Guest Posting: Not Always All It’s Cracked Up to Be

A few months ago, I was really excited because two different bloggers asked for guest posts from us, and two more asked to do interviews with Tamara and me. “Wow,” we thought, “we’re really going to be getting our name out there this month.” We felt a little like mini-celebrities.

We got together to answer the interview questions, and we had quite a bit of fun doing so, too. Both Lis Garret and Laura Spencer asked us some fun and interesting questions about everything from our families to our business partnership. We picked out a couple of pictures and sent them off and were quite satisfied with ourselves when they appeared shortly thereafter on these lovely ladies’ blogs.

But, what of those guest posts? I carefully reviewed the other blogs and emailed back and forth with the bloggers to be sure that I was writing something interesting and relevant to their readers. I kind of agonized over the posts as I wrote them, feeling like I really needed to do something extra special for the occasion. After a lot of thought and care, I attached them to emails and sent them off into cyberspace, hoping the bloggers would be so pleased with the result that they’d go up right away.

But they didn’t.

After a week or so, I contacted the blog owners to make sure my carefully-crafted prose had made its way to their inboxes. I was assured that it had, and that things were busy but that they were so grateful and would be putting the posts up soon.

But they didn’t.

Now, I have no idea what the proper etiquette is in this type of situation. In fact, I suspect that I wasn’t the one breaching the rules of etiquette, but that’s neither here nor there. To be completely honest about it, my feelings were a bit hurt, and I worried that maybe the posts weren’t as good as I thought. So, I would wait for a few weeks and then (politely) ask the blogger if he or she was intending to use the post. I was assured that he or she would.

But they didn’t.

I’m not a very pushy person, so I just let the whole thing lie for quite a while. Months, in fact. But, doggone it, I had worked really hard on those posts; and if they weren’t going to use them, I thought someone should. So I (politely) emailed the parties and asked that if they weren’t going to use the posts, could I please have them back? It turns out that they were fine with that.

So, after building these posts up in my mind for several months, I reworked them a bit for our audience and put them up here at Freelance Parent expecting they would get lots of comments and spark lots of discussions.

But they didn’t.

The blogosphere . . . she’s a fickle mistress.