The launch of #BeMyGuest in March: a month of mutual blogging

Written by Adam Vincenzini and Emily Cagle

Guest blogging is great. It’s great for the guest poster, great for the blog ‘host’ and most importantly, great for the audience.

Why?

The guest poster gets to expose his / her work to a new audience. The host gives his / her audience something new and fresh to enjoy. It’s what social media and sharing is all about.

So, we thought it would be a good idea to make March the month to encourage some mutual guest blogging via ‘Be My Guest.’

What is ‘Be My Guest’?

It’s pretty simple. During March 2010, anyone taking part will aim to:

• write at least one post for someone else’s blog, and
• feature at least one guest post on their own blog.

How will it work?

We’d really like to focus on creating some new relationships, so instead of writing and featuring posts for people you already know really well, we’d like to extend it further.

All you have to do is use Twitter to tweet out your blog details and the hashtag #BeMyGuest to let people know you’d like to take part.

Your tweet might look like this:

“I write a blog about #media called The M3dia Blog <link> and I’d like to take part in #BeMyGuest http://bit.ly/bemyguest”

“I blog about #food at The Yum! Blog <link> and I’d like to take part in #BeMyGuest http://bit.ly/bemyguest”

This will hopefully see bloggers who are interested in specific subjects connect and do some ‘mutual’ blogging.

You might want to just link up with one other blogger for the month or four…or more! It’s really is up to you.

Some guidelines & ideas

• Use the hashtag – If you post on someone else’s blog or have someone post as your guest, let everyone know by adding #BeMyGuest to a tweet when it’s published. You can also set up a column in Hootsuite, Tweetdeck or your Twitter app of choice to track every mention of the keyword so you don’t miss any great opportunities.
• Blog about Be My Guest – If you’d like to outline what you’re looking for from guest posters, and showcase what you’ve got to offer other blog hosts, write a post about your requirements and push it out across your social networks with the #BeMyGuest hashtag.
• Set out your preferences – Some hosts prefer to retain the right to edit a post, while others publish as is. Similarly, some hosts only take exclusive posts, while others are happy to reuse. So think about your preferences before you get started and once you make connections, chat to each host/guest you work with to make sure you’re in agreement.

Have fun and good blogging!

– Adam and Emily

(For daily updates, check out the dedicated #BeMyGuest Posterous site)

Tagged as: #bemyguest, blogging, Social Media