Blogging is good for business. It establishes you as an expert in your field. The keywords you use in the blog work in search engines and it helps people to find you with organic search. But did you know guest blogging is also a brilliant way of raising your profile and reaching a wider audience?
Main benefits of guest blogging
The main benefit of guest blogging is spreading the word about your brand and winning the trust of your target audience by contributing to blogs in your niche. The blogs that accept guest bloggers benefit from the backlink back to your site, plus they get new content for their site and an expert adding valuable content to their blog. You also build brand awareness, attract new subscribers and get new leads.
Other benefits of guest blogging include:
- Targeted traffic to your site – make sure your CTAs and landing pages are optimised for conversions
- Expanding your personal network and targeting influencers in your niche and industry.
- Stimulating social media shares from other blog sites. This is often higher if you use infographics and images.
- Growing your social media profiles
- Improving your online authority
- Growing brand awareness
- Generating leads
- Getting useful feedback from your community
- Sharpening your content marketing skills – the more content you look at and create– the better you will get!
To be successful as a guest blogger, you must write content that is high quality and targeted to your specific area of expertise or industry. Make sure your posts are of value. Remember to show your expertise in your writing.
What are your guest blogging goals?
When you are thinking about guest blogging. Think about why you are doing it. What are your objectives, these can be:
- Positioning yourself as an authority and a well-known name in the industry.
- Getting exposure (traffic) back to your website.
- Building backlinks to your website. You need blogs with a high domain authority (there are lots of free domain checkers online, where you can check the domain authority of the website you want to blog for).
How to find guest blogging opportunities
Simply Google guest posts, guest post guidelines, submitting a guest post to find opportunities in your industry. Also, use your personal and local networks, ask fellow business owners whose audience may benefit from your expertise. You can also use Twitter to search for call outs for guest posts.
What should you pitch?
Do your research, what level should you be writing for beginners, intermediate or advanced? What sort of guest blogs does the website share? Is it general information, ‘how-to’ tutorials or a general opinion piece? Make sure you check out the other guest bloggers and their bios on the site. You should also check pitching guidelines and make sure you stick to them. Once you have done your research find out the name of the person you want to contact and personalise your email. Share other blogs you have written that have some social engagement either from your own blog or other guest blogs. As with all blogs, it should have useful information in it. It shouldn’t be an advert!
Don’t forget your Biography and Call To Action
- If your goal is to get good backlinks, just make sure your bio includes a link back to your website.
- If your goal is to get traffic back to your website, then you might want to consider where you want that traffic to go. Depending on the subject of your guest post and the audience of the blog, you might want to send traffic to a custom landing page or page about a specific product or service.
- If your goal is to increase followers to your social accounts, do this by adding a line to the end of your bio asking them to follow you on your social channels.
Remember to check your post
- Is your writing free of grammatical errors and typos?
- Does your writing include links to reliable sources on the topic of your post?
- Have you checked the guest post guidelines?
- Does your blog post have your biography, a call to action and the links (web or social) that you want to direct people to in it?
Guest blogging can be fun and get you in front of many new audiences. Don’t forget that you can ask for guest bloggers too. It’s a great way to create new relationships with businesses and influencers while boosting traffic to your website at the same time!
If you need help writing a biography or with blogging do get in touch. You can also download my blog brainstorm guide from clairewinter.info/freebies.