If you’re using content marketing, a guest blogging strategy is an essential tactic to improve traffic and content marketing ROI.
Guest blogging is a great way to increase brand awareness because the content you post on other blogs tells new readers about you. These new audiences can visit your blog. This means that guest blogging can help you attract new subscribers and increase referrals.
In fact, guest blogging also helps you build trust because when a trusted, authoritative site publishes your content, that trust rubs off on you. And regular guest blogging can help others think of you as an expert, which is great for your business.
But have you gone out of your way to create guest posts only to have them fail? You look at analytics and wait for visitors and subscribers to arrive. Months later and guest blogging hasn’t caught on.
Sounds familiar?
Here are three tips to help you create a profitable guest blogging strategy.
1. Participate in sites that are not a waste of time
Most blogs you can contribute to aren’t worth your time because they lack an engaged audience. So start by looking for blogs worth contributing to. Check each blog and ask yourself these questions before pitching them a guest post idea:
-
Do they have engaged readers? Pay attention to quality comments, because spam comments are a red flag.
-
Do they respond to comments? This is a sign that the blogger is engaging with his readers and the blog is active.
-
Do they regularly promote their content? If they don’t try to share and market their own content, they won’t promote yours.
-
Does your target audience agree with this blog? You must have a “target audience” that you want to reach, and the blogs you contribute to should speak to the same audience.
-
Do they give author credit or a link to their blog/home page in the author description? You should put a lot of effort into creating content, so you should at least get a sidebar with a link to your blog.
2. Reply to all comments
This is now second nature to most bloggers. And that’s crucial, because when a reader takes the time to leave a meaningful comment, it makes sense to respond — if only to thank them. Even better; add to the conversation and keep it moving.
Even if the blog owner doesn’t respond to comments, you should. Blog comments help you learn from your readers, get feedback and get to know them better.
3. Promote your guest posts
Don’t just rely on a blogger to drive all the traffic to your post or share it on social media as this is not enough to get the results you want.
Some bloggers get a great guest blogging opportunity and never promote their post at all. Yes, guest blogging will help you reach a larger audience. But when you guest post on a popular blog, your regular promotional efforts have a bigger impact.
So use every promotional strategy you can, including your personal network, influence marketing, special bookmarking sites, social media, and email outreach.
