Last week, we listed seven types of content to focus on when guest blogging, so I figured I should probably continue with this topic and dig down some more to find another set of interesting guest post concepts.
But let’s just set one thing straight before we get going. This list of six more types of content is in no way inferior to the original post. I guarantee that every item from either list can land you a valuable guest post on a popular blog. In short, this isn’t a “tier 2” by any means.
Guest blogging success has always been in the execution, so how you take action on a given content type is a lot more important than what content type you choose in the first place.
8. Time specific insights
Let’s start with a whole range of topics that you can begin using around October, up to February the next year. I’m talking about utilizing headlines that are heavily based around a specific time of the year. Something along the lines of:
How to _________ in 2015
X Things Still Worth Doing About _____ in 2014
What I’ve Learned About _____ in 2014
X New Year’s Resolutions for Your Business ______ – the 2015 Edition
X _____ Ideas for 2015
There are literally hundreds of headlines like the ones above that you can use. Blog editors are usually very receptive to those, and the fact that everybody else publishes this stuff doesn’t seem to be very discouraging.
Of course, the standard guest blogging rules still apply – your post needs to be of high quality, benefit the audience and be interesting to read in general.
9. Infographics
Infographics have gotten really popular in the recent years and there are a couple of good reasons for it. First of all, their visual nature is more in tune with today’s hectic world and the short attention spans most people have these days (you and me included). Secondly, they present just the essential info and do it in a very straightforward way. Thirdly, they are much more sharable than text content.
There’s also one more reason why blog editors might be very interested in having a custom infographic made for them. Namely, it takes a lot of effort and skill to create an infographic that is truly exceptional. So blog editors are eager for you to take the workload and leave themselves with the deciding vote whether the post will go live or not.
So in the end, infographics have their pros and cons. And while I wouldn’t advise building your whole guest blogging effort around infographics, developing one every two or three months could be a good strategy.
10. Cheat sheets
A cheat sheet is a fairly straightforward type of post, with not much narrative, but instead focusing on the essential info required in order to achieve a specific goal or perform a specific task.
Or as Wikipedia defines it, “a cheat sheet is a concise set of notes used for quick reference.”
For example, if you’re in the “guitar playing” niche then a topic that’s good for a cheat sheet could be, “[Cheat Sheet] The X Things You Need to Do Prior to Going on Stage.” Such a piece could be very valuable to anyone who’s starting playing gigs and needs to make sure that their equipment is in line.
Basically, in order to come up with good cheat sheet ideas, try looking for tricks, methods of handling specific tasks, or solving challenges that people in your niche struggle with regularly.
Bonus note. If you want to improve your guest blogging results even more, you can offer a specific email subscription gift that’s directly related to the cheat sheet. Going back to my guitar example; at the end of the cheat sheet you could say something like, “Go here to learn about 5 more things you should do to make sure your gig goes as planned.”
11. Interviews
Interviews can be great as a guest blogging opportunity (something we talked about a while ago), and especially if you’re going after a popular site that doesn’t normally publish a lot of guest posts.
The success here all depends on the caliber of the person that you can get on the interview. Also, the person needs to be an authority figure in the niche that the blog you’re targeting is in.
Once you have those two things checked, you can ask your questions via email, get the answers and send everything as a nice guest post.
How to plug your own business in the interview? Easy, just make your business part of one of the questions. For example, if you’re promoting a social media tool (let’s call it Tool X), you can ask something like, “What are your toughest social media challenges right now, and have you tried solutions like Tool X or others similar to perhaps help you solve them?”
12. Comparisons
Blog editors are not that keen to publish straight-up product reviews. They’re afraid (and rightfully so) that the review will end up sounding overly promotional and that the audience won’t get much out of it in terms of real insight.
However, the story is a bit different with comparisons. Basically, when you’re comparing two or more solutions against each other, you need to present the pros and cons of all of them. And if you’re talking about equally popular tools then the post can get a lot of recognition (and hate) among the fans of each of those tools.
All this can make comparisons worthwhile as a guest post type, but there’s one catch. There simply needs to be enough “things” you can compare in your niche, which isn’t always the case.
Anyway, whenever writing a comparison, try comparing three or four solutions. While it is true that “the more, the better,” it would simply be too time-consuming to compare more than four things in an in-depth way. Keep in mind that this isn’t a simple list post linking to various tools, we’re talking about a detailed comparison.
13. Roundups
Roundups aren’t something too popular in the guest blogging space, and probably because most of the time your pitch will get declined.
So why am I even including them on the list, right?
Well, you can still very well get a roundup published as a guest post, but you just need to pick your target site right.
The only sites this works on are the ones that already published roundups in the past, but for some reason haven’t published one recently. So what you do is just step in, say that you’ve noticed they didn’t publish their roundup in a while and offer to compile it for them.
What you need to do in the roundup itself is use exactly the same headline structure as the blogger was using, include the exact same number of links, give similar commentary, etc. Basically, you need to ghost write it.
Now, in the roundup, one of the links points to your site.
That’s it for the list. I hope it’s been useful. So now it’s over to you. What is the most unusual type of a guest post that you’ve stumbled upon?
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