Guest Posting at Music Learning Workshop

Guest Blogging at Music Learning Workshop

I enjoy having guest bloggers here at MLW, I’m accepting guest bloggers, or other writers, who are interested in writing occasionally or become even being a frequent contributor.

Below I’ve outlined benefits of being a guest writer, Post guidelines and suggestions, and the steps you will need to take to post here.

Benefits of Guest Posting

Of course most writers understand the need to attract new visitors to their own website or blog. Your bio or author box is an easy way to self promote when writing articles and blogs. Doing so helps increase quality backlinks to build search engine rank

Post Guidelines and Suggestions

I’ve established the following guidelines and suggestions for guest posts. These are not absolute, but generally should be followed for your post to be approved.  So far, our guest posters have been stellar and I plan to keep it that way.

1. Quality is a must. With Google Lords slapping everyone on a continuous basis, we have to keep up the quality content.
2. Rehashed article content will not be acceptable; it has to be genuine and original. Posts should not be published elsewhere.
3. Topics- Topics and sub topics need to be about learning music, a related subject to learning music, or education method that might be applied to music. Some Topic areas are:

• Learning Music
• Teaching Methods
• Music Technique
• Music Student experiences
• Music Theory
• Performance
• Practice
• Etc.

Our audience has all ages and levels of learning as well as students and teachers. Keep that in mind when you are writing your article. A vast majority are beginners or intermediate musicians.

Series of articles are also good if you have enough material to do that. (Typically posts are published once or twice a week. We target Sunday mornings as it’s a good time to reach our audience and the associated social linking we do.)

Article Types – Any type is good

Of course the subject and the type is your call, but typically getting readers is in making sure there is value to them.  The following might give you some ideas to some good reader results.

• “How to” articles seem to get the most readership
• Simple methods that can be easily implemented are good as well.
• Other subject ideas include: shortcuts to, barriers to, beginner’s guide, common mistakes, 3 or 5 or 7 tips to, what to not do, what to do.

Article Format – Suggested structure

• Headings format – I’m migrating to the style: Key topic – Benefit statement Key topic
• Headings need to let the visitor know what’s in it for them.
• Example: Scale Fingering – How to Quickly Master Scale Fingering on the Piano.

Subheadings are needed to make it easy to read.

• Use the “heading 3” style
• Use two to 3 paragraphs per subheading
• Subheadings are best used when telling their own story if they were scanned.
• Try to make paragraphs only two or three sentences long.
• This will keep the presentation easy to read. White space is our friend when it comes to making it easy on the visitors.

I  encourage you to add questions or a discussion segment to close your post with hopes of encouraging and engaging readers to comment and participate

General Post requirements:

1. Posts should be 400 words or more
2. If you are going over 700 to 800 words consider making two posts.
3. Posts must be written in English
4. Post images are encouraged and should be relevant and if possible part of the post information. I may include an image if you do not.

Author Bio: (add a short bio at the end of your post)

• You are allowed 2 links in your bio
• No affiliate linking, linking should be to your site or a page in your site.
• Links will be checked for relevancy.
• Links will be “do follow”
• Links to your own product page are allowed
• If you want to link to your product and have an affiliate program I will consider becoming an affiliate and promoting additional throughout the site.

Also fill out information on your author page inside the blog. I’ve implemented the google profiles line to allow more link love. Also author name will be linkable as well.

To take this one step further, you can also link to your author archive on your Google profile.

Guest authors should reply to comments on their guest post

Steps To Take

1. First make sure you have your own gravatar for the email ID with which you will register for an account here. You can get you gravatar at Gravatar.com
2. Register for a guest contributor account here, you will be initially registered as a contributor.
3. You will get an e-mail with login information.
4. You will be able to begin writing directly to the blog.
5. Submit your article for approval, email me at brad “at” musiclearningworkshop.com
6. You will be notified if the post is approved or rejected or needs additional work.
7. The approved post will the scheduled to be published

Note due to my schedule and travel it may take couple of days to get back to you. I try to respond to all requests within 48 hours, but on occasion it can take up to 4 days.

That’s it! I know that sounded like a lot, but most of this is common sense stuff. Bottom line write good stuff, keep it relevant, make it reader oriented and sign up.

Looking forward to your ideas and articles. Let’s get started.

Brad Chidester

Music Learning Workshop