Find Blogging Opportunities with Twitter

Are you looking for websites that will allow you to post a guest blog post? One of the best ways to do this is with Twitter. Let me show you why, and how.

Isn’t guest blogging dead?

A couple years ago, Matt Cutts declared guest blogging dead, right? Yes and now. Irrelevant guest blog posts with a low criteria for approval are dead. Blog posts on relevant websites with high standards are still a valuable marketing tactic.

Guest blogging is a PR win

For one, a productive guest blogging campaign can help spread word about your business. Those websites can build name recognition, credibility and send quality traffic to your website. In the same way, guest blogging can help with a social media campaign.

Guest blogging for link building

But let’s face it: most of us have done guest blogging to help our SEO campaign with link building. I think there is still value in guest blogging as a link building tactic. This is especially true if you approach guest blogging as if you were a PR team. If you reach out to relevant and quality blogs you’ll receive benefits from the blog post- even if they nofollow or redirect your link. In fact, the better links to your website come from another, relevant website, too.

Why use Twitter to find blogging opportunities?

Since guest blogging isn’t dead, but has several benefits, how can you find opportunities? Many people go to Google. There several search engine queries you can enter, to find blogging opportunities.

The problem in using Google is that some of the opportunities are out-dated. Just because someone invited a guest blogger a couple years ago, doesn’t mean they will do it again.

Another problem with Google is finding who to contact. You might find the perfect blog for your niche. You might even have the perfect topic for their audience. If you can’t reach the blogger, you’ll never get the chance to write for them.

I think Twitter can do better.

Twitter blogging opportunities are fresh

If someone Tweets:

#IBMPartners – Showcase your #SocBiz thought leadership. Invitation to contribute to the Voices Blog. http://t.co/rW17RyO3Rn

— Gurpreet Kaur (@gurpreetdw) October 7, 2015

You have a good chance of success.

Twitter and Google are partners

Most bloggers take the extra step to send their posts to Twitter. They might pick up a little traffic from a few more eyeballs. It’s even better if people actually follow you on Twitter. This will give you some engagement, too. If you’ve found a blogging opportunity on Twitter, you’ve set yourself up for success.

This becomes even more valuable now that Google and Twitter have a relationship.

How use Twitter to find blogging opportunities?

First of all, you’ll need to visit the Twitter search page. You might even want to use their advanced search feature.

Now you need to know what to search for. There are two types of searches you can use to find blogging opportunites on Twitter:

People who are posting guest posts from their blog.

For example:

How to Track Your Social Media Efforts – How to Track Your Social Media Efforts written by Guest Post read more… https://t.co/h5fzhuZzIM

— Angelson Group (@AngelsonGroup) November 9, 2015

To find opportunities like these, search for:

“guest writer” OR “guest blog post” OR “guest article” OR “guest blogger” OR “guest post” OR “guest column” OR “guest author” -RT -MT lang:en

What does this mean? Search for any of the phrases in quotation marks that don’t include retweets (-RT) or modified tweets (-MT) that are in English (since, that’s the language my clients speak).

If these people have allowed someone to post on their website, you might be able to pitch them content, too.

People who are looking for guest writers for their blog.

For example:

We are accepting submissions for blog contributors – http://t.co/jg2b3AExF5 via @dawn_trudeau #bloggers #SAHM #WAHM #SocialMedia

— Dawn Trudeau (@simplybydawn) October 15, 2015

To find opportunities like these, search for:

“guest bloggers wanted” OR “guest blogger wanted” OR “submit your guest post” OR “become a contributor” OR “become a guest writer” -RT -MT lang:en

These websites need help. They might be willing to allow you to write for them. Just ask.

Might be too many opportunities

If we’re honest, most of these are bad opportunities. Just because someone publishes a guest post, doesn’t mean you want to, too. Just because someone is looking for a guest contributor, doesn’t mean you’ll qualify. It’s still going to take some time to weed-through these and find the right ones, but it will be worth the effort.

The two examples, above, will give you a lot of tweets. You might not need all those. If not, add a relevant industry term to limit the results to the most relevant Tweets. This will give you far fewer, but better, opportunities.

Two IFTTT Recipes- to make it simple

Twitter might be a great source for blogging opportunities but how can you use them? When you need an opportunity you could visit Twitter and start looking but there’s got to be an easier way. This is where IFTTT can help.

In case you’re not aware of IFTTT, let me explain. IFTTT stands for “If this, then that.” This is a service that takes a piece of information and does something with that information. It can help us manage our Twitter searches and do something with them, if Twitter finds any.

Get a list of blogging opportunities

You can use IFTTT to send your Twitter searches to a Google Spreadsheet.

Here’s a recipe I created that does this. Of course, you can change this recipe to limit your searches for more relevant blogs.

In fact, I’ve been doing this for several months, now. Here’s a directory of Google Docs with several hundred websites looking for guest bloggers.

You don’t use Google Drive? IFTTT can add each tweet to a text file through Dropbox or Box or Evernote instead. You might even send these opportunities to Pocket, to read later.

One thing I like to do with a spreadsheet, like this, is to send it to a program like Buzzstream. From here I can review the opportunities and save the best ones. In fact, you can change this recipe to only add the basic data you need to upload into Buzzstream.

Get a daily email of blogging opportunities

A list of blogging opportunities can be a lot to wade through (even with Buzzstream). If you want, you can ask IFTTT to send you a daily digest by email of these opportunities.

Here’s a recipe I created that does this for you. Like the other ones, you might add a relevant keyword to limit these to only the best opportunities.

Daily emails too much? You can have this sent to you (or someone on your team) as a weekly digest instead.

If you can think of a way to improve this method, share it in the comments below.