Having a blog is one of the most liberating and rewarding things you can do. As you know, this isn’t something only individuals do, companies and business are becoming more and more recognizable in the online realm. They are starting to gradually pick up the practice of blogging, usually with the help of talented writers and editors who make everything possible through their technical and creative skills.
Regardless if you are a writer for your personal blog or have been hired by a company/business to create content for them, you have to admit that from time to time you do get hit with writer’s block or feel that the content you have been putting out is quite monotonous and could use some spicing up.
Feeling this way is not something out of the ordinary, it’s actually quite common, its also not a recently discovered issue but one that has been around for a long time, and fortunately, already has a solution. That solution being guest authors.
What guest authors exactly are, when, and why should you consider hosting them on your blog, and most importantly, how to credit them in the right way for the work they are doing will be the focus of this article.
If you’re interested in learning more, sit back, and enjoy the rest of this post!
What are the guest authors?
A guest author is more than a person who creates content; it’s a person that writes posts/articles that can perfectly fit into your blog and are relevant, interesting, and useful for your blog’s audience. If this wasn’t the case, then guest authors could simply be replaced with a text generator or with lorem ipsum dummy text, which is a much quicker and cheaper option.
But, cheap quantity posts should never replace quality guest posting services with fully vetted websites and publishers.
So the true definition of a guest author could be a knowledgeable person and a talented writer who knows how to turn his/her knowledge and expertise into well-structured and error-free text that will be liked by people in your target audience and even wider.
A guest author can be anybody from a scientist, doctor, etc. to a freelance writer without a degree from some high-ranking institution but with a knack for putting his/her thoughts and opinions into words. Having said that, it’s important for you to remember to choose your guest authors not based on what’s in their CV but based on their previous work in blogging and guest blogging.
The benefits of hosting guest authors on your blog
Guest authors help expand your audience
If your main goal is to have more people visiting your blog because you’re serving them with quality content, then guest authors are the solution for you. Guest authors can bring in a new audience in more than one way. The first way would be their existent fans/followers coming to your blog to check out the latest content from their favorite author. The fans/followers might do that on their own initiative by searching for posts written by the author, or they could be lured in through social media shares referring to your blog, which were posted by the author.
The second way in which guest authors can help expand your audience is by bringing in a new perspective to your blog. The work of a guest author in 99% of cases will consist of new ideas or at least a different approach to the ideas you already presented your audience with, and we all know that a new perspective also means new visitors who share that same perspective.
Guest authors can provide your blog with more authority
If the guest author is an expert in a specific field/industry, they will not only teach you something new but will also turn your blog into a source of new and exciting information as well as expertise.
Although having guest authors of this sort will cost you a pretty penny, the content they provide for you will be priceless since it will be one of the key elements for establishing your blog as an industry authority.
You might receive free content for your blog
Everyone has to start somewhere, and so do guest authors. In the early stages of their guest blogging career, in most cases, they don’t have the luxury of charging for their services, and if they do, it can only be a very small amount. But this isn’t seen as a huge issue by them. For an aspiring guest author, the most important thing isn’t to earn a big sum of money, but to be hosted on an established blog so they have the chance to showcase their writing skills to a fairly large audience.
This can be a win-win situation for both of you. How? Well, if at the moment you are strapped for cash but still want to give hosting guest authors a try, hiring an aspiring author is the perfect solution. They get the backlinks, exposure, and recognition they need to further excel in their career, and you get the free content for your blog and all the benefits of having guest authors with it. And while you’re negotiating with potential clients, leave your content inserting, image importing and post reformatting tasks to Wordable.io – the process gets insanely simplified and your energy and time will be preserved for piling up improvements on your website.
You get a break from writing and more free time to do other things
Writing blog content is not only draining, but it also consumes a huge amount of your time, time that could have been spent doing other things beneficial for your blog, such as improving its SEO, doing updates and upgrades, refreshing the design, and a million other things as well. If you decide to host a guest author every once in a while, you will have more free time that you can spend in any way that you want, and you can also give your creativity a break so it can recharge and work at full speed when truly necessary. Hiring a guest author might indeed cost you, but if you do have the resources to do so, you should at least give it a try. We can guarantee that it’s worth every dime.
How to credit your guest authors properly once you decide to host them
Okay, if you got to this part of the article, it’s safe to assume that you have made the right decision and decided to host guest posts on your blog. One thing you should keep in mind when it comes to guest authors is that 9/10 times they will want to be credited for their work, which is reasonable since they, like any other content creator, need and want to protect their intellectual property. Luckily, crediting guest authors is a pretty easy thing to do with the help of something called an author box.
What is an author box?
We are pretty sure you have all seen an author box before, but we’ll still give you a brief explanation.
An author box is a box-shaped section that consists of the author’s name, headshot, a short message from them, and in most cases, their social media links.
Usually, an author box is placed on the bottom of the page so that the reader can check it out after reading an article, but this can vary from blog to blog because of things such as the blog’s layout and design.
The author box isn’t a section that has any functionality since its only purpose is to let the reader know who the author of a specific article/post is, provide a bit of information about their background, and display links to platforms on which a reader can follow or even reach out to the author.
How to add an author box?
The easiest method of adding an author box for your guest author is using a plugin called Simple Author Box.
This plugin will allow you to add a guest author without having to create a separate WordPress user account for them first. Instead, all you need to do is click on the “Add Guest Author” option, and then fill out all the necessary info about the author.
The author box you add for your guest author will contain their name, bio, Gravatar, and social media icons, which you have 45+ different ones to choose from. On top of all that, the author box will be fully customizable and responsive so you don’t have to worry about it looking bad on smaller screen size or that you will be limited only to the default design.
The Simple Author Box plugin can automatically add the author box or can allow you to do it yourself by pasting a shortcode into your posts or PHP code into your site’s template file.
If you want to have just the basic features, then you can get the plugin for free, but if you wish to both the basic and advanced features, then you will have to buy the PRO version, which costs $29/year. The advanced features include things such as top authors widget, social media icon customizing options, special positioning options, and much more.
Conclusion
As we said earlier, having guest authors on your blog can be a win-win situation for both you and the author. You get high-quality content (sometimes even for free) that can serve as a breath of fresh air for your readers, and the author gets the exposure they want as well as a new writing experience added to their CV.
So if you haven’t yet gotten into the habit of accepting guest authors on your blog, it’s high time that you do. Not only is it a trend right now, but it’s also something that could bring you a lot in return.
Give it a try and let us know how it went!
