I guess Homer Simpson isn’t your first choice when it comes to obtaining guest blogging advice, is he?

However, I was still quite surprised at how much we can learn by paying closer attention to some of his famous quotes and relating them back to guest blogging.

That being said, Homer is not a person whose advice should always be taken directly. Sometimes you’re actually way better off doing the exact opposite of what he’s saying. See for yourself:

Guest blogging is about overcoming failure

I’ve learned that life is one crushing defeat after another.

-Homer Simpson

The first lesson from this genius Homer Simpson quote is that failure is inevitable.

And not only in guest blogging. This is just as true for any other type of business or project you can take on. No matter what you decide to do, you will experience failures along the way.

In guest blogging, this will be editors not responding to your pitches, getting your posts rejected, getting your links deleted, having posts not gain any traction, and so on.

But hey, this is just how things are, and if you just continue going forward, you will find success and see good things coming your way at some point.

The power of getting started right away

All my life I’ve had one dream – to achieve my many goals.

-Homer Simpson

We should never underestimate the power of taking the first step. Showing up is really half the battle, so if you ever want to start experiencing the benefits of guest blogging, you simply need to get started at some point.

So instead of acting like Homer and just dreaming about things, do them! Send your first pitch. Write your first post. See it published on a site.

However, will this be worth it? Will it pay off? Will guest blogging work for you and your brand? Well, I don’t know. Nobody knows. But that’s the beauty because only you can find out, provided you get started.

People want facts over opinions

Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that’s even remotely true.

-Homer Simpson

There’s a huge number of guest posts circulating around these days. I alone get 5-10 pitches every week, and my site is far from being the hugest player out there. I can only imagine how many pitches the A-list guys get.

Therefore, in order to get noticed in all that noise, you need to make your content in some way unique.

What I’m finding to be an exceptionally effective approach to achieve this is to back your content with raw data.

Blog editors really seem to have gotten tired of opinion pieces or other how-to basic nonsense. They want something that has good foundations in data, something that’s based on the actual real world.

So give it to them. Write posts that are data-heavy, research-heavy, and thus value-heavy.

Simple language gets across

‘To Start Press Any Key’. Where’s the ANY key?

-Homer Simpson

Good articles are written using simple language. Regardless of the audience.

Even if the audience seems advanced, the fact that you don’t know them that well – after all, you’re guest blogging – might cause you to make assumptions that aren’t correct. So in the end, you might write a piece that’s not entirely understandable.

Just like Homer, your readers could be looking at your post wondering where’s that mysterious “ANY” key.

At the end of the day, no one will be mad at you for making things sound too basic. Everyone can still understand “too basic.” Not everyone can understand “too advanced” though.

There’s a nice readability score checker here.

Volume is king

Kids, you tried your best and you failed miserably. The lesson is, never try.

-Homer Simpson

Some people say that you should only approach a small number of blogs when guest blogging, and that you should work on your pitch for weeks until you finally send it – this is supposed to improve your chances of getting accepted.

Well, I disagree.

The fact is that your post getting rejected or approved depends on a lot of factors, and the quality of your pitch is just one of them. So even if you try your best, you can still fail miserably. What’s the lesson? Well, it’s not “never try” like Homer says. It’s actually the opposite.

Send a load of pitches.

Some of them will fail. Some will succeed. But I guarantee that you will learn a lot more by sending 20 good-enough pitches and getting two of them accepted, than by sending two perfect pitches and getting one accepted.

Guest blogging is the future (and the present)

I believe that children are our future. Unless we stop them now.

-Homer Simpson

Guest blogging is still your best chance at getting your thoughts across and your brand out there, featured on some of the top sites on the web.

I mean, what else is there if you don’t have a big advertising budget to work with? Social media? Spamming people on Twitter? Not likely a long-term strategy.

For many brands, bootstrapping their way to success, guest blogging indeed is one of the few ways to gain some publicity.

It’s literally our future, unless we stop doing it.

Other brands are paying attention

Kids, just because I don’t care doesn’t mean I’m not listening.

-Homer Simpson

Sometimes it can feel lonely out there in the blogosphere. You may feel like your efforts go unnoticed, or even that there’s no one paying attention to the content you’re putting out.

For individual posts, this might be true. Not every submission will be a hit. But over time, things add up and people start noticing you.

This is one of the reasons guest blogging should be done as a long-term strategy. Neil Patel, for example, advises to do it for at least six months straight before evaluating your strategy.

So as you go along, inevitably, you will start getting contacted by other brands and individuals that have seen your content and now want to work with you in one way or the other. The funny thing is that opportunities don’t always come from where we’d expect them.

Have you learned something valuable from Homer Simpson?

Let’s conclude with an open question. Is there anything valuable you’ve learned from Homer?