Bloggers are absolutely bloody clueless – well except for my friends of course. But most of the bloggers out there really don’t know which way is up.
Most bloggers bitch about one of two things: coming up with new ideas for their blogs or not getting paid to blog! The whole today.com fiasco had blame on both sides – there were an awful lot of bloggers who were convinced they were owed a living based on their inane, or even well-written, ramblings about their day-to-day life.
(BTW if you were thinking why not to that last sentence – try putting up your own blog along these lines and living off the resulting revenue… )
Which brings me to the point of this post. I do some freelance work for an agency. That agency gives me articles which need to be placed on relevant blogs – that’s not so hard is it? After all most bloggers want unique content right?
Actually absolutely not correct. I have kept a bit of a list and I find if I try to contact 10 blogs that look suitable the break down goes something like this
- 1 blog will have absolutely no way to contact the owner of the blog – this is particularly true for wordpress.com blogs but I have had it from self-hosted and blogspot blogs as well. Its not that hard people – its called a contact page – you either put a form on it or you write your email address like lis at lissowerbutts dot com.
- 2 blogs will promptly and politely respond that they don’t accept guest posts – cool no problem, thanks for your time.
- 1 blogger will respond and then prove utterly clueless about how to actually cut and paste the post – we get there eventually – and hey at least I got my Kharma quota up – I do however wonder sometimes!
- 1 blogger will respond, request the post, and post it – win/win job done.
- 5 bloggers will never respond to my email.
Its those 50% of bloggers who are too lazy/arrogant/whatever to bother responding to that I am talking to.
- No you haven’t just not been online becuase I know your blog is updated regularly otherwise I wouldn’t have contacted you.
- No its not a trick -the concept of Guest Posts is apparently difficult for some people to grasp – I’m not sure because its talked about all over the blogosphere – but trust me Guest Posting is a legitmate opportunity for companies to get their nae out there. What do you think article marketing is all about?
- No I will not be insulted if you don’t want a post – just tell me so – how long does hitting reply and typing no thanks take?
- Have you no bloody manners?
Oh and if you have a PR3 on your front page or more than 200 RSS subscribers blog in any of the following niches: health, diet, exercise, healthcare careers, medical careers, patient rights, or Web 2.0, and would like a 500+ word original article which includes one link in the authro’s bio paragraph please feel free to drop me a line via the contact form or email lis (at) gmail (dot) com. No splogs or other autogenerated content please.
