Guest blogging basics. Becoming a guest and inviting guests to join you.

What do you find exciting? Is it trips and vacations? New purchases? New experiences?

I'll tell you what a child finds exciting. Nerf wars.

Recently, I enjoyed dinner at my sister's house. She invited most of our family to attend, so the place was filled with kids. As an adult, I was excited about the good food and conversation around the table, but kids find that boring. They wanted to do something active, so my nephew got a bunch of his Nerf guns together and invited everyone, adults included, to join him outside for a Nerf battle.

I'll confess something to you. Initially, I didn't want to participate. I just wanted to sit at the table and finish my food. But as I thought about his invitation a little more, I realized I would be missing out on a fun time with my nieces and nephews if I didn't get up from that table. So I took him up on his offer, grabbed a Nerf gun, and joined the fun outside in the yard.

Honestly, it was a blast. And as I think about it, I just needed a little nudge to join in the fun.

Blogging is a little like that. I'm sure there are some people reading these words that don't think blogging is exciting. They'd rather do the things they're presently doing and not worry too much about creating or sharing blog content. But if that's your attitude, I think you're missing out on the fun.

Much of the Internet consists of blog posts. When you type a question into a search engine, many of the suggestions you'll be given are from blogs. The creators of those blog posts frequently benefit from the additional traffic their sites are getting because they took the time to create that content.

But there's more to a blog than simply creating new content. In fact, I would contend that even if you don't like creating written content, your online platform would benefit from having a blog. And if you're savvy, you can populate that blog with content others are creating.

Quite regularly, I invite content creators that I trust to submit guest blog posts for my blog. Doing so is mutually beneficial. When I post their content on my site, that helps them gain added exposure for their platform. Their posts remain online for years and can drive an increasing amount of traffic to their site over time as their posts are indexed by search engines.

Posting their content also benefits me. It adds more helpful content to my website, which makes my site a more valuable destination for others. It demonstrates to search engines that my site is active. And in some cases, it can lend additional authority to my site if someone recognizes the name of the guest blogger I'm featuring.

I would also contend that even if you don't have a blog at present, and even if you don't really enjoy writing, you could create a blog that's simply geared around presenting relevant guest posts from contributing writers.

And if you do enjoy writing, guest blogging can be useful to you in another way. From time to time, I have traded guest blog posts with other content creators. They feature my content on their sites, including backlinks to my website, while I feature their content and link to their websites. It's a nice trade and a great way to collaborate. It can also offer mutual benefit when attempting to increase site traffic.

Who do you know?

Who do you know that might want to be featured on your website? If you know someone who is creating great content that fits with the theme of what you're building, invite them to become a guest poster on your platform. Even if the content they create is most often shared via audio or video, you can encourage them to send you a couple paragraphs about one of their videos, then create a post that features what they wrote along with a link to their video.

Guest content wanted

Keep in mind that there are also sites that have been created primarily to feature guest content, and in most cases, they allow you to share content you've already written and posted elsewhere.

A good example of this is Medium.com. Their site accepts and ranks guest submissions. You can literally go to their site, set up a free account, and begin posting the blog posts you've created for your site on their platform. All you have to do is copy and paste the link to the post you want to share and their software will import your content automatically. It's that simple.

Driving traffic

At the end of the day, the goal is to get your content in front of more eyes. Becoming a guest blog poster on other sites, and inviting guests to be featured on your site, helps accomplish this in at least four ways;

• 1. It puts your content in front of new people.
• 2. It increases your authority and name recognition online.
• 3. It populates the Internet with backlinks to your site.
• 4. It creates more opportunities for your pages to be indexed with popular search engines.

So if you're looking to get more eyes on your content, and if you're looking to increase your traffic, consider becoming a guest blogger on others' sites, and invite others to create guest blog posts for your site. The more you do that, the more your content will be discovered and utilized.

-John