How and why to include Guest Authors in our WordPress Blog

Accepting guest authors to post on our blogs is a very effective way to gain an audience. Thanks to them, our sites can enter other circles of people who are linked to each author. Faced with this, we can be presented with many questions about when to accept an author, how to manage it, what resources WordPress gives us for it and what precautions to take in each case, among others. Here are some suggestions to open our sites to guest authors in a safe and reliable way.

What will you find here?

• 1 Advantages of accepting guest authors
• 2 How to attract guest authors
• 3 Precautions to take into account
• 4 Guest Author Accounts

ADVANTAGES OF ACCEPTING GUEST AUTHORS

Let’s start by looking at the advantages and benefits of having guest authors .

1. In the first place, they will surely provide us with a new point of view, another way of seeing and interpreting the themes that our site covers. The greater the variety within our themes, the more attractive the site will be to the public. Variety is the essence, both in content and in style. This will undoubtedly please our public and will also be of interest to other new visitors. In addition, each author usually has their own audience, which will be directed to our site when the article is shared.
2. If each author usually also has their own website, every time we allow a publication from another on ours, both sites are linked and an “association” begins that could be very beneficial for both.
3. Let’s also keep in mind that an article that someone else writes means less work for us, that although we love to write, from time to time it does not hurt to have someone work in our place.

So, as we can see, we have many benefits ahead of us, both from our readers’ side, from our own and also from our site. We will see below what ways we have to attract guest authors and some precautions that it would be good to keep in mind.

HOW TO ATTRACT GUEST AUTHORS

We had already analyzed the multiple benefits of having guest writers on our site who contribute their articles. There are many advantages in various fields: our site, our audience and ourselves. We will see below some ways to attract and invite other authors to publish their work on our blog.

1. Perhaps the easiest and fastest way is to make an invitation page on our site. Many blogs have this page and it is highly visible. This can be a direct message such as “Write for us” or “Send us your article”.
2. If we have some economic resources we can also offer some remuneration for your work. It is important to be able to put yourself in the shoes of a guest author and think about the benefits of publishing your articles on our site. We must offer something in return. Whatever that motivation, it has to be clear that we are interested in receiving articles from third parties and what we can give them in return.
3. If this does not work, we can take another first step, that of being the guest editors on third-party sites. Once we show them that the experience can be beneficial and that we are people of serious work, we can invite them to change places and that they are the ones who write on our site. This type of exchange is very common, since many editors have their own blogs. The exchange of articles is something reciprocal that brings many benefits for sites that focus on the same market niche.
4. Another option is guest author communities . Sites like MyBlogGuest unite people looking for just this, so why not check them out?

PRECAUTIONS TO CONSIDER

Earlier we reviewed the benefits of having guest authors on our site and also looked at some ways to get them to come to us. Here we are going to focus on some measures and precautions to consider when we have accepted a guest author.

1. Every publication contains SEO work behind it, something like the “dirty work” of the article, which not only seeks to reach the reader but also Google. Although the search engine insists that what pleases the public also pleases the public, there are always some hidden techniques.
2. Let’s ask about the keywords and backlinks that copywriters are looking for. They are ways of promoting your own sites on search engines. We must be careful with this, since we may not want our site to be related to other very common topics on the web (gambling, pornography, etc.). Many times these keywords and backlinks point to this type of thing.
3. It would be wise to know a little about the main ideas of the post or a summary of it before it is published. There are many articles that are already written in advance and are repeated by many websites. We don’t want that for our precious blog!

GUEST AUTHOR ACCOUNTS

We now go to the WordPress configuration to accept our guest authors .

1. One option is to create an individual account for them, with restricted privileges (never as administrator). This way they will be able to upload the articles and format them, the publications will be under their name. But since each guest is probably only posting once, why create and delete an account each time?
2. We can have a generic guest account and enter the articles that we receive, either by email, by filling out a form or other means. Let’s be sure to also include each author’s name, a brief description, and a link to their website.