6 tips to get others to create content for your blog for free

You know how valuable a blog can be to your business. You know how every article you add gets you more love from Google. More traffic. More leads. More sales. You started off great, but now you’re getting busier and you just can’t find the time or inspiration for creating regular new content for your blog. I’m in the same boat, and so are many of our business blog clients, so I created this article for us all.  There are easy ways to get others to WANT to create content for your blog, for free. Here are 6 of the best … which one are you going to try first?

Before you get into the 6 tips, remember that these will only work for you if it’s a win-win situation. You win because you’re getting quality content for your blog for free, but the contributor needs to win as well through exposing their work and promoting themselves to a new audience.

So have a think about what you can offer the contributor so it’s always win-win. Usually this will be traffic from a backlink from your blog to their website – and this is usually enough if the contributor has a less-popular blog than yours, or doesn’t have their own blog yet. However if you have the newer blog and are probably not receiving more traffic than their blog does, you’ll need to sweeten the deal (see tip 5 for more ideas).

1 – Get word out

Don’t wait for people to come to you. Get word out that you accept guest articles for your blog. Use social networking sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, add it to your email signature, get word out to your email database with your next newsletter – do anything and everything to get word out.

Add an article about it to your blog. Add a ‘Write For Us’ page to your blog as well. Include guidelines for contributors, such as the topic/s you accept articles on and preferred article length. Be up front about your copyright preferences. Will they still own the article? Can they post it on their blog as well? Check out other blogs for their contributor guidelines to get ideas. Add a mention at the end of every article you write that you accept guest articles. Link to the Write For Us page from your blog articles.

2 – Offer a bribe

Run a competition asking for articles on a particular topic and offer a prize for the winner/s. You can get the prizes for free too. Get in touch with your business network and see what they will donate in exchange for you promoting them in the article about the competition. If you have no networks to tap into, buy the prize yourself or offer your products or services as the prize.

3 – Do an interview

Tap into your business network or approach people you admire, even if you don’t know them yet, and ask if you can interview them and publish the interview on your blog. Aim as high as possible. Approach well-known people whose name will make people want to read the interview.

You don’t even have to meet with the person. You can simply email them a few questions and create the article from their replies. Don’t wait for them to reply with a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ before you send the questions. Go ahead and send the questions with the email request. This saves you both time and they are more likely to act then and there.

If you don’t know them, remember to introduce yourself and make it clear who your clients and target market are, so they know the audience they’ll be speaking to. Think about ‘what’s in it for me’ and include the benefits they’ll get by granting you the interview (see tip 5 ‘Sweeten the deal’).

4 – Use book excerpts

You may already know people in your network who have books or ebooks for sale that relate to your blog topic/s. Even if you don’t know someone but you have a favourite book or ebook – approach the author anyway. Ask if you can publish a free excerpt from their book or ebook on your blog. Offer a link in exchange to send visitors to buy the book or ebook.

You win with free content, they win with more book / ebook sales. When you approach them with the offer, select the chapter or excerpt you’d like to publish. Make sure you select a chapter that is about a related topic and uses keywords that are valuable to you for free SEO.

BONUS TIP: Ask if you can have a free copy of their book or ebook to give away in the article as well. Entry could require the reader joining your email database or just adding a comment to the blog answering a question. You could even pose a question they can only find the answer to by visiting the contributor’s website to help give the contributor more traffic. Get creative!

5 – Sweeten the deal

Sweeten the deal for all or selected contributors by offering to add them to a dedicated page on your blog that profiles all your contributors. Offer to add their photo and a brief bio about them to end of their article as well. You could also let them know you’ll send an announcement of their article out to your email database. The easier you make it for them and the more you put them in the spotlight the better.

6 – Publish existing articles

Approach bloggers who have already published great content that relates to your topics. Request to repeat-publish one of their articles on your blog, giving the credit to them of course. If you think their blog probably attracts more traffic than yours does, and therefore you would win more than they would if they say yes, sweeten the deal as much as you can so it remains win-win for you both.

So, there you have 6 easy tips for getting others to create the content for your blog for free. Pick one and get started today. I’d love to hear which tips work best for you.

Of course, if you don’t have a professional blog for your business yet, find out if a blog would benefit your company.  If you already know you’re missing out, or if you’re sick of your unprofessional blog design and know you could be attracting more traffic and leads, get in touch to find out how affordable it is for Orchid to create a custom blog for your business.

copyright Anna Gervai for Orchid Web Design, June 2010

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 20th, 2010 at 2:01 pm and is filed under Blogging, Copywriting, Online Marketing, SEO, Social Media, Traffic generation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.