As a marketer or blogger, do you use guest blogging as part of your content marketing strategy?
If you aren’t, it’s time to start now. It’s been years, there’s plenty of speculation about the death of guest blogging , but the tricks remains one of the most effective ways to promote your business. After reading this article you will be aware about how to create and execute a successful guest blogging strategy.
Benefits of Guest Blogging
If you’re organisation is using content marketing , then a guest blogging strategy will be a perfect tactic to boost your traffic and marketing ROI. As a guest blogger, you are not the only person who will benefit from the guest blogging strategy, the site where you post benefits too.
Guest posting is an excellent way to build brand awareness because the content you will post on other sites helps the audience to know about you and your work. Now, we’ll help you to conduct effective guest blogging by following certain criteria :
1) Know your goals
Just like any other marketing strategy, an effective marketing strategy begins with knowing about your goals.
To know about your goal helps you to get a direction and tells you where exactly you are heading. It’s necessary to have a goal in mind so you can ensure that you give people what they want, so you get what you want for your website.
2) Find the Site to Contribute To
Before you start writing a guest blog post, you’ll have to find a site that allows guest authors and is constantly in search of good and new content.
Apart from that,you’ll need to make sure that posting on this site will help you attain the ultimate goal you are working for. You have to look for the sites which are worth your time and effort and will help you accomplish your goals.
You can look for guest posting opportunities by analysing where all your competitors are posting or using keywords searches on Google. E.g. if you are looking for technology blogs accepting guest posts, then you need to search for the below term:
“technology blog” “accepting guest post”
Though maximum people will share these posts to enhance their reputations, you can keep an eye on the articles your competitors are posting using a tool like Semrush.
3) Form a Connection with the Site Owner
Connection
As soon as you approach the site owners for pitching you will have to make an instant connection with them.
Don’t get yourself fooled by all the guest post pitch templates you free on the internet; as most owners are wary of such cold pitches and won’t work till the content is stellar.
4) Write Great Content
Once you get to know about the site and the owner you will be working for, you have a clear understanding about the kind of content the owner wants to read. The next thing you do is, search for a good topic. Writing a good guest post is a difficult task to complete.
Once you find your topic, your main target must be to craft a stellar headline. Start by taking a look at the headlines in your pitch again.
For best headlines, there are certain tips :
- Include the benefit for the reader
- Use action words
- Tap into emotions
Google Map
The owner of the site will love your guest content if it has a good potential to rank in the search engines. Including the images can be a hassle, so unless the site owner prefers to do this themselves, help them out by including or suggesting relevant images for your guest post.
Make a note of how they use subheadings, capitalisation, bold texts, lists, etc. In the end, format the post so it matches others on the site. The lesser work you will leave for the owner, the more the change of them accepting and publishing your posts.
5) Work on your Bio
Your main payoff for the hard work you’ve invested in writing a guest post is usually in the backlink you get to your own website as part of your author bio.
Best practices on building your bio with a link are as follows:
- A single link to your home page
- A link to any page/resource on your site
- A link to your site plus a social media link
- A couple of web and social media links
There are even a few site owners who put no restrictions on link in the bio, though that’s not so common .
6) After the guest post is published
Respond to the comments and mentions on your posts. Not just because it’s good manners, but also because being responsive is how you make the connection with your audience, which can help you meet some of your strategic goals.
Finally, remember that content promotion is a key part of your guest blogging strategy so more people read your content and follow it back to your site. The site owner will be happy to benefit from increased traffic too.
