I get a couple of emails a week with content people want me to share on a site I’m connected to. I think there has been two times when the content was actually relevant to the site and didn’t sound terrible. And yet, every time I get sent an approach email, it says differently.

There’s a good chance that if you are sending emails asking to guest post on someone’s site and you get no response, you are making the same mistakes.

Some simple advice

  1. If you want to people to accept your invitations, then suggest relevant content.
  2. look for content submission details. Some sites WANT more content and have an easily discovered page where you can submit content.
  3. On the other hand, some sites DON’T want your content and won’t accept it even if it’s great. (e.g. This site is my own personal site, I will never accept a guest post on it. Start your own.)
  4. Don’t use a stock approach email. They are easy to spot and I will ignore your message. (but you may get inspired)
  5. If you don’t read a site, then be honest! Don’t fake “being a long time reader”. I’m more likely to read the “hey I’m looking for guest positing opportunities on {topic} and I came across your site. I was wondering if…” If you read my site, prove it subtley not just saying you read a post.
  6. Even if you do everything right, I may have just deleted every email in my inbox because I got fed up. You can try emailing me again but there’s a good chance I’m ignoring you or have blocked you as you came across as spammy.

By the way, this was going to be a tweetstorm but I remembered the words of a friend and decided that a blog post would be better.