The ABCs of Guest Posting

When the pandemic pushed businesses that had always foregone a web presence online, it intensified an already competitive environment for the 32.5 million US small businesses. That, in turn, intensified the need for a solid digital marketing strategy.

Of course, for the digital newbie, digital marketing is a foreign land filled with the unfamiliar. You’re facing things like SEO, content marketing, and guest posting.

If you’ve found yourself looking at the advice to write guest posts and wondered what that meant, keep reading. We’ll cover the ABCs of guest posting to help you get started.

What Are Guest Posts?

A guest post is a blog post that you write with the explicit purpose that it will appear on someone else’s blog. While the post may intersect with your business, industry, or interests, its main purpose is to appeal to the other blog’s readership.

For example, a local chef might write a guest post for a local bakery. While the chef’s primary interest might be assembling entrees, the post might focus on pairing the right bakery item with the right entree.

That post topic has appeal for the bakery blog’s usual audience.

Benefits of Guest Posting

Of course, the people writing guest posts don’t do it to be nice. They get some things out of the deal as well. One of the big things they get out of the deal is some quality backlinks to their own blog or website.

Those links help encourage potential customers to visit your website and consider your services or wares. Turning up on other people’s websites also helps you establish yourself as something of an expert or authority. After all, if you wrote a post for someone’s favorite bakery site, you must have some clue about what you’re talking about.

This kind of free guest posting has other benefits, including:

• Branding building
• Email list building
• Boosting your social media following

Guest posting may even benefit your search engine optimization efforts. With the basics covered, let’s dig into the nitty-gritty of guest posting.

Set a Goal

Before you type a single sentence of a guest post, you should set a guest posting goal. What do you want to get out of your guest posting strategy?

Are you trying to boost sales or build your email list? Build a brand or establish credibility?

In many ways, the goal will determine exactly which guest posting sites you submit to and what kind of links you include.

If you want to boost sales, you might include a contextual link to a product you sell. If you want to build your email list, your link might go to your homepage where you encourage email list signups. If you’re brand building or establishing credibility, you might link out to specific blog posts on your site.

Find Appropriate Sites

Yes, a site like Forbes.com might get a million visitors a day, but that doesn’t make them a great target for you. Forbes is an almost entirely business-focused website with some lifestyle content thrown in for color. If that isn’t the target audience for your business, it’s not an appropriate site for a guest post.

If you sell consumer products or services, you need a consumer-focused website that talks about your niche. Spend some time narrowing down a list of four or five bigger websites that fit that profile.

They’ll prove more interested in publishing your guest post. Just as importantly, their audience will likely prove more interested in the content of your post.

Craft Your Pitch

Some websites or blogs will consider already completed blog posts. For the most part, though, you must pitch the editors for those sites or blogs first.

That means that you must develop an idea that meets their needs. Unless you’re already an avid reader of their site, this takes some research. You must pin down topic areas that recur on their site.

You should also carefully read their submission guidelines. These guidelines will often tell in general or specific things they want or don’t want to see from you.

Once you pin down those general topic areas, you must brainstorm some ideas inside those niche areas. After you brainstorm, it’s back to research. You must make sure they haven’t published something similar recently.

Do your best to write a compelling subject line for the email. Focus on the benefits picking your idea will offer. In other words, tell them what’s in it for them.

Why does your idea serve their audience? If appropriate, include a link or two to other high-performing guest posts you wrote. It’s a kind of proof that you deliver quality.

Write a Good Post

This is often the trickiest part because good means a couple of things. The post should follow the publisher’s guidelines exactly.

That means only including links back to your site where they say you can include them. In many cases, that place is exclusively in your bio.

Write content that is relevant to their audience and provides value to that audience. In the name of all that is good and right and true, proofread that post. Better yet, have someone else proofread it.

If you’re not sure you can do all of these things, consider employing a guest posting service.

Promote

Once the blog post goes live, promote it. Talk about it on social media and provide a link. Include a link in your next post on your own blog.

It’s an easy way you can build a little goodwill with the publisher.

Guest Posting and You

Guest posting is one weapon in your digital marketing armory. It helps you promote your brand, products, or services. It can potentially improve your overall SEO performance.

It’s also an excellent way for you to reach a wider or bigger audience. That provides opportunities for email list building or establishing credibility for yourself. It’s also a more basic opportunity to simply support sales.

Bipper Media specializes in crafting guest posts for you and syndicating them to high authority sites. For questions or more information about our services, contact Bipper Media today.