Guest Blogging – 10 Examples Of How Not To Start The Conversation

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The more well known The Social Ms as a blog becomes, the more guest blogging request we get. And since we really like to have guest posts on the blog as they add a point of view and often topics we ourselves would not have covered, our blogging doors are wide open. We love reading from you, and we like to publish guest posts on The Social Ms.here are 10 examples of really bad emails for landing a guest blogging opportunity with us. If you want to publish guest posts make sure you send an awesome email request that includes all necessary information. #guestblogging #guestposting #bloggingtips #guestbloggingoportunity

But sometimes the emails we get are so plain bad that I wonder why you even bother to send them. You can save your time and our time by cutting back and forget about it if you cannot come up with something better.

So here are 10 examples of really bad emails for landing a guest blogging opportunity with us (and to give you some positive advice, I will add some tips on what I like to see in an email for a guest blogging request)

1. Dear Mike, Mary or Pamela

Sorry, my name is Susanna, and I am running this blog together with Jonathan. I have no clue where you came up with these names – well I actually have, it is clearly a copy and paste mistake – but the email was obviously not meant for me.


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2. Dear Susanna, My name is Mike, My name is Maria

Wait, what? Who are you again, Mike, Maria … all the same? While I get why you are calling ME wrong names with a simple copy and paste mistake, I do not get how You can have several names or be several people. This smells a lot like Spam. Sorry, no chance.

3. I had a look at your blog and saw that you are covering finance topics

Wait, what? That is total news to me. We have and will be writing about online marketing topics. While we have written about our history as startup founders, these articles are rare, and our blog has a clear niche: Online Marketing.

And no, we will not make an exception for you, just because you are saying we cover your topic.

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4. Guest blogging is good for your blog…

You do not have to convince me that accepting guest posts is a good thing. You have to convince me that I want to have YOUR guest post on our blog. If I do not already know about the benefits of guest posts for our blog, your 2-3 sentences are not going to convince me either.

I want to know about you and what kind of content you produce. I want to trust you as a writer and blogger. So tell me who you are and why your content would be great for us.

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5. I published a post on our own blog, which would be interesting to your audience too. Please repost!

What? While I am not convinced that duplicate content is in any case just evil or bad, we are not your content sharing machine – if you want to publish on our blog you are welcome to create an outstanding and exclusive piece and try to convince us that it is a good fit.

If you think your piece is so good that you want to republish it, go for sites that explicitly allow it. (Yes these sites exist. ) But do not call it guest posting – you have clearly gotten it wrong.

6. Your English is barely readable

here are 10 examples of really bad emails for landing a guest blogging opportunity with us - and some advice on what to write instead

I am German. Believe me, I understand how it is to write in a language that is not my mother tongue. And I am willing to edit and correct a good post if necessary. And I also know that my posts are probably not totally flawless either. But if I have trouble to understand what you are trying to say – then you either need to consider if you pay an editor (We did that when we were starting out with content marketing in English), or you could try to use some tools like Grammarly to smooth out the worst mistakes in your content.

Either way, if you cannot come up with an English piece that is readable, maybe you should rethink if guest posting in English is the best way to go for you.

7. A non-legit email address

If you get in touch, and I answer you, an error message that this email address does not exist does not help to build trust. Most likely you lost me at that point. Also writing to me from an email address that belongs to another person looks a little shady, sorry.

8. I’m a fan of your blogs the Social Ms and exploreB2B

In case you had not noticed: exploreB2B was not a blog it was a publishing platform. And exploreB2B is gone for good. Good for you that you have heard of it, but if you want to score points by mentioning you are a fan of something we do, make sure it is something we do.

The same goes for telling us: I really liked your article LINK and then link to a piece neither me nor Jonathan has written.

9. Sending not working links as references

If you send references with your guest post application (which you should, if you have them), make sure you link to existing content. If your links are broken, I start to wonder why your content was taken down. Most of the answers I can think of will not make me trust you.

10. We’ve met at <event I’ve not been at>

This has happened more than once. Sometimes we may even have been planning to go there so our names may have been on the guest list – but I have also seen it happening with events in a country I have never been to. And even though I am getting older, my memory usually still works quite well – even if I have been at an event you should not try to game me by claiming we met if we haven’t.

Now I told you quite a lot about what I do NOT want to read in your guest posting contact email. Here is what I want to read:

  1. Tell me who you are, what you do and why you are an expert in online marketing
  2. Make a suggestion for a topic you want to cover. There are mainly two options: either send me a draft article for me to look at. Or send me a couple of topics or post titles to choose from. If you think it might help you can add some words about what you are going to cover in the post.
  3. Add links to your previous work. Honestly, nothing can convince me better that you are worthy to be published on our blog than if you have already been published on a blog I like and trust. Especially when you first send only topic suggestions and no finished article it is nice if you give me the opportunity to take a look at the kind of content you produce.

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