Guest blogging is the most successful inbound marketing strategy today. Inviting someone to write and publish a blog post on your website allows a certain blog company to promote their respective brand.
Also known as guest posting, this imparts a promising opportunity for a certain blog website to increase traffic and interaction in the blog website, boost the domain authority, expand brand awareness, and foster further relationships with different clients in a certain industry.
Not only this benefits a certain blog website, but this gives a win-win situation for guest bloggers because aside from the situation that this boosts traffic in the blog website, the blog company website will also feature the guest blog writers in a certain content, which will also give them more opportunities to do guest blogging or guest posting.
Survey says that 62.96% of people perceive blogs with multiple authors to be more credible which is why most websites would often welcome guest post submissions. Aside from establishing your credibility as a blogger or content writer, guest blogging also provides the following benefits:
- authority
- qualified traffic
- relevant links
- motivated leads
- increased sales
By having a good opportunity to use blogging as an avenue to build further relationships with other people by exposing the brand to an entirely new audience or retain the vision of the bog company to an existing group of audience, guest blogging is beneficial to a certain blog company. To take advantage of these benefits, here are some of the steps or strategies that you can employ in your guest blogging efforts.
Find Websites Open for Guest Blog Contributions
First, you want to find relevant websites that accept guest blogging. You may focus on websites that:
- are relevant to your niche or industry
- have content that will interest your target audience
- contain posts with an engaged readership
- have a blog owner who is active on social media
For example, if you are selling carpentry and home-remodeling tools, then you need to find an audience of engaged carpenters and home-remodelers. You must look for websites that also touch on topics relevant to home remodeling or carpentry.
When searching for guest blogging sites, you may use Google, Twitter, and Optimize Smart, and other search engines. Here’s a tip: Simply type in “write for us” on the search bar and you will find a list of websites welcoming guest post submissions or contributions.
Aside from finding websites that are open for guest blog contributions, make sure that you also get familiar with their writing style and writing personality. This can be done by asking their typical writing structure and the type of emotions highlighted in their blog articles. In this way, this will not overpower other blog articles and will foster harmonization in the blog company, as the sense of unity in terms of style and personality is embodied.
Create Topic Ideas Suitable for a Particular Website
In order to attract and engage the guest blogging site editor/editors and their audience, you need to research not only their demographics but also their favorite topics. Thorough research and comprehensive scanning of the topics are a must before deploying it to the writing stage. In this phase, you get to create profitable ideas that will ensure further interaction among other people. In this section, here are some of the platforms you can use to create topic ideas that are suitable for a particular website.
To ensure great topic search, Optinmonster tells us to add value by;
- Responding to what’s on the site
- Providing additional information on a popular topic
- Writing something new on a topic that’s likely to be popular with the audience
Additional guidelines are:
- Checking the type of content commonly used in the articles
- Determining whether the audience are beginners, intermediate, or advanced
BuzzSumo is a great tool to use in doing this. BuzzSumo provides information on the most popular blog posts of a certain website. This information helps you:
- Create an article for a relevant topic
- Pitch an idea that has not yet been written out
By using similar tools, you can suggest topic ideas with a high approval rate. With the different statistics and progress they let you see in terms of searchability and profitability, you can
As a guest blogger, make sure that you make use of the following platforms to ensure that there is higher accessibility in a certain website. Creating more familiar and marketable niches will ensure more profitability for you and the blog website.
Compose a Winning Pitch
Make sure you follow some basic rules for making a great pitch.
It’s a no-no to write generic guest posting pitches. To avoid this from happening, take note of the following tips:
- keep the pitch short, but to the point
- personalize your greeting by knowing the names of the website owners
- include the post title in the subject
- use bullet points in elaborating your topic idea
- talk briefly about yourself and why you can guarantee you will produce high-quality content
Since BuzzSumo provides you a good glimpse of the popular headlines of a specific blog, you can use it to improve your own headline ideas and minimize rejections.
The aim of having guest blogging is to keep the readers be more engaged; thus, you have to make sure that you effectively compose a winning pitch so that you can be able to boost the promotion of a certain blog website.
Write Your Article Strategically
Blogging is a great tool to attract visitors to your website. This will increase the engagement between your company and of course, the visitors as well. Using guest blogging as a strategy to increase the brand awareness of a company blog website, make sure that you write the article in a strategic way.
One important thing to consider is the quality of your article. Make sure your copy does not come across as “too promotional”.
There are some guidelines to follow in writing your article for your guest blogging. The guidelines may vary from one blog to another but here are the basics.
First, you need to write a headline that will engage your audience. Even if you have already submitted your headline, you can still improve on it. It should include the benefits for the reader, call-to-actions, and emotional content.
Second, the audience must be the focus of your blog. Your guest blogging must educate them rather than just selling them your products and services.
Third, be original. Data from Social Media Examiner states that 58% of marketers find original content as the most important type of content. It is even more important than visual content, such as those using images or videos.
After making sure that your article abides by these standards, you may then proceed to check whether your article observes the best SEO practices. Optimizing your content by targeting the right keyword density and length, as well as positioning your links strategically can help improve your chances of driving traffic and engagement to your blog post.
Note that if your host blog finds your article very effective in this aspect, they would love for you to guest post again on their blog. Indeed, this will turn out to be very beneficial for you and the host blog.
Submit, Then Promote Content
After you have submitted your blog, your work continues.
One of the most common mistakes of bloggers who submit guest posts is that they don’t promote the posts once they have been published. Guest post promotion can actually have an even bigger impact if you only carry on promoting your posts through different channels.
Leverage every promotional strategy you can. Among those strategies, you can leverage is the following
- personal network
- influence marketing
- niche bookmarking sites
- email outreach
- social media
With the multitudinous channels present, promoting your content is never a hassle, as this promotes not only the content but the blog website as well. Once your guest post goes live, make sure you promote your work to maximize engagement and conversion for your post as well as your website. This will enhance the market value of a blog company and your article.
Monitor the comments that will be coming in the following days. In accordance with the guidelines given by the host blog, you should respond to as many comments as you can to maximize the conversion and engagement rate of your post. Moreover, the more you communicate with your audiences, the better your writing improves.
When composing comments, you should pay attention to the language used. Talking politely and objectively is a must since now you are speaking not only for your blog but also for the host website.
Remember to share with your social media followers or through your email newsletters to further promote the guest post across other platforms. In any case, your guest blogging on a broader forum will impress your existing audience and may attract new ones.
Tagging the host bloggers once you share your post is an excellent way to keep the interaction and maintain a secure connection with them. If they can see your efforts to push the article, they might probably appreciate it and consider you as a dedicated writer.
You may even write a “thank you” email to the site owners a few days after your post is published to express your gratitude and discuss other guest blogging opportunities.
