Travelling the long and winding road of promoting your business online, you’ve probably come across guest blogging and the importance of it. Although it sounds pretty straightforward and easy to comprehend, guest blogging can be a little tricky to grasp in order for it to be worth your while. You’re not new to this online marketing stuff. You’ve read numerous articles on Kissmetrics, moz, social media today etc. and have had success promoting your company on the infinite internet. Writing content to post on someone else’s site may not sound the most appealing BUT if done right, the results will entice you to guest blog for more sites.
What actually is guest blogging?
In literal terms, guest blogging is posting a blog, as a guest, on someone else’s blog. When a writer develops unique and relevant content for a site that isn’t their own. Now, maybe you’re thinking, why would I waste my valuable time writing content for someone else? We all know that content creation is time consuming. It’s a tedious task that is incredibly essential to your online presence. So again, why write content for someone else? Trust me, there is a method to this madness.
What is guest blogging good for?
With submitting a guest post for a guest blog, the positives greatly outweigh the negatives. The only true negative about guest blogging is the thought of writing content for someone else. In reality, although your content isn’t going to be published on your own personal site, you will actually reap in the results.
- Link Building -If you’re posting content anywhere, you should be including a link back to your site. Guest blogging and link building go hand in hand. Having the chance to link back to your site is a golden opportunity. The more content you publish for other sites with a link back to yours, the more traffic your attracting.
- Reaching a larger audience -Guest blogging widens your audience and introduces you to new people. Having your work published to someone else’s site, opens the door for that site’s audience to view yours. It’s like being introduced to someone by a friend. The more sites you post too, the more new friends you’re in line to meet.
- Search engine appeal -Since the content you write will be fresh and unique, it’ll also be recognizable by search engines. Search engines like Google or Yahoo, thrive off of fresh and unique content. Being able to post your content elsewhere leads to another direct line to your business. Search engines view any post online as a ‘popularity contest’. The more interactions you get from others (i.e. likes, comments, shares, links) the better! The search engine recognizes the increase in interaction and will boost your pagerank, moving it up the list so it’s more likely to appear on the search results page.
- Exceptional for Social Networking -Since you’ve written the content and it’s YOUR content, you can also share your post on your social media networks. Sharing your post on your social sites works like killing two birds with one stone. Not only will you be, again, broadening your audience (this time your social media audience) but you’ll be increasing the amounts of shares, comments, and likes in order to get noticed by the search engine.
The process of guest blogging
All of this sounds great but how does one start this back road into the long and winding adventure of guest blogging to promote your business? Good question! First thing’s first, 1. Find the blog that you’d like to write for and start writing. Make sure your topic is beneficial to your niche and let your creativity take over. Remember to focus on keywords for your business when writing your post. 2. Once your post is written, you’ll want to contact the owner of the blog. Send over an email asking if they’re accepting guest posts. A few friendly tips, introduce yourself, send along a brief summary of what you plan on sharing and be sure to include your email, social networks and website link in your signature. Blog owners want to see that you can add value to their site as opposed to just adding ‘fluff’. 3. Once you’ve received approval from the owner of the site, post your blog and get excited about it! 4. Track your traffic and make sure to promote your guest post on your social sites!
Where to find guest blogging sites
Now, all of this sounds great but where do you find guest blogging sites? The best and easiest way to go about finding a guest blog site is to simply google search it. Start with your keyword i.e. “SEO” and then ‘write for us’. Search results will show you a couple pages full of potential sites in your niche. Pick whichever websites and email the owner to begin your guest blogging expedition!
Guest blogging etiquette
With all of this new brand awareness, link building and widening audiences don’t get carried away and forget to be polite. Guest blogging is a great outlet to expose your business but you don’t want to just throw a bunch of words together and send it off just to reap the benefits. Keep in mind that you’re not writing to promote your business. Guest blogging isn’t for advertising. Make sure your topic is relevant, specific and beneficial for anyone who reads it. Customize your post to fit in with the website your posting too, like posting a blog about SEO on an SEO guest blogging site. Each site will have a set of rules to follow in order to get your post posted. Make sure to follow the rules and stay within the guidelines. Last but not least, be sure to promote your post once posted! This is your work. Be proud of it.
At the end of the day, guest blogging is a challenge. It’s a challenge on many different levels between finding credible sites that accept guest posts, tailoring your post to fit their criteria and simply just writing the content. Time is of the essence as guest posting is quite the time consuming task but hard work pays off. With the time you spend on guest blogging, your business will reap the benefits. You’ll expand your reach, receive more brand visibility and widen your audience along with other advantages. If you’re not guest blogging, start to consider. It’ll be worth the long journey.
