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I hope you find my writing and business tips and observations useful. My business and blog are dedicated to helping businesses communicate clearly and reach their potential. Read, subscribe to my newsletter, enjoy!Tash

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Finding a guest blogger to suit you

Having a guest blogger write in your blog has advantages for you and your readers, but how do you find the right person to do some guest posts for you?

You may be lucky and have someone offer to do some guest posts for you when you are ready for them, but if you want a guest blogger without any leads for one, here are ideas for finding a guest blogger:

  • do a blog post announcing you are looking for a guest blogger! If you want to be a little more subtle, add this information to your about us page or your blog policies
  • do some research on your regular commenters – those that contribute constructive comments may well be suitable to do some guest posts for you. In fact, their comments may inspire the guest blogging idea so they can expend on something useful they have written as a comment
  • look at your suppliers – do any of them have a blog that showcases valuable information for your audience? If so, ask them for some guest posts – they get increased exposure and they are helping a client (you!) so are likely to be agreeable
  • ask for guest bloggers through networks (both real life networks, online forums and social media) but be aware that you may get a lot of responses and not all will be of value
  • look at your favourite blogs – would any of those people have anything to say that is relevant to your blog audience? You already know they can write blog posts that attract readers!
  • do a search (in a search engine or through a blog directory of some sort) of blogs in your industry
  • ask any of your suppliers if they know of anyone who could provide relevant expertise – if they supply you there’s a good chance they’ll supply related businesses
  • advertise in unusual places and see who responds. For example, if you run a blog on parenting or helping children with homework, put an ad in a school newsletter as you will reach many parents

Good luck – and let me know which of these ideas worked for you in finding a guest blogger for your blog.

Refining your Google searches

If you’re like me, you use Google and similar search engines frequently and know a few tricks to make your searches as useful as possible.

Here are a few tips you may or may not use – and if you have some others, please add them to the comments so I can learn them, too!

  • restrict a search to one site by using site:wordconstructions.com.au
  • search for something specific on only one site by using the word and the site only command report writing site:wordconstructions.com.au
  • find the definition of a word with define:gerund
  • exclude a term from your search using a minus sign, so writer -fiction will bring results for writers without mention of fiction writing
  • include all similar uses of a word or term by adding the tilde sign; for example, ~ article
  • maintain certain spelling of a word or term with a plus sign so + Sidney will not bring up all the Sydney sites in a Sidney search
  • use * to replace any word, such as in professional * writer
  • find related sites usingrelated:wordconstructions.com.au
  • find a specific file type in a search – if you want to find only word docs about spelling, for example, you enter spelling filetype:doc
  • find all sits linking to a site or page usinglink:www.wordconstructions.com.au
  • do a general search without risk of finding inappropriate (ie adult) content using safesearch:breast   cancer
  • find out about a specific page usinginfo:www.wordconstructions.com.au/ebook.php
  •  use quotation marks to refine the search to your exact term; that is, “business writer” will give results about business writers only rather than results for all references to writer and/or business

Hope they help!