Any savvy inbound marketer knows blogging is a critical tool for attracting the right visitors to your websites. One of the oldest ways to get your name and blog out is guest blogging or guest posting. The best part is that you don’t have to do everything yourself because you can hire a guest posting agency to do it for you.
If you’ve not been using guest blogging as part of your content marketing plan, you might want to start now. In this post, we will help you understand what guest posting is all about and how you can use it to get more brand awareness and traffic to your website.
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What is Guest Blogging?
Guest blogging simply means publishing an article on someone else’s website to build brand awareness and generate traffic to your own site. Businesses may solicit such posts on a contract, subcontract, or a one-time basis. When you post a blog on someone else’s website, you’re inviting their readers to check out your website, subscribe or even buy items from you. When combined with search engine optimization, this technique is one of the befst ways to build a niche community, create awareness for your brand and generate more organic traffic.
Steps To Follow For Effective Guest Blogging
So how do you create posts that are appealing to both parties and encourage them to request more posts in the future? If you’re a writer, this shouldn’t be complicated for you. Here are a few steps you can use as a guide:
Develop Your Goals
Like any other marketing strategy, you need to have goals to know how your guest posting strategy will benefit your site. In most cases, the goals are often the same for everyone. They include:
- Improving SEO by attracting inbound links
- Driving more traffic to a specific landing page
- Building brand awareness
- Increasing subscription
Your goals should help you frame your bio appropriately and show people that you can deliver exactly what you promise.
Develop a Connection With the site Owner
The best way to get more readers to your blog is to connect with them. Most developed website owners prefer to work with people they already know, but that doesn’t mean you cannot be on their list. To make this work,
- Make sure you have published quality content on your blog.
- Assess whether their niche matches yours. If not, determine whether you’re skilled enough to write content in that field.
- Review your host site and check their content to see how they like their work and what matters to them most.
- Follow them on social media sites.
- Comment on their posts and tag them when you share their content.
- Avoid spamming their site with your links in the comments or social media posts.
The point is to form a genuine relationship with your potential host site owner. Don’t fake it or spam. Be helpful in your responses and add value where you can.
Focus on the Audience
It’s critical that you understand the audience on the website you’re guest posting for and write content the readers on that site can relate to. Conduct thorough research to understand what readers on the platform are looking for and determine what appeals to them. Check comments, social media shares, and other channels where the host site interacts with the audience. For instance, if your host website shares content about financial advice, you want to make sure that your post is related to finances to reach the right demographics.
Understand the Style and Voice
When readers subscribe, share and write comments on your blog, you can be certain that they like your style, voice, and brand. The same applies to your host site. You’ll want to adopt that style to fit the brand host, to get people reading your blog and clicking on your link. You can go through the past articles the host site has published and study the style, voice, message, and ideas. You might find yourself writing a better piece than what is already published. You can also ask for specific instructions from the site owner to follow when writing your posts.
Focus on Quality Helpful Content
People tend to like actionable content because it helps them relate to their challenges and encourages them to do something. When picking a topic, always ask yourself how it will help the reader solve a problem they might have. You could also teach a new skill that everyone would enjoy learning and applying in the real world. You can also write topics that can help make life easier.
