Guest posts are the job of writing a useful article for someone else's site, so their readers meet you there. It takes the Workflow shape and fits in an afternoon: about three hours to build a checked list of sites, write a pitch for each, and send the first few. You give the AI what you know, who your customers are, and a few samples of your writing. It searches for sites that publish outside contributors, writes one pitch per site, and drafts the full post once an editor says yes. You check that every site is real, pick the ones worth your name, and press send.
- Shape
- Workflow
- Sitting
- an afternoon
The shape: Workflow
This job is a Workflow because it is three steps that hand off to each other, and each step has a different job. Step one is finding: a list of sites whose readers are your customers and who accept contributions. Step two is pitching: one short email per site, each with an idea built for that site. Step three is drafting: the actual article, written to that site's guidelines, after a yes.
The AI does most of the labor in each step. You sit between the steps and make the calls it cannot make: which sites are real, which are worth it, and which idea you can write with authority.
That also explains the afternoon. Steps one and two fit today. Step three waits on an editor's reply, which can take days or weeks, so you finish today with pitches sent and the brief saved for when a yes arrives. Run the same three steps again each quarter with the next batch of sites, and it becomes a habit rather than a project.
What you give the AI
Gather these in a plain document before you open the chat.
- What you do and for whom: two lines on the business and the customer you most want more of.
- Three things you know that your customers ask about: the questions you answer on the phone every week, written as questions.
- Where your customers read: trade associations, industry newsletters, local business publications, the blogs of businesses that serve the same customers as you, and any site a customer has mentioned to you by name.
- Who you already know: partners, suppliers, and peers with a blog or newsletter, because a warm pitch usually beats a cold one.
- Three samples of your writing: your two best pages from your own site and one email you were happy with, so the AI can match your voice.
- Your limits: topics you will not write about, claims you cannot make in your field, and any competitor's site you would rather not appear on.
That is the whole input. If the second item is hard to fill, start there, because the guest post is only as good as the thing you know.
What comes back
Paste this brief into a chat with web search turned on. It works the same in ChatGPT or Claude.
You are helping a small business owner write guest posts for other sites.
Read everything below before you start.
Step 1. Find sites.
Start with the blogs and newsletters of the people the owner knows, listed below.
Then search the web for up to 15 more sites whose readers match the customers described
below and that accept articles from outside contributors.
For each site, return:
- the site name and its home page address
- the address of its contribution or "write for us" page, or
[NOT FOUND] if you could not find one
- who reads it, in one line
- two recent article titles copied from the site
- any sign it charges to publish, or "none seen"
Do not include a site you could not open.
Never invent an editor's name or email address.
Step 2. Pick and pitch.
Rank the sites by fit with the customers below, and drop any that charge
to publish. For the top 5, write a pitch email:
- under 170 words
- a subject line under 10 words
- one specific article idea with a working title, built for that site's
readers and not a repeat of its recent titles
- one or two lines on why this owner can write it, using only the facts below
- [NEED: ...] for any fact that is missing, instead of guessing
Step 3. Wait.
Do not write any full article yet. When the owner comes back with a site
that said yes and its guidelines, draft the post to those guidelines in
the owner's voice, using the writing samples below.
Business and customer: [paste]
Questions customers ask: [paste]
Where customers read: [paste]
People the owner knows: [paste]
Writing samples: [paste]
Limits: [paste]What comes back is a table of up to fifteen sites, five pitch emails of a screen or less each, and a note that it is waiting for step three. When a site says yes, come back to the same chat, paste the editor's reply and the site's guidelines, and ask for the draft. The draft should arrive as a full article in plain text, with a headline, short sections, and a short author bio at the end.
If the site list is thin, ask for fifteen more from a different direction: associations, suppliers' blogs, or regional publications. Two rounds is usually enough.
How to judge it
You can reject a bad result in about a minute, step by step.
A bad site list has sites you cannot open. Click every home page and every contribution page. If a link fails, cross the site off; do not ask the AI to try again on that one.
A bad site list is full of link farms. Warning signs: a "write for us" page that lists prices, a home page of unrelated articles on loans, casinos and pets side by side, and no named authors or editors. If the readers would not include your customers, the site is not worth your name, whatever it promises.
A bad pitch is generic. If you could send the same email to all five sites by changing the name at the top, the AI skipped the work. Each idea should only make sense for that site's readers.
A bad pitch repeats the site. Check the idea against the two recent titles the AI copied. An editor will not take an article they ran last month.
A bad pitch invents. Watch for awards you did not win, years you have not been open, and clients you never had. Any [NEED: ...] markers are good news: the AI admitted a gap instead of filling it.
A bad draft sounds like everyone. If the article could have been written by any business in your field, it is missing the thing only you know. Ask the AI to add one example from your own work, then write that example yourself.
A bad draft sells. A guest post that reads like an ad for you is the fastest way to a no from an editor. The author bio is the place for your name and your link, and nowhere else.
What stays with you
Checking the sites is yours. The AI can produce a plausible site, a plausible editor, and a plausible submission address that do not exist. Open every link yourself, and find the editor's address on the site's own contact or guidelines page.
The choice of where your name appears is yours. A site's reputation becomes part of yours the day your article runs. Read a few of its articles before you pitch, and skip any site you would not send a customer to.
The expertise is yours. The AI can structure an article and smooth the sentences. It cannot supply the job that went wrong, the question a customer asked last week, or the reason you do it differently. Those details are what make an editor say yes and a reader remember you.
The claims are yours to check, and so are the rules of your field. If you work in a regulated area such as health, finance, law or real estate, read the draft against your own professional rules before it goes anywhere.
The send button is yours, and so is the follow-up. Send each pitch to one named person. Follow up once, about a week later, with one line. Then let it go and move to the next site on the list.
The final say on the article belongs to the editor. They may cut it, retitle it, or change your link. That is part of publishing on someone else's site.
Which sites to pitch first
There is a real choice in step two, and the best first pitch is usually the site where someone already knows you.
| Site type | Why it may say yes | What it usually wants |
|---|---|---|
| A partner's or supplier's blog | They know you, and your article helps their customers too | A practical how-to for the customers you share |
| A trade association or industry newsletter | It needs member expertise to fill each issue | Specific, field-tested advice, often with no links at all |
| A local business publication | It covers business owners in its area | A local angle, a lesson from your own business |
| A larger industry blog with a contribution page | It publishes outside writers regularly | A fresh idea backed by real experience, to its guidelines |
Start with the first two rows. Pitch the larger blogs after you have one published article to point to.
An editorial example
This is an invented business, used only to show the method.
Say you run a small landscape design studio that specializes in yards that need little water. Your customer list says homeowners in hot, dry areas; your partner list includes a native plant nursery and a pool builder.
The AI might return a regional gardening publication, the nursery's blog, the pool builder's newsletter, and a homeowners' association magazine. It would likely rank the nursery first, because its readers are already shopping for the plants you design with. The pitch might offer "Five plants that get through a dry summer on almost no water," written for the nursery's customers.
Your edit: you open every site, cross off one whose contribution page lists prices, check that the nursery's blog is still active, and replace one of the AI's plant picks with the one you actually use. Then you send the pitch to the owner of the nursery, whom you already know.
After the post runs
Share the article from your own channels, and link to it from your site's about page so customers find it. A guest post is one of the ways other sites start to name you, which we cover in what small businesses should publish for more AI mentions. If you would rather reach a reporter than an editor, the same skill drives pitching local news, and a talk is the spoken version of the same job, covered in speaking. Google's own spam policies are worth a read before you run guest posts at any scale. For more jobs you can finish today with the AI you already pay for, see the full DIY marketing list.
Of every job on this list, social media is the one that comes back every week, and Boomp is software that does that one for you. See ten posts made from your website, free
