Many bloggers allow guest writers/ contributors to write content for their blog. This allows the blog owner to add some alternative perspective to their library of content which may be of value to their own readers.
Articles written by guest bloggers should be published through a contributor account rather than through the editor’s account with a mention of who contributed it. Not only does it look professional but it allows your guest blogger to write for your blog in the future if you are interested in using their writing talent again.
This tutorial is going to walk you through the process of setting up a contributor account on free WordPress.com blogs so your guest blogger can login and submit their blog post for your review.
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- After logging into WordPress.com, navigate to your full dashboard. This can be found at www.yourblogname.wordpress.com/wp-admin/.
- Select “Users” from the column on the left and select “Invite New” from the drop down menu or the top of the Users page.
- Complete the information required on the new user invitation page:
- Add the guest blogger’s email address (preferably one they already use to log into wordpress.com).
- Select “Contributor” from the Role drop down menu.
- Add a personalised message explaining the process involved with submitting articles to your blog (if you wish).
Once completed, proceed to “Send Invitation”.
What the Guest Blogger Receives
After you’ve sent an invitation request to the new contributor they will receive an email asking them to accept the invite:
After accepting, they will be re-directed to your blog’s login page where they can sign in using their WordPress.com username/ email and password. If they don’t have an existing account on that email address then they will need to register one on the login screen:
Contributor Restrictions
Fortunately, WordPress has added some restrictions to contributor accounts compared to admin or editor accounts. The most important one is that they cannot publish directly to your blog. Instead they are provided with a “save as draft” option or “Submit for Review” in place of the usual publish button.
This allows you to review their work before publishing it yourself incase it needs any formatting or spelling corrections. Don’t worry, the article won’t appear as being published by you, it will retain the author name, bio etc of your guest blogger to show it was written by them.
Another useful feature is that Contributor users can only upload images to the featured image section. They can’t however upload images for the body of the article’s content so be sure to receive any of the images they intend to use by email and upload them through your own account.
Again, by editing any part of the original article you do not take away the attribution of the author to the content. It still appears as their own when published.
The third and final useful restriction is that once the completed article has been published it can’t be edited or updated by the guest blogger. This is especially useful if they are sneaky and want to publish extra links within the article without asking for your consent first.
Last Minute Checks
Before publishing your guest blogger’s article, check out their profile information first i.e. is their author biography appropriate for your audience? This information with be the same on every WordPress.com blog they write for so simply check out their own blog and read a previous article to preview how it will appear.
The same applies to that writer’s avatar so be sure to check that it is appropriate beforehand too.
