Rejection hurts. We all know the feeling. It’s especially painful when your overtures are not only rejected, but don’t even merit acknowledgement. Such is the painful reality of guest posting sometimes.

Recently though, the painful sting of rejection was turned to elation when the blogger who seemed to ignore the e-mail with my guest post ended up tweeting a link to the post after I put it up on my own blog.

In the end, this might be the best result. When I think about it, I got the SEO benefit of hosting the content on my blog, a social signal from a powerful Twitter account (which can help me rank in search) and I got the blogger in question to endorse my post and share it with his audience.

This gives me more motivation to put myself out there, as scary as rejection might be. But to keep my chances of rejection lower, here are some things I try to keep in mind.

1. I need to choose an appropriate targethttp://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/ has some ca-ray-zee link juice. But check out their author requirements:

Writing for us: We are always looking for fresh original social media articles.  Our editorial requirements require you be an established authority to contribute content and provide original content to our site.

Established authority? I wasn’t sure what that meant so I checked out some of their author bios. The first author I found could be my twin. Her blog has just about the same Page Authority and Domain Authority as mine, and she has about the same number of Twitter followers. The second author’s blog has a PA of 1, but he’s CRUSHING it on Twitter.

The third author has about the same level of blog authority as me. But she’s somewhere between me and second author on Twitter. It looks like – surprise, surprise – socialmediaexaminer.com wants its authors to be big deals on Twitter. I’m not a total slouch at 332 followers of @CathyReisenwitz, but I’m probably not going to impress these people.

2. I need to follow directions. Speaking of author requirements, I found those by searching around the site. Before you submit a guest post, BE SURE you search for any guest post submission guidelines. Sometimes bloggers bother to write them, sometimes they don’t. But if they bother to write them and you don’t bother to find them and follow them, you are probably buying your guest post a one-way ticket to file 13.

3. I need to be flexible. I scored a guest post on http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/ one time but I had to spend hours on a guest post, submit it, then completely rewrite it before she’d accept it. Then, before she published it, Penelope completely rewrote it by combining my first and second drafts together. If you are submitting your content, you have to let go of editorial control, because it’s their blog, and they’re in charge of what ultimately lives on it.

Even following these steps, I’ve gotten rejected, and you will too. It’s a part of life. If you’re never getting rejected, you’re probably not shooting high enough. Just remember as you go along, shoot for the moon, and you’ll get your post tweeted out. Or something along those lines.

How do you deal with rejection, or have you had to? I want to hear your stories in the comments.

Cathy Reisenwitz helps small businesses increase their qualified traffic through organic and local search. Check out her Birmingham SEO Blog.

cc licensed ( BY ND ) flickr photo shared by HikingArtist.com

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5 Responses to “When it Comes to Guest Posting, Sometimes “Failure” Isn’t”

  1. Gail Gardner

    Hi Cathy,

    Many bloggers are seeing rejection where failure to connect is actually a more accurate description. I encourage bloggers NOT to assume they're being rejected if they send an email and don't get a response because it is very possible that their email did not get delivered OR was lost in the hundreds or thousands of emails some of us receive each day.

    Each blogger is easiest to reach where they are most active. That might be Facebook for some. For me it is an @GrowMap message on Twitter because I search for my username each time I look at my Twitter stream – but I do not see DMs in a timely manner because I have yet to find a way to block auto-DMs and my DMs overflow because so many are still auto-DMing.

    I encourage those interested in guest blogging to look at blogger's about and contact pages for tips on how to reach out. Mine have details on how I prefer to receive guest posts and how to reach me. Wouldn't you rather connect live on Skype or IM or Twitter and get a faster answer than send email that may not be seen because it landed in spam?

    For me Skype, IM, Twitter are the fastest ways to reach me. For others it may be Twitter DMs or email or even the phone. The way to find out for sure is to read About and Contact pages on blogs and bios on Twitter.

    Reply
  2. Akash

    Absoulutely agree with you, whenever I am looking to guest post on a new blog I always check their guidelines and a few guest posts published there to get an idea of what kind of posts they accept.

    Reply
  3. Martin

    Rejection is just a part of our lives. We have to accept it and learn to deal with it, but if we use it right, it will help us grow as people. So every time you get rejected, use it as a strenght.

    Reply
  4. Web Design Florida

    Rejection may be happen when you do some work against of their guideline. If we want to post the blog then we must have to read their rules. Rejection must learn you more and more.

    Reply

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