I was commenting on a blog about social media burnout. It was a blog written by Niall Harbison from Simply Zesty, on the blog I told Niall Harbison that guest posting from great bloggers helped me avoid getting burnout because I get to do other things, concentrate on other stuff like assignments, get time off from blogging and spending more time on my next post. After that Niall told said this to me
“Yeah its true Aaron that guest blogging does help. The one issue I have with that is that people usually come to the blog to read what you or I have to say so if you have to start getting guest bloggers in all the time to cover you people just get bored of it.
We’re not talking guest blogging on blogs like problogger etc, I mean guest posting on personal blogs like mine or Danny Brown.
He has a good points there. I replied to him that I understand what he meant and use a restaurant kitchen metaphor as an example. Where Niall is the head chef of the restaurant and he only want people to stop by his restaurant to taste his food and not others. I on the other hand allow other chefs to enter my kitchen and offer daily/weekly specials to my customers (readers).
So it got me thinking, should we accept guest posts on our personal blogs? Here is what I think:
The Pros
New read, something different
Having guest posts gives something different or offer a unique new perspective to the blog. If we continue with the kitchen metaphor then having guest post adds something extra to the menu of the day. People will expect to taste the food from the chef but is given something different and unique instead.They where expecting a great apple pie from the chef and found that the menu offered blueberry pies. (I wonder if that make sense LoL)
New Readers
Why new readers? Besides having your original readers on your blog, now you have different readers dropping by. Why? This is because the person who wrote the guest post will tell their friends on their social networking accounts that their guest post have been posted or live. That is what happened when my good friend @thephattay wrote his blog post and he told his friends. Other great guest post from @MarianSchembari @antwizzel @dino_dogan @pushingsocial @AutumnStJohn showed it to their friends too. I notice whenever I have guest post I have a spike in my traffic.
Avoid Social Media Burnout
It really helped me to avoid social media burnout because I get the time to spend doing other things online and offline. Having the time allowed me to complete other task like my assignments. Before this I had to juggle my assignments, blogging and helped my client. With guest posting I can avoid the need to blog too much as I know my readers be getting a lot of information from the guest posts.
The Cons
Turn Off
People might get bored if you have guest posts. This is one concern that Niall said on his comments. I agree with him that people will get bored because at the end of the day they come by your restaurant to taste your food (They want to read what you think). Imaging Chris Brogan and Seth Godin accepting guest post from other bloggers. It will be weird because Chris Brogan and Seth Godin are celebrities and their blog is their voice and thoughts. They are the Gorgan Ramsay of the blogging world.
Lose readers
Doing it too much it might annoy your loyal readers who came to your blog to read your thoughts. Using the Gordon Ramsay’s example, customers come by Ramsay’s restaurant to taste his food instead they got food from a different chefs. They might not come back again after that because they got annoyed if you do it too often.
So what do you think? Should you accept guest posts on your blog? Do you have extra pros and cons that you want to add. Share with the readers here. Would love to hear what you have in mind.
photo credits: arnold | inuyaki snowpea&bokchoi