How to Effectively Attract and Manage Guest Bloggers in WordPress: An Expert‘s Guide

As a WordPress site owner, bringing on guest bloggers can seem like a challenge. Where do you find qualified writers? How do you ensure their posts are high-quality? What‘s the best way to collaborate?

With over 15 years of experience running various WordPress sites, I‘ve refined an effective system for attracting first-rate guest bloggers and publishing phenomenal collaborative content.

In this comprehensive guide, I‘ll share insider tips and proven strategies to help you succeed with guest blogging on WordPress. You‘ll learn how to:

• Craft compelling guest posting guidelines to attract top talent
• Source promising guest blogger candidates that are a fit for your site
• Implement an efficient vetting and approval process
• Streamline your publishing workflow for easy collaboration
• Promote guest posts for maximum impact and ROI

Let‘s dive in!

Why Guest Blogging is Worth the Extra Effort

Before we get tactical, it‘s important to understand the major benefits that make guest blogging worth the investment:

1. Expand your reach and grow your audience

Guest bloggers expose your content and brand to new audiences. For example, if you land a guest post on a site with 50k monthly visitors, you‘ve instantly expanded your reach to a pool of 50k+ potential new followers.

This audience sharing helps you tap into additional traffic sources and grow your own following faster. Brian Dean of Backlinko found that guest posts generated over 1.8 million visits from social media referrals over just 7 months.

2. Gain additional backlinks and improve SEO

High-quality guest posts allow you to pick up authoritative backlinks, which signals to Google that your site is credible. This gives your domain authority and search rankings a nice boost.

For example, Ahrefs found that search giant SearchPilot saw its domain rating jump by 2 points after a successful guest posting campaign that generated just 29 new organic backlinks.

3. Build relationships with influencers in your space

Guest blogging develops relationships with site owners, industry influencers, and subject matter experts. These relationships can open doors down the line, leading to JV partnerships, referrals, podcast appearances, and more.

4. Showcase your expertise and credibility

Guest posts allow you to highlight your expertise on niche topics and establish credibility as a thought leader. Publishing on authority sites lends 3rd party validation.

5. Enjoy fresh perspectives and variety in your content

Guest bloggers naturally bring diverse perspectives, writing styles, and topics to the table. This adds flavor to your content and gives readers a change of pace.

6. Save time by outsourcing writing

Rather than creating all your content yourself, guest posts done by others add new content to your site without you having to write it all.

According to statistics from Orbit Media, an average blog post takes 4 hours and 18 minutes to create. Guest posting allows you to reclaim some of that writing time for other projects.

Post Length	Average Writing Time
500 words	1.8 hours
1,000 words	3.4 hours
1,500 words	5 hours
2,000 words	7.2 hours

Clearly there are some major benefits and advantages to be gained from guest blogging. Now let‘s talk specifics on how to make it work for your WordPress site.

Step 1: Craft Compelling Guest Posting Guidelines

Your guest posting guidelines form the foundation for attracting high-quality guest blog submissions tailored to your needs. That‘s why crafting detailed, enticing guidelines is so crucial.

Here are some key elements your guidelines should cover:

• Brief overview of your brand, site, target audience.
• Preferred topics and content formats for submissions.
• Post length and tone requirements.
• Content quality expectations – what makes a great guest post for your site?
• Editing process – number of revisions, timeframe, etc.
• Deadlines and timeframes for publishable drafts.
• Compensation information if paying contributors.
• Author bio and headshot specifications.
• Any legal policies, disclaimers for submitting work.

Study guest posting guidelines from sites like Forbes, Entrepreneur, Business Insider to get presentation ideas. Tailor things like tone and topics to match your brand voice.

Once your guidelines are ready, publish them on a dedicated Guest Posting page on your site. This serves as the hub you‘ll direct all interested contributors to.

Make Your Guidelines Scan-Friendly

Optimize your page for skimmability. Research shows only 16% of users read website content word-for-word. Use the inverted pyramid structure – important details first, background info last.

Chunk content into short paragraphs and bullet points. Highlight key sections with bold headings. Host the page on a standalone domain (e.g. guestpost.yourbrand.com) for better discoverability.

With compelling guest post guidelines in place, you‘re ready to start sourcing promising candidates.

Step 2: Find and Vet Quality Guest Bloggers

Your guidelines can attract passive submissions from writers who stumble upon your site. But for best results, you need to proactively source targeted candidates whose expertise aligns with your content needs.

Here are some of my proven approaches for finding guest bloggers that consistently yield great results:

Mine Your Network

Start by reaching out to industry connections, existing contributors, or past collaborators. Let them know you‘re seeking guest posts – ask if they‘re interested or can refer someone.

This yields a higher response rate since you have an existing relationship. According to Mailshake, emails to existing contacts have a 40% open rate versus 11% for cold outreach.

Attend Industry Events

Events like conferences and meetups are full of engaged people worth getting to know. Pitch potential guest contributors face-to-face at events. Swap business cards and follow up via email after.

Search Industry Publications

Look at who‘s being quoted or writing articles for publications in your space. Reach out to reporters or sources who cover topics relevant to your site.

Explore Forums and Groups

People active in your industry‘s forums and groups make promising candidates. Start conversations to assess expertise before pitching a guest post collaboration.

Interview Existing Authors

Ask your current stable of writers for guest post referrals. They likely have connections in your space worth tapping into.

Cast a wide net with your outreach campaigns. But also remember that quality over quantity counts when assessing contributors. Only work with those that meet your standards.

Guest Blogger Vetting Checklist

Use this checklist to qualify candidates:

• Relevant expertise and credentials
• Samples of high-quality published work
• Strong communicator and collaborator
• Aligns with your brand and content style
• Has an engaged audience to share with
• Thought leader in your space

Phone or video interviews can further help assess fit beyond just emails.

Only partner with guest bloggers who meet your standards to maintain content quality. Decline politely if someone isn‘t the right match.

Step 3: Implement an Efficient Submission and Review Process

Managing guest posts takes time and coordination. That‘s why you need a streamlined system to stay organized from submission to publication.

Here‘s an effective guest blogging workflow used by WordPress pros:

1. Submission

Have writers submit completed drafts or content proposals through an online form on your site. This keeps everything centralized in one place.

Tools like Google Forms, Wufoo, and Gravity Forms have free forms you can embed.

2. Initial Triage

Give submissions a quick first review to ensure they meet your basic requirements and standards. Reject any that clearly miss the mark right away.

3. Editing & Feedback

Provide edits, suggestions, and feedback for promising posts to help refine their fit and quality. Limit major revisions to 1-2 rounds so you don‘t get bogged down.

4. Final Approval

Once a post meets all your standards, mark it as approved for publication. Reconfirm any publishing details with the author.

5. Scheduling

Map out a monthly content calendar and add guest posts. Aim to space them out evenly rather than clustering posts from the same writer.

6. Promotion

Share approved posts across social media. Email writers once live to request they also share with their networks.

Don‘t let guest posts pile up in your inbox indefinitely. Set a policy to respond to pitches within 1 week and provide feedback on drafts within 3-5 days.

Step 4: Streamline Your Guest Posting Workflow

Beyond your review process, you also need to optimize your systems and tools for smoothly collaborating with guest bloggers.

Here are some tips to maximize efficiency:

Maintain an Editorial Calendar

Use a content calendar to track all upcoming posts in one place. This helps coordinate schedules with writers.

Tools like CoSchedule, Kapost, or Google Calendar help here.

Use Content Collaboration Software

Online tools like Google Docs, Dropbox Paper, and Notion provide central hubs for drafts, feedback, revisions between you and writers.

Create Content Templates

Provide article templates, outlines, or samples that match your style. This gives writers a model to work from for polished submissions.

Automate Follow-Ups

Use email sequences or CRM software like HubSpot to send automatic reminders about drafts coming due.

Batch Process on Fixed Days

Rather than tackling submissions piecemeal, block off dedicated times like "Guest Post Tuesdays" to handle them more efficiently.

Pay On Time

Use PayPal, Venmo, Direct Deposit or similar tools to pay contributors promptly upon publishing. Late payments or hassles will deter writers.

Adjust your systems until you find a workflow that makes collaborating with guest bloggers simple and frictionless.

Step 5: Promote Guest Posts to Maximize Impact

Getting published is only half the battle. You need to actively promote guest posts upon release to capitalize on this exposure opportunity.

Share on Social Media

Schedule social media posts across your platforms announcing the new guest post and highlighting key parts of the content.

Send Dedicated Email Blasts

Send dedicated email newsletters to your subscriber list announcing new guest posts. Consider partnering this with a lead magnet giveaway.

Boosted Online Media increased guest post traffic by 8,387% by promoting each one through dedicated email blasts.

Update On-Site Promotions

Temporarily feature guest posts on your homepage, in menus, via popups or banners. This gives them prominence among your existing content.

Request Cross-Promotion

Ask guest bloggers to share a link to their post from their own site, email lists, and social profiles to tap into their followers.

Promotion Channel	Potential Reach
Your blog post	10,000 followers
Guest blog post	15,000 followers
Guest‘s Twitter	5,000 followers
Guest‘s LinkedIn	2,000 followers
Guest‘s email list	25,000 subscribers
Total potential reach	57,000

Getting guest bloggers to co-promote their posts can double or triple your potential reach. But you have to explicitly ask them to cross-promote.

Monitor Performance

Review Google Analytics to see traffic, lead generation, dwell time from each guest post. Double down on what performs well.

With the right promotion, a single guest post can continue driving value for weeks after publishing.

Key Takeaways from 15+ Years of Guest Posting

After managing dozens of guest bloggers across various sites over the past 15+ years, I‘ve learned:

• Vet thoroughly. Taking time to properly vet guest bloggers pays dividends in quality and headache avoidance.

• Optimize workflow. Eliminate friction in every step of the process for a smooth experience.

• Promote aggressively. Guest posts require active promotion to fully capitalize on their exposure potential.

• Nurture relationships. Stay in touch with guest contributors about future collaborations down the line.

I hope these tips help you get more from your guest posting efforts. Let me know in the comments if you have any other guest blogging best practices I should add!