Guest Blogging & Blogger Introduction: Feedback Please?

Hi Ted, the OP nor myself are a War Room Member

Could you offer a few tips here, maybe a brief summary of what to say?

Hi Ted,

Thanks for your report, I just downloaded it, and will read it immediately.

I am looking for tutorials on guest blogging.

Good luck with it. It's too early to start looking at the results, but I'm wondering if some will perhaps think it looks like a standard, duplicated, mass email which you've sent out to anyone you can find? And dismiss you as "just another marketer wanting a link"?

I can suggest a few little modifications for you to experiment with, if you want to ...

I offer them one specific post and include it in the email so it's right there, in front of them.

But I start off by talking about them and their site. I explain why I like it. I talk in detail about their approach, and their presentation, and their readers/visitors, and their interests, and their subject-matter, style, content, and so on. (You have to have a good look around their site to do this, which is time-consuming, but guest blogging is a real relationship-building business and let's not pretend otherwise).

I then try to tie in some observation about their visitors/site to the specifics of the post I'd like to offer them, free of charge, for publication, explaining why I think it's relevant and likely to be of interest to their visitors. (I think it's important to say "free of charge", not because I'm trying to avoid their imagining I want payment for it, but because I want to try to convey - without putting it this way at all - that I'm interested in doing them the favor, here.)

I explain that the post's right here ("below my signature") and I paste it in, explaining that they're welcome to publish it with my link at the end (it'll just be "at the end", in a "first article") in clickable form. (So they've already read a lot and taken me seriously, I hope, before they see that I want a clickable link).

I make it clear that I might have other guest posts to offer them, also, in future, and that I'll never expect payment for them. I also make it clear that I'd like to hear from them and be happy to chat about their niche, their site, their content and their shoes.

I never send an attachment (I've got to reach their inbox!).

I never send a link (other than the one attached to the guest post, of course) inviting them to look at my site. They'll look if they want to, and see an informative, content-rich site, not a salesy-looking site (which helps).

The post I send them will be basically an article "written for syndication"; it'll never mention a product; never sound as if it's selling or promoting anything at all; and while never having a salesy "call to action" at the end (let's not talk about "resource boxes" here: we're not dealing with an article directory), it'll make it clear to their readers that I have more to say at mysite.com.

I also offer to write them a paragraph to "introduce" me to their readers, or for them to re-write in their own words if they prefer. (I'd rather do it myself, if they'll let me).

My overall aims, in the first instance, are simply (a) to offer and present them with something that they can immediately see is of potential value to them, and (b) to "get my stiletto-heeled foot in the door" and show them that I'm interested in building with them a relationship which will be useful and helpful to them.

Try some/all of it? I'm sending them perhaps 20 times as much as you, but it works for me ...

I believe the opposite.

I also believe that the way I'm doing it is effectively selecting the most valuable ones to me.

I look at it very differently: I think they receive dozens of short emails which are totally unpersonalized and look like "brief mailshots" - and (understandably?) nobody much is interested in those.

And I am giving them only "the facts" - there are a lot of relevant facts, here.

I want them to understand that I'm not a "hit-and-runner", a "here-today-gone-tomorrow marketer" like all the rest, but someone who can genuinely help them in the long term and wants to build a real relationship with them.

For this reason, the more different I can make my approach to all the others, the more likely they are to take me seriously.

Randall, do you find this really increases your acceptance rate?

Also, regarding your latest blog post on here, why do you operate under 3 different names? Is there some kind of benefit to doing so?