The Step-by-Step Guide to Reaching 1 Million Potential Customers Through Guest Blogging

March 4, 2015

Today, I want to show you one of the most powerful ways to market your business, get your name out there, and sign up new customers and clients.


You don’t have to shell out a dime for advertising, you don’t have to pay for expensive software, and no, you don’t even need to have your website rank high in Google in order to generate leads.


In order to show you how you can sign up more customers, I want to take you back to the beginning to a time when I was a struggling marketing consultant and show you how I went from being lucky to generate one lead to building a marketing agency that consistently signed up 5 clients per month.


Six short years ago, I was sitting at my grandmother’s kitchen table and she placed four of her homemade meatballs in front of me.  The absolute best meatballs on the planet, mind you.


I remember the look in her eyes when I told her that I wasn’t hungry.  It was the first time in 28 years that I had ever turned down anything my grandmother cooked.


And being an Italian grandson, it was like I was being condemned.


Food stopped tasting good a long time ago, but now I had officially lost my appetite.


When I got home that night, my saint of a wife Lyndsay had asked me what was wrong.


I remember screaming “I’m fed up!”


I’m fed up with working with soul sucking clients who demand that I be at their beck and call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.


I’m fed up with clients who weasel every last possible cent they can out of me.


I’m fed up with never knowing when and where my next client is going to come from.


I fought back tears as I looked at her.  I had reached rock bottom and wanted to quit.


A few months later, I was watching a webinar with a very successful online marketer by the name of Jon Morrow.


At the time, Jon had been generating hundreds of customers a month for a variety of different businesses.


In fact, he would later go on to launch a new blog.  And before he even wrote his first post, he had over 13,000 email subscribers.


Pic 1


On the webinar, Jon had said something that I knew to be true, but I never really quote/unquote “got it”, if you know what I mean.


To paraphrase, he said: “The secret to building a business online is simple.  All you have to do is drive traffic to your website, and convert that traffic into sales.”


I didn’t need worry about getting Twitter followers or Facebook fans or optimizing my website for search engines.  I can’t tell you how much time I wasted on various social media channels engaging with people, hoping they would hire me.


If you want to sign up more clients online, then you have to do two things.


Get prospective clients to come to your website


Get those prospective clients to hire you.


That’s it.


I NEEDED to learn more, so I signed up for one of Jon’s courses to learn directly from him and later hired him as a mentor and coach.


What is Guest Posting

I want you to imagine this for a second.  There’s a marketing event being held inside a professional football stadium that is filled to capacity.  We’re talking over 70,000 people.


pic 2


In attendance are CEOs from the fortune 1,000; founders of highly funded startups, and business owners from across the world.


And on this day, you are giving the keynote speech and every one in attendance has come to hear what you have to say.


And imagine that at the end of your speech, you said “if you want more information, contact me to schedule a consultation.”


Your schedule would be booked for weeks!


Well, what if I told you that you could get in front of tens of thousands of people and do just that whenever you wanted?


All without the added stress of actually speaking in public.


It sounds almost too good to be true, right?


That’s exactly what guest posting on the most popular blogs in the world is all about.  Which is the strategy that I learned from Jon.


You see, when I wrote this guest post on the popular blog Copyblogger, I was sharing my marketing expertise with over 170,000 CEO’s, founders, and business owners from across the world.


Pic 3


Pic 4


Then, at the end of the post, I told these 170,000 people where they could go to find out more information about me and my business.


Pic 5


Not everyone will click on the link and go to my website; but over the course of the next few months, about a thousand people did.


And over the next few years, I’ve written guest posts on popular marketing and business blogs all over the web.


Pic 6


Can you see how powerful and how profitable getting a guest post accepted on a popular marketing blog can be?


I know you might be thinking:  Well, I can’t write for a popular blog because I’m not a guru or big shot with millions of page views.


Well, neither am I.  First, I hate the word guru, and second, I have found that the only thing a popular blogger cares about is receiving a good post that’s relevant to their audience.


How to Get a Guest Post Accepted on Popular Blogs

With that said, over the next few minutes, I’m going to show you step by step how to get a guest post accepted on a popular blog.


I’m going to show you how to find the blog that you should write for.


I’m going to show you how to find a topic to write about, even if you have absolutely no ideas.


I’m going to show you the exact email script that I use to get a guest post accepted every single time.  Even if I don’t know the blogger.


And let’s say you aren’t a good writer, or you don’t have time to write a guest post.  Then I’m going to show you a very simple way to hire someone to write the post for you.


By the way, don’t worry about taking notes, because I’m going to link everything below.  But I do want you to pay close attention because I’m going to break down the method to my madness for you.


Step 1:  Find a Blog to Write For


The first thing you need to do is find a blog to write for.


Luckily, when I was growing my agency, there are no shortage of marketing, social media and PR blogs out there eager to publish fresh content.


As a marketing agency, there are two directions I could go.


First, you can publish blogs for the likes of Copyblogger, Problogger, and Social Media Examiner – which are strictly marketing blogs.


Or, you can publish blogs that write for specific industries.


For instance, if you work with lawyers, you might want to spend some time writing for legal blogs.  Or if one of your ideal clients are software companies, then you might want to write for tech blogs.


If you are looking for a list of blogs in your industry that accept guest posts, simply Google: “the name of your industry” and “Write for Us”.  These key words will return a list of blogs in your industry that accept guest posts.


So if you Google “Small Business” and “Write for Us”, you’ll see a list of small business blogs similar to this that accept guest posts.


Pic 7


Step 2:  Choose a Topic


Once you find a blog you want to write for, you’ll need to come up with a topic that the blogger will accept.


This is going to take some work, but here’s what you can do.  Read the last three to six months’ worth of blog posts to get a good feel for what type of content the blogger publishes and what type of posts his audience likes to read.


Look at the number of comments and social media shares each post gets.  Those with the most comments and shares probably get the most traffic, and in a blogger’s mind, are the most successful.


By creating a topic around a post that is already successful, you’ll increase your chances of getting your post accepted.


Let me show you what I would do as a marketing consultant.  One of my favorite small business blogs is called Under30CEO.


pic 8


After doing my research, I find that a lot of the blogs that do well have to do with getting your name out there, and increasing your company’s visibility.


In particular, this one “Steps to Improve Your Company’s Visibility” got 132 Tweets and a variety of other shares.


pic 9


Not too shabby.


Instead of creating a whole new topic, I’m simply going to put a different slant off of this post and create an article called “5 Practical Ways to Get Your Company in Front of Your Prospects, Even if You Don’t Have a Huge Budget.”


See what I did?


I talk about increasing visibility, and added my own slant: Even if You Don’t have a Huge Budget.


Step 3:  Pitch the Blogger


Once we have the topic, we just need to pitch the blogger.


Here’s the email script that I use every single time to get a guest post idea accepted.



Hey Jared,


Over the past few days, I’ve spent a lot of time reading articles from other marketing bloggers.


After reading many of the posts, I’ve noticed that posts concerning a company’s visibility seem to do quite well in terms of traffic and shares.


For instance, “Steps to Improve Your Company’s Visibility” got 132 tweets.


I would like to submit an article titled “5 Practical Ways to Get Your Company in Front of Your Prospects, Even if You Don’t Have a Huge Budget.”


I would love to know what you think.


Regards,


Greg


In fact, I actually did send this exact email to Jared.


See, here’s a screen shot.  And just a few hours later, he responded to me telling me that he would love to review the article.


pic 10


Now, I have the opportunity to get my name in front of tens of thousands of people.  It’s as simple as that.


Step 4:  Write a GREAT Article!


All I have to do is write a good article.


But let’s say I was a crappy writer, or I didn’t have the time to write a great blog post.  Then what?


Well, here’s what I would do.


I would go back to the blog and make a list of people who have written a guest post recently.  Then I would then email one of the guest posters and ask them how much they would charge to write a guest post in your name.  Give them your topic and headline and have them write the post for you.


You’d be surprised, in many instances, getting a good guest post in your name might only cost you $ 100.  And if you were able to get a client or two out of it, then I would say it’s a very good investment.


That’s really all it takes to write a guest post on a popular blog.


And anyone who tells you differently is just full of it.


But now, I want to show you the best part of guest posting.  Right after I wrote this post on Copyblogger,


Pic 11


the head of PR at Shopify sent me this email:



Hey Greg,


Wondering if you do paid freelance writing work? Also, if you do ghost blogging?


Best,


Mark Hayes
Head of Public Relations


Shopify


pic 12


Shopify is a multi-million dollar tech company, and the head of PR is asking me what my rates are.  Seriously, how cool is that?


The Truth about Guest Posting

Is that it takes a lot of work.


Writing a GREAT blog post takes a long time.  Sometimes it’s taken me upwards of 20 hours just to write one post.


But, if you’re a startup strapped for cash looking to build your brand and generate more leads for your business, it’s the most effective way to go.


It’s a strategy that helped me build my marketing agency, and it’s a strategy that will help me build my software company.


 This post was originally published on Birchfieldapp.com

Digital & Social Articles on Business 2 Community

(242)

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.