Is guest blogging part of your content marketing strategy? If you are not using it, it is high time that you start to do so. There has been a non-ending discussion around the role of guest posting strategy in business marketing.
The truth of the matter is that guest blogging is among the best strategies for marketing your business. You can use guest blogging to generate a lot of income or attract more customers to your business. This article will take you through the process of creating and executing a successful guest posting strategy.
Once you read through the article, you will be in a position to guest blog effectively. It is one of the best ways to gain more visibility for your brand and business and enhance lead generation.
Table Of Content
Advantages of Guest Blogging:
If you are a content marketer, a guest posting strategy is a crucial tactic to your content marketing ROI and traffic generation. Guest blogging strategy provides offsite expert content making it an essential component of your marketing.
Guest blogging is an excellent way of building your brand awareness. The content that you post on other websites will inform a new audience about the existence of your brand.
The guest blogging strategy also builds trust. Once authoritative sites trust you, they will publish your content, and that trust comes back to you is some way. Regular guest posting will tell others that you are an expert in the niche, and this enhances the reputation of your business.
SEO of the primary beneficiary of guest posting. Link building from high-quality websites is a significant ranking factor in the search engines. It is one of the primary determinants of your position on the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).
Guest bloggers are not the only people who benefit from this guest posting strategy. The blog that is hosting you also gains a lot from this strategy. The main content marketing challenge is creating content. Therefore, the guest blogger will make it easy for the site owner to achieve his or her content creation targets.
However, if you are going to use the guest posting strategy, you have to make sure that you are doing everything right. This article will give you some tips.
How to plan a guest posting strategy:
1. Know Your Goals:
Like the other marketing strategies, a solid guest posting strategy will begin with knowing your goals. You cannot get to a place unless you know where you are heading from the onset.
The objective of any guest blogging strategy goes hand in hand with the benefits that we described above. It will help you to drive traffic to a particular landing page to get more sales and leads. Guest blogging will also help you to build awareness for your products, services, and brand.
The strategy also attracts inbound links to improve SEO. It will position you as an expert in the niche, and hence, more people will cite you and increase your speaking engagements. Guest blogging strategy will also grow your social media audience and the number of email subscribers.
You need to have any of the above goals at the back of your mind to develop an effective guest posting strategy. It will help you to build trust with the new audience that you are attracting to your brand.
2. Find Websites That You Will Contribute To:
Before writing guest posts, you need to identify websites that accept guest bloggers and are actively looking for content. You should also look for sites that will help you to meet your SEO goals.
The internet has several sites that accept guest blogs. However, you have to make sure that you are choosing one that is relevant to your niche. You have to make sure that both you and the followers of the website will benefit from this engagement.
Some of the phrases you can use to find the best blogging website include;
- (Topic keyword phrase) + become a contributor
- (Topic keyword phrase) + guest article
- (Topic keyword phrase) + write for us
You can also get more suggestions about the search quarries from the Optimize Smart website. You can also type ‘guest article’ or ‘guest posts’ in the Twitter search box for more suggestions.
The most important thing is to make sure that you are getting the right opportunity for your brand. Follow your competitors on their social media platforms or subscribe to their email or newsletter to get more suggestions. You will get some of the sites they are publishing guest posts to enhance their reputation.
You also need to check at the referring domains, anchor text, and the actual backlinks. The most important thing is to get a list of reputable sites in your niche that accept guest posts.
3. Connect With The Owner of the Website:
Before pitching, you have to form a connection with the site owner. Don’t allow the guest post pitch templates that you see online to fool you. Cold pitches don’t work for most website owners unless your content is stellar.
Most site owners are fed up with poor quality content and irrelevant peaches. As a result, these authority figures will only accept blog posts from the authors they already know, trust, and like. You should start by understanding their website and the kind of content that they publish on various platforms.
Subscribe to their sites so that you will get updates when there is something new. Follow, share, and comment on their posts as much as you can. These actions will help you to connect with the site owners. It will help you to develop a genuine relationship, and it will become easy for them to accept your request as a guest blogger.
4. Select Winning Topics:
The topic you choose will determine whether your guest posting strategy will succeed or not. Once you know the sites that you are targeting, you need to get the topics that you will be pitching. By this time, you know what is popular on the website, and you should think about how you will add value.
You can do this by responding to what is already on the website, giving additional info on some of the popular topics, or writing about a new subject that has high chances of becoming popular with the target audience.
You can use the Buzzsomo tool to narrow down your choice. This tool will help you to discover the content that is popular on the website you are planning to pitch. You will be able to create related topics that are likely to go viral. Besides, you will not annoy the site owners by pitching ideas they already have on the website.
Read the guidelines about pitching and writing for that particular website. If you don’t do this, the website owners may reject your pitch before he or she even read it.
5. Make the Pitch:
You need to avoid generic guest posting pitches if you want your guest posting strategy to succeed. You need to create a pitch that is personal to every website with minimal effort. The pitch should always be short and to the point.
Most people who own authoritative sites get several pitches and don’t have the time to waste. Also, use the name of the site owner by researching their contact details. The other thing to include in the post title in the email subject. Use the information that you get from Buzzsumo about the popular topics to create a unique one for your case.
If the reader loves your title, you can be sure that you are halfway the process of pitching. Explain how the content will benefit the readers since you already know their current content. The last thing you need to do is show the site owner why you are the right candidate to write the post.
The pitch is not a resume, and hence, you should highlight the information in a few points. The pitch should be unique to the website to wish to reach out to. Use your natural tone and language to achieve this objective.
6. Write Great Content:
Content will either make your guest posting strategy to either win or fail. You need an article that will stand out from all the other blog posts on the website. The best headline will include the benefits that the reader will get, tap into motion, and use action words.
The best content will rank high in the SERPs and drive traffic. Search for relevant keywords so that you can optimize the most critical phrases. Proper keywords will show Google and other search engines that the content is appropriate.
Read more: Best Content Writing Tools to Create the Perfect Blog
Include relevant internal and external links to the article without forgetting your site. It means that your guest blog should have an excellent link profile. These attributes are useful for building authority and SEO.
Don’t forget to follow the owner’s guidelines as you write the article. Some of them limit this, and you will get the information in the bio section. Include images in your post and make sure that you format them correctly.
The post should match the other content that is on the website when it comes to lists, bold texts, capitalization, and subheadings. Give the site owner less work if you want your guest posting strategy to succeed. Most sites will give guest bloggers specific guidelines that you need to follow.
Read more: Content Optimization: The Ultimate Guide for 2019
7. Work That Bio:
The Bio will pay you off the hard work that you have done while working on the guest posting strategy. A few site owners don’t have restrictions to what you include in the bio section. You can include a social link plus a URL of your choice.
You will get the link back to your website and resources at this point. You can have a single link to your website, a link to any resource or page on your website, several social media and web links, and a social media link plus a link to your site.
You need to use your Bio to generate leads for your website. You can do this by linking to a lead magnet or landing page so that people who love your content and want to learn more can sign up. Remember to include a call-to-action so that readers can know what they need to do next.
You can encourage the visitors to follow you on social media, download a free resource, or visit your website. You can use the referral detection tool from OptinMonster to measure the traffic that is coming from the guest blogging strategy.
You can use a unique guest posting bio on every website. Use your goals to determine the overall look of your bio.
8. Be Responsive:
While implementing the guest posting strategy, respond to all the mentions and comments on your post. It is good to do so but being responsive will also help you to create connections with the new audience. It is the best way to meet your guest posting strategy goals.
Blog owners are more than willing to continue working with responsive guest bloggers. It will increase your chances of working with the site owner in the long run. You can subscribe to comments on your blog to help you get email alerts when someone comments of your post.
Such a strategy will help you to provide timely responses to your blog. Also, use Google alerts to track the shares and mentions of your blog posts.
9. Promote Your Content:
Your guest posting strategy will not succeed unless you look for the best ways of promoting your content. It will make sure that more people read your posts hence driving a higher amount of traffic to your website.
Share your posts on social media and give your subscribers info about new content through email marketing. Encourage your subscribers to read the post, comment, and then share. You can also promote your guest blogs via Buffer among other platforms.
Read more: Step By Step Guide to Successful Email Outreach
10. Write Several Guest posts:
The secret of success for any guest posting strategy is publishing content regularly. The most important thing is to upload high-quality standards as you continue to publish more articles.
It will help you to increase your online presence and become an authority in the niche. As a result, you will get more writing invitations, event participation, high traffic to your website, and more sales and leads. You need a guest blogging calendar that will help you to track all your posts.
Google calendar is the best tool for this purpose. The other tools that you can use to track your commitment to blogging and schedule and Asana. Choose the one that you think will work best for your guest posting strategy.
11. Track Your Level of Success:
Tracking success is crucial for your guest posting strategy. Several tools can help you to measure the success of your guest blogging. Some of these tools are Google Analytics, Buzzsumo, and OptinmMonster’s conversion analytics depending on what you wish to achieve.
With these insights, you will know what works for your website and what does not work. It will help you to take corrective actions to make sure that your guest posting strategy succeeds.
Conclusion:
These tips will help you to plan and implement a successful guest posting strategy. You need to attract traffic that you can convert into leads and sales. It is the best way to become an authority figure in the industry and get more revenue.
Would you like to develop a perfect guest posting strategy? Call us for the best way forward.
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