If you’re not including guest blogging into your content marketing strategy, you’re missing out on a potentially massive increase in your long-term ROI. Guest blogging is one of the most effective (yet underutilized) tactics for long-term content, traffic, and sales growth.
While it has been around for a while, not many marketers make it a foundational aspect of their content strategy, which is a massive mistake. Whether it’s because they don’t know how to tactically implement it, or they just don’t fully understand the benefits of guest blogging, it doesn’t matter.
Marketers who aren’t guest blogging for themselves (or their clients) in 2020 are losing out on traffic, SEO links, and increased brand awareness. Below is our guide covering the basics of guest post services, the benefits of guest blogging, and exactly how to start implementing guest posting tactics into your strategy.
Guest Posts 101: Why They’re Beneficial
Whether you call it guest posting or guest blogging, they’re two in the same. Guest blogging is when you write a blog or other piece of content on a website other than your own. The end goal of guest posting is to increase your brand awareness, increase SEO via effective backlinking, and increase the amount of traffic coming to your blog and/or website.
Most guest posting relationships are reciprocal, meaning that you (i.e. the guest) get as much benefit as the website owner. The guest poster receives all of the benefits we covered above, and the website owner gets free content for their site (which is a win-win for both parties).
Why It’s Essential for Your Business to Be Guest Posting
Brand awareness and authority are two of the most important factors in any branding and/or content strategy. Without authority, your customers/leads will be questioning your brand. Without awareness, your customers won’t even know what your brand is.
This is why guest posting is such an incredibly useful tactic to employ in your strategy; it develops authority and awareness at the same time, effectively killing two birds with one stone. Not only does it allow you to develop awareness and authority, but it also allows you to develop new relationships with other industry partners/thought leaders (further establishing your brand in the minds of your audience or customers/leads).
How to Create a Guest Posting Strategy
If you don’t have the time to develop an entire guest blogging strategy on your own (and then actually write all the content that’s required for a successful strategy), it’s recommended to contract your guest posting out to a qualified firm. Otherwise, creating a strong guest blogging strategy begins like most other strategic work: with plenty of research and planning!
Goals, Planning, and Success
One of the very first things you should do when developing your plan is to set out some very clear, very specific objectives. You should know exactly what you want to get out of guest blogging (so that you can accurately measure the success – or failure – of your guest posting efforts further down the line).
Research
After you’ve laid out your objectives, you’ll want to research some industry-relevant blogs and/or websites (that obviously don’t belong to or are affiliated with your competitors). This is one of the most important steps in the entire process (save for developing/writing the actual content).
Identifying areas of opportunity is the defining factor in any guest posting strategy. If you’re able to find guest posting opportunities on .edu or .gov sites, you would be wise to take that opportunity. Sites hosted on .edu or .gov domains are considered gold in the SEO world.
Develop the Content
The next step, and one of the most important ones in the entire process, is writing high-quality content (or hiring writers that know how to blog/develop exceptional content). If you don’t provide the guest website with quality content, they won’t want to work with you again.
This goes the other way too, in that if you submit high-quality blog posts that drive new traffic, they will be much more likely to continue the relationship (which would be beneficial to both parties). This part of the process shouldn’t be downplayed; high-quality content written by experienced content professionals is very important.
Rinse, Repeat, and Watch the Results Come in
Guest blogging isn’t something that will change your business overnight, it’s more of a long-term strategy. However, once you get the ball rolling, it will eventually turn into its own machine (that’s almost always ROI-positive when it’s properly done). Setting clear objectives, researching industry-relevant blogs, and developing quality content are the three keys to a successful guest posting strategy.
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