Katie Stow
Blogging has become an industry standard, with more and more businesses trying to jump on the bandwagon and connect with their leads through this personal and influential platform.
As a crew of digital content marketers here at g2m Solutions, we are all about blogging. We blog for ourselves, we blog for clients, and some of our keenest members even blog for fun! So what have we learned with our cumulative 503 posts? Well, quite a lot! Certainly more than we can squeeze into our 504th post…
However, lucky for us, a fellow blogger has summarised his extensive experience of guest blogging into 7 simple lessons learned – and boy are they relatable! Neil Patel has recently published his 300th guest post and to celebrate his milestone by sharing (in another blog post called 7 Lessons Learned from Publishing 300 Guest Posts) what he has gained from his experience. Here are his 7 lessons with a few little summaries from us:
Go after a broad audience
Your B2B content marketing blog will naturally attract a niche and refined audience, but for your guest blogging you need to attract a wider variety of visitors (think leads) so keep some of your posts, open and broad to accommodate a larger range of people.
You can guest-post on industry blogs, but don’t do it too often
Guest posting on industry blogs (rather than just your own B2B blog) can be a great branding technique, for both you and your business, but you need to make sure that the locations where you are guest blogging are also places that your audience will visit.
List posts convert the best
These ‘drive up the most sign-ups and revenue’ – as long as you include your company somewhere within the list. With regards to list etiquette, never put your own company at the top of the list, it’s just too aggressive. However, anything below third will decrease your sign ups by over half – so keep yourself in the sweet spot at number two.
Use headlines that people would search for
It is important to remember that when people search online they type in problems – this is why ‘How to’ and question posts are so popular.
It’s a numbers game
Neil has observed from his own blogging data that guest posts that are over a year old continue to drive traffic to his site. This highlights the long-lasting value of guest blogging.
Keep your content simple
Blogs of big companies showcase short content (less than 1000 words) so it is quite likely they will be cut down if you write too much. An easy way to do this is to keep your content simple – which will also make your post easier and more likely to be shared on social.
Continually find new places to guest-post
Though loyally posting on the same blog may be great for your brand, Neil argues that ‘you’ll eventually notice a diminishing return’ – so keep fishing for more exciting new places to post.
So there you have it – the 7 biggest lessons learned from one of the biggest guest bloggers out there!
What lessons have you learned from blogging? Had any good, bad or ugly experiences with guest blogging? Let us know in the comments below!
Additionally, if you want to read more life lessons we’ve learned from blogging – have a read of our Business Blogging Best Practices free eBook.
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