reading that. They
probably get a lot of people filling in this form, so I'm going to actually
try and come up with a name of someone-

Andrew:  Oh good. This is you doing it in real time, finding a way to
contact that's not the generic go to the form.

Annabelle: Yeah, maybe you can help me now.

Andrew:  Yeah, here's what I do.

Annabelle: No, we don't cheat on Mashable, but I don't think he would
charge us (?). Go ahead, tell me.

Andrew:  The way that I would do it is I would go to Mashable and I would
see who the recent guest posts are. I would send them an email saying
"Great post. I really like it" and then remind myself to follow up with
them a week later and say "Hey, I'm thinking of doing what you did by
posting a guest blog post on Mashable. Who do I talk to?" and that person
would make the introduction.

Or what I would do if I were the person in the audience is say "Oh, Andrew
says he has a friend at Mashable. I just heard his course. I'm going to
email Andrew and ask him for an introduction" and then I'll make the
introduction for them. But that's the way I would do it. I would say who's
in there who's guest posting? That person probably has a contact and they'd
be happy to share them.

Annabelle: Yeah, that's a brilliant way to do it. Another possibility is
just to look through the comments and see who's responding to comments on
that site, because often they're the person who's in charge of the day-to-
day management.

Andrew:  Yeah, that's a good point too.

Annabelle: You can take the shortcut though.

Andrew:  So the other site I was looking for, I actually didn't realize you
were going to do this as a live example. I wonder, show
blog.kissmetrics.com, if you could go over to that site?

Annabelle: Why are you interested in that one Andrew?

Andrew:  Because someone recently did, someone in my audience recently did
a guest blog post for this site. It's blog.kissmetrics.com, and what's
interesting to me about it is I know that-, sorry?

Annabelle: It comes up as a link. I know this site because I've got a half-
written guest post for them coming up. That's why I'm like, oh this is (?)
for them.

Andrew:  So this site, their blog, has a really good targeted audience of
entrepreneurs and analytics monsters, people who are just soaking this
stuff up, and it doesn't show here, but they get a lot of traffic, and this
person what he did was he took an interview that I did and he basically
wrote it up for them using the style of their blog. I know that because of
that he got 54 tweets which is actually pretty low for the site.

Annabelle: (?) where, from where else?

Andrew:  I interviewed the founder of Living Social and he said "Oh, that's
an interesting interview. I'll just write notes on that interview and I'll
submit it to KISSmetrics as a blog post" which is what he did and you can
see his name there, Michael Alexis.

Annabelle: I'll (?) there. Yes.

Andrew:  Which mean, first of all, he won me over because he mentioned me
on KISSmetric's site, and second, he also got a really good connection with
the people at KISSmetrics, Heaton Shaw and Neil Patel and the others who
run it. And, of course, he has access to their audience with a link from
them and they have good page rank. So I wanted to share that as an example
of how someone in the audience has done it.

Annabelle: Yeah, no, it was interesting because they emailed me asking me
for a guest post.

Andrew:  KISSmetrics did?

Annabelle: Yeah. They had seen a guest post up on Copy Blogger and I'd
never heard of them before so I had to do my research. They seemed to have
a reasonably good readership but I also noticed they have a Google page
rank of five. That's something we haven't talked about.

Andrew:  Oh, I thought they had a 100 page rank. Only five?

Annabelle: I think it's five, yeah.

Andrew:  Wow, I thought more.

Annabelle: You think it's higher? Maybe it's higher, but five's good enough
for me.

Andrew:  OK.

Annabelle: The other good thing about guest posting is those incoming links
to your blog. So there's a lot of, multiple benefits, and that's one we
haven't talked about, the incoming links. Basically the higher the Google
page ranking the better. I think everything above four really is pretty
good. Four or five.

Andrew: OK. Alright, then the next step is to start writing this thing, and
now that we have a sense of the style of the site and I can see that
Michael Alexis did that here with that post, he got a sense of their style.
They like to do top five lists over there. They like to talk about
different ways of growing traffic and subscribers, so he really hit it with
that. What are some tips that you have for us for writing the right kind of
headlines?

Annabelle: I would really recommend that you study popular headlines. One
way to do that, for example, is a very easy way at home is to look over at
Copy Blogger. They have a list, Best of Copy Blogger 2010.

Andrew:  OK.

Annabelle: And I'm very proud, very proud. One of my guest posts is on
there. If you have a look at that list you'll notice that I think there's
20 guest posts listed there. About 10 of them are numbered lists.

Andrew:  I see. So we know that numbered lists are really effective on this
site. OK.

Annabelle: Absolutely. So I don't think it's just on this site though
Andrew. I think they're always a bit of a winning formula. I don't know if
you've found that on your own blog.

Andrew:  Good point.

Annabelle: But basically. Sorry, I (?). You need to have a really good
headline for your guest post because when we finally get around to
submitting the guest post which we'll talk about probably soon, what I
recommend you do is to just say in the subject line for the header "Guest
post:" and then the headline of your guest post. Now if the headline's no
good, they're not going to want to review the guest post (?) not of any
interest. So you really need to start nailing those blog post headlines.
Finally, here I am, Best of Copy Blogger 2010. You look at this kind of
thing you can see what makes a good headline basically.

Andrew:  I see.

Annabelle: This is based on the number of tweets and the number of
comments.

Andrew:  So they're basically telling us what their best headlines are,
what their most effective articles are so that if we're looking for
guidelines and examples of what to write they're right their on their site.

Annabelle: Quite handy isn't it?

Andrew:  It is. I'm sneaking ahead here and looking at your notes and one
thing that you suggested that I didn't think of is also look at the
comments. See which posts get the most comments, and in fact, right there
on your screen I see the most popular articles right now so that gives me a
sense of what the audience is looking for and is engaged with. I can also
see that some posts get more comments and more audience engagement than
others. So if I'm looking for a crib sheet or I'm looking for a set of
examples those are the examples to study.

Annabelle: Absolutely. Yeah. For example, if we have a look at the Kiss (?)
website again, or maybe we should-

Andrew:  Yeah, I can see that the one that's posted today is not one to
copy. It only got three comments.

Annabelle: Right. Well the Copy Blogger, the Top 10 Blog Posts, all of
these are going to have massive numbers of comments. So, for example, I
might, this is my own blog post, Eight Habits of Highly Effective Bloggers.
I might look at that blog post, say I'm not me, and write to the Copy
Blogger people and say 'Hey, I noticed that blog post about effective
habits is really popular. So I've got another article on a related topic
which I think will interest your readers". I think that's going to get
their little hearts pumping because as any blogger knows, if you've got a
blog post with 100 comments on it, you need to write more about that topic.
You should be doing that on your own blog of course, and that's just a good
way to decide what to write about for other people's blogs.

Andrew:  You know what? You're absolutely right. If I were thinking about
how do I promote this course by doing a guest blog post for Copy Blogger I
might submit a suggestion to them saying "I've got an idea for Eight Habits
of Highly Effective Guest Bloggers" that I would want to run, and then of
course I would credit you by having a link at the top of the post and then
I would have the eight habits based on this session. Bim, bam, boom. I
submit it. I like it.

Annabelle: There we go. Well I'll submit it to Pro Blogger with a different
headline.

Andrew:  No. Feel free to steal that headline, feel free to steal the whole
thing. I just want to always think about, you know what? The way that I
always think is "How do I relate it to me?" and "How do I relate it to my
audience?" I think very much in my own little world here. So as you're
teaching this stuff I keep in the back of my head playing this game with
myself saying "How can I apply it to my world? What can I do to make this
useful tomorrow? How can I give this as a suggestion to someone who I hire
and tell them 'Go do it'?" and so when you show me Eight Habits of Highly
Effective Bloggers and I'm doing this session I think "How can I promote it
that way?".

But I think this would just about work for any topic. I could think if I
wanted to promote and interviewing session of if I wanted to promote my own
site as an interview site I might see that headline and submit an "Eight
Habits of Highly Effective Interviewers" or "11 Smart Tips for Brilliant
Interviewing" to steal the next headline above or to play off that, or How
To Do 500 Times Better Than Ad Sense. Maybe I'd come up with How To Do 500
Times Better Than Blogging. I don't know. But I get the point. I see how it
works, and I hope the person who's listening to us is playing this little
game the way that I'm playing it so that they get the most value out of
this and everything else in life.

Andrew:  Yeah, no. That's great. That's a really good idea.

Annabelle: That is a really good idea.

Andrew:  Let's see what's next then. Send a short email. OK. I noticed that
you had that document up on the screen, the same one that I'm looking at.
If it's still up let's pop it up on the screen for people and go to the
samples of the emails that you recommend they send.

Annabelle: OK. I'll tell you how this came about, and it came about because
a friend of mine, she did exactly what you recommended people do. She said
to me "Hey, how did you get a guest post on Coffee Blogger?" so I told her,
and it happens quite a lot in fact. So this is basically a template of an
email I put together which I recommended to you. It's very important to be
very brief in your emails to people. I can never quite manage the
recommended five sentence, but I try to stick to five sentences.

Andrew:  Sorry, did you just drop your headset? I suddenly lost the audio a
little bit.

Annabelle: (?) wardrobe malfunction. Can you hear me now?

Andrew:  Yeah, the video froze a little bit, but as long as the video's
being recorded probably. Oh there we go. Now I see you. As long as the
video is being recorded properly on your side, we've got it.

Annabelle: OK. That's good. So we recommend basically you keep your emails
very short to people.

Andrew:  Yes.

Annabelle: I'm sure that you'll share this template with your (?) Upstart
which is fine. It seems so obvious what I'm telling people here. It's
unbelievable how many people, A, don't use a name, B, if they use the name
spell it wrong.

Andrew:  You're right. I have to tell you, a personal pet peeve of mine is
people who send me emails saying "Hey Andy" like they know me as Andy.
Nobody knows me as Andy except every once in a while a random stock broker
will call me as Andy or someone asking me for a favor will email me as Andy
like we're buddy-buddies.

Annabelle: Yeah.

Andrew:  So you're saying get the names spelled right and make sure you're
saying it the way that they say it. Then you've got the outline here saying
"Tell them you love the blog and have been reading it for however long". I
still fall for that. I still love that.

Annabelle: You've got to. It's true (?) I've been leaving comments on your
blog. You're going to realize it's true.

Andrew:  That is true actually and I do have-

Annabelle: It's not just a line I'm spinning. You're going to say "Oh yeah,
she has. I see her comments. She always (?) my blog posts".

Andrew:  That is true. And do you know what else I do? I have something
called Reportive on my GMail that tells me what other interactions I've had
with whoever's email I'm looking at and so if they did email me in the past
I have a good sense of it fairly early in reading their email. So I say
"Alright, this is someone who I've been in contact with. They're not just
randomly emailing me". OK. So tell them you've been reading the blog,
they'll know you from the comments. Next step in the email is what?

Annabelle: Tell them in two sentences about you and your blog.

Andrew:  OK.

Annabelle: They should already know who you are and what your blog is, but
I think it's just polite to just remind people, but you want to keep it
brief so I just say "I post a travel blog called (?) Hot Spot. I (?)" for
example. That's all you need to say. Put a link to that and they can go and
check that themselves. They'll want to check it out definitely. Then I say
that I'm (?) the blog post (?) basically that's how I always do it. I post
the blog post directly into the email for people and I thank them for (?).
You know, taking time to read it and say I'd really love to see it on their
blog. I let them know I'm excited about it which I always am. It's not just
a (?). I get a thrill whether I post on Coffee Blogger or (?). I want them
to know that. I think it makes it much more interesting (?).

Andrew:  OK.

Annabelle: (?) opportune time.

Andrew:  I see that, and I can see the power too of showing them the
official, not the official, but showing them the blog post that you've
written saying "Here, look. This is in your style. I've created it. What do
you think?" and then you get their feedback on it.

Annabelle: Absolutely. You've got the (?) there in the subject header with
the hot headline that you've chosen and immediately they can just stop (?)
the guest post. They don't have to (?) so I always (?). I will attach it as
a separate document as well. Some people prefer that. (?).

Andrew:  I do like that you've got your bio in there as some people who've
taken a few of these sessions will know, I usually write the bios for
people and yours stood out completely and it was different because you just
gave me your bio. You said "Here Andrew. This is it. You don't have to work
on creating a bio or an introduction. This is the way that you can
introduce me". It's a big help.

Annabelle: Yes. When I set up a guest post I'll always check. Every blog
has a different way of putting out their guest post. Some will say
"Editor's note: Guest post by so-and-so" and some will just say "Guest post
(?) so-and-so" so I always study how they format that and the exact words
that they use and I put that in for them with the links again at the top
and at the bottom, already set to go. It's fine to present a custom link to
your own blog, but most people don't like it to be the (?) keyword (?) for
example. So just be polite to begin with (?). Make it very easy for them.
The point is it should be very easy for them to get great content on their
blog at (?) that.

Andrew:  I think that this is the way to do it, and still the next section
that you and I are going to talk about is rejection because if you do it
all right, you still get rejected, true?

Annabelle: Sometimes you do, yes. Sometimes I think people don't actually
have time to read your guest post. I think we've missed a step here because-


Andrew:  Oh. Did I just jump over something? OK.

Annabelle: No, I think it's probably my fault, but I think somewhere in the
notes I said that I'll sometimes tweet people to get them excited about my
guest posts before I send it to them in an email to make sure they're awake
and it's not on a holiday for example. So I might tweet Pro Blogger and say
"Hey Darren, I've got a brilliant idea for a guest post. Are you
interested?" and nine times out of 10 he'll send me a direct mail saying
"Yes, email it to me" and it gives me his email address. So that's another
good way to get you that email address and contact details hopefully.
Again, I don't think Darren would give me his email address if he didn't
know who I was and had been commenting on his blog posts for years on end.

Andrew:  OK.

Annabelle: OK. So yeah, I make sure that these people actually know they
are or expect to get email (?). (?) to do that. You can just send them a
(?) or an email with a great subject line, subject header (?) blog post.
Hopefully that will get their attention.

Andrew:  OK. I can see that. You send them a post, you send them a tweet
asking if they want it and if they're excited enough to say "Yeah, send it
over" then you absolutely send it over because you're much more likely to
get written up, get your post published by them. OK. By the way, before we
go to the rejection, let me ask you something.

Annabelle: OK.

Andrew:  I told you that when I guest post on Mashable, when I see others
guest post on other sites, the feedback is really helpful. What was the
feedback like that you got from Darren when you asked to published on Pro
Blogger or what did you get when you asked from Brian to publish on Copy
Blogger? I imagine their feedback and their edits would be insanely
valuable.

Annabelle: Every blog is different. Some blogs will just take you blog post
and pick it up exactly as it is. Other blogs will do a really tight editing
job on your blog, put in links within their site or others peoples sites,
so you can't really know until you send off your blog post what exactly
it's going to look like. They might change your headline even, which can be
a bit disappointing.

Andrew:  Was there anything that you especially remember about the edits
and what you learned from them?

Annabelle: Yes. I've got a, I haven't actually done it yet, what I did with
my first guest post on Copy Blogger was I printed out the guest post I sent
them and the guest post that got published and I went through the editing
that was done on that with a fine tooth comb so I could really see what
improvements they made to my writing and as you say, you know, you get
really good feedback. I'm basically getting a really hot editor helping me
improve my writing and I paid attention to that. I care about the (?) of
guest posts. I try to make sure my writing is a little bit tighter.
Hopefully its improving every time. I always fantasize that they'll just
publish that without editing at all, but they normally change a few things.

Andrew:  Can you do a search for Mashable Andrew Warner? I'll show you the
one thing-

Annabelle: (?).

Andrew:  Actually it doesn't even make sense. Let's take a look at that.

Annabelle: How many guest posts have you had here on Mashable?

Andrew:  You know what? It was only five or so. What I did was when I
started out and I couldn't get people to do interviews with me, I proposed
to Mashable that I publish my interviews on Mashable too, or at least
summaries of them, and Mashable said, "Yeah, absolutely. If you can get
guys like Seth Godin to an interview we'd love to have your write-up about
it for Mashable". Then I went to Seth Godin and said "Seth, can I do an
interview with you and of course I'll also write it up for Mashable who's
interested" and so as you can see here, Seth Godin's 7 Tips for Start-Ups
in a Down Market, there's somewhere in there about Tim Ferriss. I think if
you click that top link with Andrew Warner Mashable you'll see a good
picture, a good round-up, the top. There you go.

Annabelle: So that also enabled you to get those really good guest posts as
well.

Andrew:  At first. So the way I did it was I went to Mashable and said, "If
I can get you these guys would you want to publish it?". They said yes,
then I went to those guys and said "You'll get your interview published on
my site and on Mashable". So they said absolutely yes. Afterwards I went to
other interviewees and I said "Look, I just did an interview with Guy
Kawasaki, with Seth Godin, with all these other people, with Tim Ferris.
Would you do an interview with me?" And they said "Well, if those guys said
yes, then I say yes". So just kind of moving up.
The other thing that I learned from this process is this is before Twitter
was so big so we didn't get many tweets, but it did get a lot of traffic,
the other thing that I learned from this process was their editor sent it
back to me, their original articles and they kept saying more quotes. They
said "Andrew, if you have Tim Ferris is an interview and you're writing
about it, give us quotes from the interview so that we can show people how
he's saying it. Don't write it in your own words". Today when I hire
writers for Mixergy I always give them the same advice. I say "Look, give
me the quotes from the interviews when you create this content for me" and
it's really been helpful.

Annabelle: OK. That's interesting.

Andrew:  All right. I feel like I just ran away with your course here and
took it in my own little direction instead of-

Annabelle: No. I'm very interested. I think we make a good team actually
for a bit of guest posting webinars.

Andrew:  I love it.

Annabelle: So I just wanted to go and have a look at yours to compare (?).

Andrew:  Can we see all the quotes there? Can we see them? Yeah, there they
are. There are lots of quotes there. All those quotes marks are theirs.
They are suggestions. They sent it back and said "Andrew, quote, quote,
quote".

Annabelle: That's interesting, because when I think of an interview I think
of question, answer, question, answer but this is quite a different format.
Obviously it's question, answer, it's all quotes.

Andrew:  What I did for them was I just pulled out seven key points from
the interview and I created a post about that.

Annabelle: Very interesting. I'll review it later.

Andrew:  All right, so we do need to talk about rejection. It's so easy to
hear over and over that you're going to get rejected, but when it happens
you feel like you're the only one that Mashable or Copy Blogger doesn't
love you. Talk to me a little bit about rejection so that I and my audience
feel a little bit better about it when it happens and don't let it stop us.

Annabelle: OK. Well, you've got to get used to rejection. These bloggers,
these huge blogs are very busy people. I think we've already got you aware
that they're getting possibly even 100s of people wanting to (?) the same
guest post to them at the (?) guest post, so (?) it's normal that you're
going to be rejected. Sometimes you have to be patient. You might even get
a reply to your email as a guest post. You might have to spend eight hours
writing or longer. So, in that case I would just email them again, maybe
one or two weeks later and just basically send them the same email again
with a little bit at the top saying "Oh, hi Jack. Just wanted to check you
saw this email. I'd still love to have it published on your blog" and
again, don't be abusive. Don't due that too soon and don't do it too often.
If they don't write back that's fine. (?) you've been rejected, in which
case, cut your losses. You've got great guest post, but try and think about
who else you can submit it to who might actually want to publish it and
keep the ball rolling.

Don't necessarily give up on the other blog as well. I think it took me
about three months to get one guest post published on Zen Habits. You do
have to be very patient. It's quite a difficult game because you never know
when your guest post is going to be published, even if it ever will be
published. So you've got to just put your guest posts out there and then
(?), but keep trying, keep writing more and keep opening up new channels of
communication in comments.

Andrew:  It is part of the process. Whatever you learned from writing that
one post you can use for another and it sometimes just takes a while for
people to say yes. And I've got to tell you, I'm summing this up here,
repeating what you just said, and I'm worried that my audience is going to
hear that and just say, "Oh, come on, you're just giving me some advice
that I've heard a million times." I'm saying it. I've heard it a million
times too, like you my audience, the person who's listening to this, who's
going to go and publish a lot of guest blog posts and make me really proud
that I did this whole session. But anyway, I head that a lot too, I'm
saying it now and of course when I get the first rejection after this
session, it's going to hurt, but it does take a few tries and when you get
that hit, when you start to really grove with it, it feels great. And it's
worth it. The website is, SuccessfulBlogging.Com. What's another website
where we can send people to if they want to follow up with you or just spy
on you and see how you're doing your blogging?

Annabelle: Guestsinthehall.com(SP). That's my original blog and that's the
one that I set up [bad phone connection]. And if people want to any
reservations for persevering and putting up with rejection. There is a nice
story about how I just won $10,000 in a competition there. You know this
competition where you have to write 25 words or 50 words about something?

Andrew: I didn't know that, OK.

Annabelle: I've probably entered hundreds of them in the last 30 years. I
finally won one, about two weeks ago.

Andrew: OK.

Annabelle: So, keep going. Don't accept rejection. Keep trying. Keep
writing.

Andrew: Oh, that post the one you're showing there is you winning $10,000
for writing 25 words?

Annabelle: Forty-nine words actually (laughs).

Andrew: Forty-nine words. Wow, congratulations.

Annabelle: Thank you. So what I do on this blog Guestsinthehall.com, is
actually try to motivate people and to keep them upbeat and get them
writing. There's a lot of good tips on there, because we all struggle with
motivation I think. We all think, "Oh, no, I've been rejected. I'm going to
give up." So, that's the whole focus of Guestsinthehall.com.

Andrew: Well, I asked Heaton Shaw, the guy from KISSmetrics, recently, I
said, "Look, you've worked for top companies like AOL, and you've helped
some of the most admired new internet startups get traffic for their
sites." I said, "What's the one thing that any entrepreneur who needs to
get traffic to his site should do quickly, just to get the word out about
his blog." And he said, "It's guest posting." In fact, he said, "If you're
going to do two posts a week, have one post on your website, one post on
someone else's website. The post on your site's going to build up your
content, and build up your reputation, and build up your connection with
your audience. The one on someone else's site is going to make you a better
writer and is going to get you traffic and is going to get you
authoritative links, one and one."

You have showed us how to do it. My audience now is empowered. They're
armed and I really want to see them use this stuff. I mean, really, if
you're listening to this and spent about an hour, you could have been
watching a full episode of 24, a full episode of Dancing with the Stars.
You could have watched two episodes of, I don't know what, of Family Guy.
But instead you choose to watch the two of us teach you something, and if
you're going to sit and learn, and spend all this time with us, you've got
to go use it. Otherwise, really, you could have been entertained by dancing
super stars on television. So go out there-

Annabelle: Yeah. [bad phone connection]

Andrew: That's absolutely it. Completely and for me. I put in all this
time, not so much for you to get the session, but to see the results, go do
it, come back, send me a link, and let me see what you've done. Annabelle
Candy, thanks for teaching us.

Annabelle: Thank you, Andrew.