Create a user called Guest and then publish all the guest posts under that user name. This approach may help in multiple ways.
1. You can get all the guest posts from few clicks(under dashboard) — See all the posts published under the username Guest.
2. Visitors can see all the guest posts by clicking on the link Guest(if its clickable and displays all the articles published under the username Guest).
3. Visitors/readers confusion as to who wrote the article would be reduced to a certain extent.
Link back to the guest writer’s blog or twitter a/c is a good way to show that the article was written by a guest writer. But if you have your name on the homepage(where you show only post excerpts and show “published by yourname“), then showing “published by Guest” would make more sense to your readers. This way you can eliminate a certain degree of confusion and add more clarity(and good usability). People will be knowing, whether its written by you or a guest writer – before clicking on the read more link.
Showing Authors Photo, Bio and a Link – using a smart plugin
Another nice way to show credit to guest writers is to show their bio, a small image and a link to their website/twitter a/c at the end of the article, in a well structured manner. Did you just say its a tedious job? No its not. There is a good plugin called Author Image, which can do the job for you. It creates a widget that you can insert in a sidebar, or much about anywhere and you can also add author’s description in addition to his/her image.
Who should care for it ?
If you are receiving 1 or 2 guest posts per month, then managing guest posts will not be a big challenge. But once your blog is out there for some more years and you blog consistently, you will start receiving a lot of guest post requests, so you will certainly need some strategy to manage them effectively. So keeping things organized from the beginning is smarter then messing up with things later.
What strategies do you follow to maintain/manage guest posts.