The Art of the Pitch

Any writer worth his ink knows that no matter how brilliant your writing style, no matter how solid your argumentation and how exclusive your scoop it’s all for nothing if you can’t get published. It works the same in the jet setting world of Guest Posting: you have to get published in order to get links and in order to get published you need to know how to make the perfect pitch.

Many people will tell you that you just need to be yourself when writing an introductory e-mail. Say hi, praise the site owner a bit and pitch your article, explaining why it’s good for them. While this might be fine and dandy in theory you’ll need to jump through a few more hoops in order to get published in the real world.

First of all, while templates do help if you are sending out a lot of e-mail make sure to heavily customize each one. Tell the people who you are and what you do, give unimportant details about your life. The people who appreciate these sorts of things will be more likely to read your e-mail completely. Those who don’t will think nothing of it.

Secondly, make sure to read a bit of the blog you want to be posting on. If you work for a SEO online agency you have to get to know the blog anyway to tell if it’s right for your content (and your client). When you make your pitch, mention some of the things that you like about the blog without praising it too much. Name a story that you really enjoyed or even a fragment from one of the stories. If the person reading your emails knows that you have read his or her blog before pitching a guest post they’ll be more likely to read and respond to it.

This might seem like common sense but you need immaculate spelling and grammar and to a smaller extent flawless sentence structure. Your pitch is your calling card and if you fail at a hundred-word e-mail how can a site owner or editor trust you with an article? Proofread, proofread, proofread.

Last but not least you need to know when to persevere and when not to. Don’t give up hope if you haven’t received a reply after your pitch. The admin might have been too busy to answer you or might have forgotten about your mail. Write again reminding them of your pitch possibly with your old mail attached. Just keep positive and you’ll be posting a lot more!