Make guest blogging work for you
By now you should know why blogging is so important for your business. Here’s a little recap for those who are late to the party or still standing in the corner drinking on their own because they’re too scared to get up on the dancefloor and meet new people like their much more successful friends.
Benefits of blogging recap
Blogs help drive traffic to your website, which when combined with the right marketing strategy can help boost your lead conversions. They are a much more effective and cost efficient way to increase your visitor numbers. Unlike traditional advertising (which still works when you know what you are doing) the traffic doesn’t dry up when you stop spending. We are huge champions for including this form of marketing in your advertising budget to complement and make your advertising more impactful.
There are many benefits to blogging; one is SEO. Each time you write a blog you get another indexed page on the search engines. Without a blog you’re probably only updating your site every 3–4 months. Blogs are also shareable content from your site and that benefits your social media presence, which better exposes you to the thousands of potential customers using social media every day.
Most of all it helps establish authority, which improves how your customers view you. And it is authority where guest blogging really comes into its own.
Why guest blogs?
Guest blogging is a two-way street — you need to be posting guest blogs on other sites and welcoming guest bloggers to yours.
Welcoming guest posts on your site is great for keeping content fresh. Ideas are sometimes hard to come by when you’re so close to the company and we’ve already established why new content is good for SEO and driving traffic to your site. Oftentimes bloggers will have their own following and that exposes your site to a new audience. You also get the benefits of that blogger promoting their content on their social media pages.
When it comes to writing for other sites the benefits are similar. You’ll drive less traffic directly to your site but you create backlinks, which helps with SEO. You also establish yourself as an authority in your market or on a particular subject.
How much more trustworthy and credible would your sales team come across if they could direct customers to an independent site that features an article they wrote? Or your support team contributing to a forum or self-help website with an article that answers questions your customers have?
How to guest blog
When hosting guest blogs on your site, ensure that you are using bloggers with experience in your market. The content needs to align with your business so do your research and feature articles from people who have a respected background. LinkedIn is a great source for content writers as the people you find in your feeds on a daily basis are often writing long posts in groups or sharing their work. Reach out to them and ask to feature some of their work on your site or to write something new.
For your content you need to do something similar. You need to contact respected bloggers in your marketplace and ask them if you could feature an article with them. You are not trying to directly win new business from your articles — the point is to educate your audience and hope they become customers (many of them will) — and bloggers don’t want to be involved in ‘stealth marketing’, so your content should always be educational in nature.
Here are some tips to work into your guest blog for maximum effect.
- Include a relevant internal link to one of their other posts in yours. It will be appreciated for the additional traffic and shows you’ve done your research.
- Encourage readers to leave a comment and broaden the discussion. The more comments and shares you get the better for your SEO.
- Share the content on your own social media pages.
- Ensure your author bio clearly states who you are and the company you represent. This will help build your authority.