Melanie Green — June 28, 2017 — June 28, 2017
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Guest blogging is when you write a post on another person’s website or blog. You write the post directly to their audience, usually with a small biography about you and your company to accompany the post. The posts can accomplish a lot for your business, such as connecting with new readers you’d otherwise have no way of reaching.
How Guest Blogging Benefits You
In most cases, you won’t be paid for guest blogging. However, that’s not the real reason you should write a guest post. There are many tangible benefits of guest blogging that include:
- Establishing credibility through expert advice
- Reaching new customers
- Creating additional backlinks to your website to improve your own SEO
- Building key relationships with influencers that can help you grow your brand
These benefits can be leveraged to help you grow your own company or brand’s interests. In general, the more people that become exposed to your offerings, the more people that will buy your products or services. If you don’t have a product or service, the exposure will help others see you as an expert.
Identify Your Goals for Guest Blogging
Before you approach any blog owners, you need to clearly identify your goals for guest blogging so your posts will be as successful as they can be. If you want to establish credibility within your industry, you might want to only approach blogs and websites within your industry. However, if you want to attract customers, you should write posts on sites that your best customers frequent.
Ideally, you should find targeted guest blogging opportunities that closely align with your goals. Blogs open to guest posts want relevant, high quality articles that their visitors enjoy reading. When you know what your goals and markets are, you’ll know what websites to target. For example, if you are a plumber, you may want to look for how-to home improvement websites where potential customers look for plumbing solutions, a plumbing industry website with advice for other professionals, or a blog about people who own service-based businesses. All of these would provide access to a different group of readers that may advance your own strategic goals for guest blogging.
Research Potential Blogs
After you’ve clearly identified your goals and the type of blogs you want to target, it’s important to research potential blogs that might work best. Make a list of sites that you want to research further. Ideally, you want to know if the website is open to guest posts, what kind of posts they publish, the frequency of publishing, and who is in charge of the website. You’ll want to know how to contact them about your guest blogging post to see if they’re interested and to cater your post to meet the needs of their audience.
You also want to research more about the blog’s visitors and the website’s reach. Do visitors leave comments or share posts on their social media pages? Have you checked the site’s Alexa score? A website’s Alexa score reveals how much website traffic any site gets. You don’t need to be the website’s owner to find this out. Check your own website to see what kind of traffic you get and your ranking to compare to the guest posting site. You want to guest post on a website that has more traffic than yours does.
Approach Blog Owners
Even if the blog you want to write a post for doesn’t ordinarily accept guest posts, there’s a chance that you’ll still be able to write a post for them if you can persuade them. Consider the best topics for the site that aren’t currently covered on the blog and that closely fit in with the topic there. You want to establish that you’re very familiar with their content and their audience by selecting the best topic.
Write a well crafted pitch email to the blog’s owner. First, you should compliment their website and make specific comments about the content. For instance, “I love reading the content on [SITE’S NAME]. Recently, I loved the posts titled “RECENT ARTICLE NAME.” Mention how long you’ve read their posts and why you like their content. Then you want to tell them about your idea. Don’t write out the entire post but provide them enough information to know if it would be a good fit on their blog.
Last, you want to make sure that you tell them why you’re the best person to write this post on their site. Let them know about any experience, education, or expertise that you may have. Remember to stay brief and to the point, as you don’t want to waste their time.
Write a High Quality Guest Blog
Your guest post is a direct reflection of you so make sure that it’s of high quality. In most cases, you’ll want to write it in a similar style of what’s currently on the website. If existing posts are written in the third person and use H2 headers, your guest post should, too, unless the blog’s owner asks you to do something else.
Try to provide the most accurate and valuable information in your post that readers want to know. Don’t regurgitate the same type of information that’s found on other websites, although it’s important to do enough research to ensure that your information is correct. The better your article is, the longer it will be up on the site and shared. You may even be asked to write another guest post in the future.
Be Open to Feedback from the Blog Owner
The blog’s owner might want revisions to your guest post to more closely align with their brand. You may not agree with their feedback, but it’s okay. Ultimately, what the blog’s owner wants to post is their decision. You may not understand some of their suggestions, but it’s a good best practice to comply with their requests unless you feel that the changes would misrepresent the message that you want to say.
Drive Traffic to the Post
Try to make your guest post as successful as possible by doing what you can to drive traffic to the post. Plan on sharing the post on your own social media pages to increase traffic to the website. You want your guest post to be the most successful to reach the highest number of people and to have opportunities to write a guest post on other websites. These stats will be important later to showcase their successes.
Interact with Blog Viewers
Readers want to interact with guest post writers. If you see that your guest post gets comments, feel free to respond to them in a professional way. It’s best not to respond to negative comments unless you’ve been asked to. Instead, thank readers for their feedback and provide additional information in your response. You can even answer reader questions. Just make sure to check with the blog’s owner to get their approval before responding to every comment. They may want to be the ones to engage with their readers.
Guest posting is a great way for companies and individuals to expand their audience and establish credibility. If it’s your first time writing a guest post, it can be overwhelming. Use these tips to ensure a smooth campaign.
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