Guest blogging is all the rage.

Bloggers looking for content for posts or an easy way for supporting their theme find guest blogging a simple solution.

A Guest by Any Other Name

You may have heard guest blogging referred to as guest posting.

There are great resources that tell you all about guest posting, like Chris Garrett’s Guest Posting Workbook and Problogger’s Guest Blogging 101.

The purpose of this post today is more basic than that. It is about the mechanics of guest blogging or posting.

Posting Made Easy

Most of us have experienced the wonky things (a technical term) that different browsers and word processing software do to formatting.

Many blogging applications don’t play nice with Microsoft Word. So, if you copy and paste a Word document into your post, strange things often occur.

Here are a few ways for avoiding those problems. This applies to Word Press applications.

Use Author Setting

The Author status authorizes guest bloggers access to your Posts. They can add their guest post directly onto your site and publish it, pend it for review, or schedule it for future posting.

Here are the steps for adding someone as an Author.

1. Go to Users in your list to the left
2. Click on Add New
3. Add the guest blogger’s information
4. Use the drop-down menu next to Role and select Author
5. Click on Add User button to save.
   

Use Contributor Setting

If you want more control over the process, you can set the guest bloggers access at Contributor.

This setting allows guest bloggers access for writing and editing their posts, but does not allow them to publish the post.

Follow the same steps #1, #2, #3 and #5 used for establishing Author status. The only difference is in step #4, where you select Contributor from the drop-down menu.

Use HTML

If you do not want a guest blogger having access to your blog, there is still a simple solution for preventing wonky formatting.

1. Have your guest bloggers create their post in their blog applications.
2. When finished, they click on the HTML tab and copy the post.
3. Next, they paste it into Notepad or text file.
4. Finally, they email that file to you.

Mechanics are the simple things. The harder part, as we all know, is content.

Find a guest blogger that complements your blog, and return the favor by guest blogging on theirs. You both benefit.

What simple solutions do you have for guest blogging?

Photo Credit: stockxchng Blue Pass 2

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This is Day 22 of the Ultimate Blog Challenge – blogging every day for 30 days. I hope you’ll stop by often and offer your suggestions for topics and offer your comments. You can add the RSS feed or sign up by email to receive new posts. Thanks for stopping by.