Simple tip for boosting your guest posts’ effectiveness

Guest blog posts are a great way to expand your network. This tip will help you get more mileage out of your appearances on other people’s blogs.

When you guest-blog, ask your host to insert your headshot photo, byline, and brief bio into the post. Without this information, your readers may not notice that the host is not the author of your post.

I know this because a friend of mine was a guest blogger. However, at first I attributed his opinions to his host. I finally caught on after the friend tweeted his authorship. Don’t let this happen to you!

I follow my own guidelines when I host guests on my blog. I also introduce them briefly. You can see examples by clicking on the many links in “Guest bloggers: 2011 in review.”

I’m mulling over another insertion: the guest blogger’s Twitter handle. I like how Mridu Khullar Relph included @SandraBeckwith in the byline for “Platform Building for Non-Fiction Writers.”

Unsure about how to find guest-blogging opportunities?

You can learn how to find guest-blogging opportunities from my blog posts on “How to guest-blog on personal finance or investments, Part I: Your approach” and “Part II: Blogs that accept guest posts from financial advisors.”

P.S. Why I’m no longer labeling guest posts as “guest posts”

I used to put “guest post” in titles of the posts other people wrote for me. However, I’ve stopped doing that after reading “Why Blogs that Allow Guest Posts Will Be Penalized in 2013” on the ProBlogger blog. The gist of that post seems to be that blogs that abuse guest posts as part of the authors’ attempts to raise their rank in searches will be penalized by Google in 2013.

I think I’m in good shape because none of my guest bloggers are inserting keywords or links solely to boost their Google rankings. However, the first tip of the ProBlogger post was “1. Stop telling people it’s a guest post.” I figured that was a small step worth taking.