Guest posting is useful. There are no two ways about it. It has, however, changed in recent times. Gaining results via guest blogging differs from building a niche.
The following five steps will garner results via guest blogging.
Step 1 – Write a guest bio
Before hunting for guest posts to contribute to, work a strong bio. The bio must be quirky, and action-oriented. Introduce yourself, but don’t be too pushy. Research the bios of other writers to see how unique they are. Try adding links to it (if possible).
The guest post author’s bio must reflect his/her personality. It should give a reason for the posts’ audience to click on the link. Be original and interesting.
Step 2 – Find your guest blogging target
Target only those posts that will fetch your website with backlinks.
Finding Viable Guest Blogging Targets
Before you start your guest posting campaign, make sure your efforts are going to pay off. You should find viable targets for guest posting – blogs and resources with backlinks that will increase the authority of your website and bring you traffic and potential clients.
You cannot just go around randomly offering to write for different blogs. You need to take into account whether they accept posts, what their niche is, and whether they are an authority in their field.
There are dozens of tactics aimed at it. For example, Passive Marketing claims that one of the most effective ways of finding the guest posting targets it uses is, ironically, making it widely known that you accept guest posts yourself.
Action Item
Find blogs that accept guest posts and suit your niche. You can do it in a variety of ways:
- Google search strings
- Already existing target lists (sorted by niche)
- Author Bios in your niche
- Blog comments
- And many others
Step 3 – Reaching out
Sometimes guest posts appear after somebody reaches out to you and asks for one. Yet, sit in one place and wait for somebody to come, and you are going to wait very long Important blogs are very unlikely to ask people around like this. This means you have to reach out to bloggers, administrators and webmasters on your own.
Kate Erickson from EOFire provides an interesting case study based on her own experience, providing insights into what you should do to persuade important bloggers to publish your posts. There is also lots of other advice on how to approach this stage, for example, be actively engaged in networking or promote your own brand.
Action Item
Actively reach out to the bloggers you’ve chosen in the following manner:
- Interact with the blog so that they know you
- Clearly define the blog’s topic and the kind of content they publish
- Analyze the blog’s style
- Brainstorm the ideas and titles for your posts
- Suggest writing a guest post, with the ideas and titles ready.
Step 4 – Preparing a Sales’ Pitch
Via mail
Be honest with yourself. When you reach out to a blog and ask them to publish your post, it means that you need them, whereas they can do without you. If you are dealing with big authority blogs (and what’s the point of it otherwise?), you’ll have to deal with some serious sales resistance.
Mary Jaksch, chief editor of Write to Done, deals with a lot of pitches in her line of work, and in this excellent post, she enumerates the tricks she uses herself and finds them attractive when used by others.
Action Item
Approach each blog individually. Be respectful yet confident. Focus your letters on what the blogger you are talking to needs, not what you need. Make it short and snappy.
Step 5 – Promote Your Posts
The fact that a post is published doesn’t mean that your job is done. On the contrary – you have to do a lot to squeeze as much out of it as possible, both for your own benefit and to improve your standing with the blogger.
Jawad Khan recounts an experience with a guest post that brought many more social shares and comments simply because the author actively promoted it via social media. It resulted in greater benefits for all concerned and an altogether different attitude from the blog’s team.
Action Item
Make sure to draw traffic towards your guest post – from your own blog, from your social media accounts. Promote the post by answering comments – in other words, do everything to show how great you are as a guest blogger.
Opinions on guest posting as a promotion strategy vary from “complete rubbish” to “the best way to draw traffic your way”. Some of these opinions are personal preferences; but in the long run, how well it is going to work for you is only determined by how well you understand it. Hopefully, these tips will help you.
