Everything You Need To Know About Guest Posting

There are numerous ways to promote a blog, however, guest posting is the most commonly used practice. Do you know? 60% of bloggers write one to five guest posts per month.

Guest posting, also known as guest blogging, simply refers to the act of creating and publishing an article on another website, preferably in a similar niche. Additionally, guest blogging is also done by domain experts to post their views and industry-thought-leading opinions on various blogs, websites, or social media pages. 

This boosts brand credibility, affinity, trust, and even advocacy. In fact, Google loves guest blogging activities and rewards you with a significant SEO score boost!

Moreover, guest blogging allows you to expand your arc of brand influence and sales footprint by giving you a superior reach to a larger audience, with better search engine rankings /sales conversions. 

This is not enough! We will discover a few more benefits later in this article – read on! 

So, if you are a blogger and want to start guest posting then this guide is the best fit for you. In this article, we will talk about various topics like: 

• Benefits of guest posting for everyone (individuals and businesses)
• Best practices of how to go about doing smart guest posting/guest blogging 

Carry on reading and web-winning!

BENEFITS OF GUEST POSTING

With the growing popularity of blogging for brand enhancement and SEO-driven sales, different types of blogging activities are needed to scale up marketing ROI.

Guest blogging is one of the smartest ways of helping your marketing activities win more, consistently and growing your fan base intelligently – regularly.

As guest blogging continues to grow in prominence it has delivered many notable benefits. Multiple market-acclaimed and user-delighted benefits of guest blogging are many. These include:

• Increases online thought leadership reputation authority, public credibility, people-reach, and corporate and product brand advocacy.
• Improves the site’s ranking in search engines by updating the content strategy
• Boost your SEO, visitation (traffic), and content stickiness (time spent on web pages)
• Boost sales conversions and overall volume + ROI
• Generates qualified B2C and B2B leads, including B2Government and B2NGO prospects – solo / direct sales, partner /franchisee sales, up-selling and cross-selling
• Means of collaboration that benefit both parties
• Enhances your writing and content marketing skills

There are many individuals, prominent influencers, smart marketers, big to small companies, government agencies, and social innovators / NGOs that continue to gain immensely.

GUEST BLOGGING FOR DIFFERENT INDUSTRY SECTORS

B2B GUEST BLOGGING

B2B branding and sales rely heavily on long term brand salience /market leadership branding sustenance. Hence for serious B2B marketers and brand leadership innovators, it is imperative to implement a well-thought-through guest blogging initiative.

This is done by either a prominent client or industry thought leader to engage in guest blog content posting.

And it’s a smart tactic to cross-link this guest blogging post with the client’s own website or social media asset where a snippet of this blog post could be replicated for boosting the overall content credibility and SEO reference ability.

This B2B guest blog could be implemented as a series of actual user experience delight posts that are educative and experiential. These guest blog posts will be great brand boosters for both the user and seller (the user is greatly helped by being able to share his user intelligence in using industry-acclaimed smart processes/products, while the seller is able to showcase products’ real-life value outcomes).

B2C GUEST BLOGGING

B2C products/process selling companies need to attract as many prospects as possible and then effectively convert them into loyal users and advocates. 

Also, B2C guest blog posts help businesses to showcase different credible benefits delivered to delighted customers thereby boosting overall customer loyalty. With the growing fragility of B2C branding as users are often spoilt for choice.

B2C guest blogging is indeed a smart tactic to leverage organic content marketing to boost brand reputation. 

Inviting actual B2C users to share their real-life user benefits in a brand-suitable manner, it’s indeed a smart move to boost real-life brand credibility. And it pays off handsomely in the face shortening spans of customer loyalty and viral references to their friends and family.

INDIVIDUAL GUEST BLOGGING (SOLOPRENEURS, INFLUENCERS ETC)

Whether you are a solopreneur or an influencer or an independent industry consultant/expert, you do need to consistently enhance market acclaim and brand leadership in your business domain.

By carefully selecting credible clients/users/fans to post the brand and user-delight guest blog posts you are smartly boosting your work’s market acceptability and overall user affinity. 

Truthful guest posts help the public understand how best they can leverage your capabilities to enhance their business or life in general.

This is also a great way of educating the masses on how different people can better harness the superior benefits of your offerings with actual user blog posts making you win more with compelling – user-friendly sales inducement innovations.

B2Community GUEST BLOGGING

Nurturing your loyal customer community is an inescapable marketing activity necessity in today’s hyper-competitive business arena where customer loyalty is becoming tougher.

By building and nurturing a loyal fan base community a company is able to get actual users to talk more beneficially about their wow experiences in using your offerings.

You can easily scale up this smart user content-driven organic marketing campaign intuitively by making the guest blogger share his promotional guest blog amongst his own social media fan base.

By inviting a larger number of users to participate in guest blogging in users attracting portal, you could combine guest blogging with rewards e.g. freebies, etc

B2NGO GUEST BLOGGING

NGOs are forever trying innovative ways to raise funds for their social emancipation and innovation activities.

These NGOs (both local and global organizations) are routinely scaling up their branding and funds raising ROI by leveraging guest blogging of prominent business people, industry experts, and government officials to endorse their activities.

NGOs can also use their activities beneficiaries to do guest blogging about their life transformation experiences to boost their initiatives’ efficacy and overall brand credibility.

These guest blog posts could be integrated with a real-time info counter that informs people of the total amount of funds raised through various marketing and brand promotion activities.

B2Government or eGovernance GUEST BLOGS

Governments in democratic nations are driven by politicians both at the local and national levels. Guest blogging by beneficiaries amongst the public and businesses is a great way to showcase the benefits of different social empowerment activities.

Besides boosting branding for election campaigns, guest blogging is also a great way of enlisting different opinion reactions from the public to build a credible database of public responses.

This helps build a solid case for future innovations/initiatives. Government bodies are often looking for external funding from global agencies and these public guest blog posts are of great help in pitching for these funds.

Guest Blogging For External And Hr / Employer Branding

In addition to the usual guest blogging to boost external sales, there are many benefits for HR/employer branding. 

For example, guest blogging by employees about different employee engagement initiatives greatly boosts employer branding and recruitment marketing’s ROI. These guest blogs by employees should ideally be cross-linked to other social media campaigns and also to industry sources like Glassdoor.com to boost brand footprint as an employer of choice. This boosts the overall admired branding of the business which greatly boosts both sales and hiring ability of corporations.

GUEST BLOGGING CASE STUDIES

1. Buffer

Grow your Customer Base from 0 to 100,000

Leo Widrich, the co-founder of the social media scheduling service Buffer, published about 150 guest pieces when they first came out. and succeeded in doubling Buffer’s customer base from 0 to 100k in just 9 months.

2. Danny Iny

Danny Iny was not a well-known blogger or marketer when he founded his marketing company, “Firepole Marketing” (he changed the name of his business to Mirasee in 2016). At 30 visits per day, their traffic wasn’t anything to get excited about. He simply had to make this work quickly because he was in debt from a previous business attempt.

He then started writing on other sites with established followings. Danny had good luck; Copyblogger accepted his first guest article. In a few months, he wrote 80 guest blogs. In addition to seeing an increase in traffic, he also quickly expanded his email list to create the audience and community that still serve as the cornerstone of his online business success today.

3. Gregory Ciotti

A startup that offers email support software for small businesses, HelpScout, employs Gregory Ciotti as its marketing strategist. In just 14 months, he used guest blogging to increase the HelpScout email list to over 36k subscribers.

4.  Silvio Porcellana 

Silvio is the founder and CEO of Mob.is.it. He employed guest blogging to increase search engine traffic to his website by 20% as a result of better search engine rankings. 

In just five months, he posted 44 guest blog entries. And this is what happened:

• Search traffic rose by 20%.
• The domain authority rose to 34/100 from 29/100.
• The Ahrefs rank exhibits a consistent rise.
• Organic search volume increased significantly.

Now that you are aware of how beneficial guest blogging can be for your company, allow we will share some advice with you on how to begin writing a guest blog effectively.

HOW TO START GUEST POSTS THE CORRECT WAY (8 EASY STEPS)

1. LOOK FOR OPPORTUNITIES

Look for blogs in your niche that welcome guest posts. Depending on how well-established your business is, you might search for a generic website or only concentrate on your niche market. 

You can use Google search to help you with this. Type strings as listed below to find the best results:

Additionally, you can use keyword tools like Semrush and do a competitive analysis to see the backlinks acquired. This might as well give you some potential guest blogging sites.

2. DRAFT A PITCH

Editors at major journals could see hundreds of pitches each week, so if you send one that sounds too generic for a guest post, they might just hit the delete button.

Therefore you need to make sure your pitch has the following characteristics: 

• Unique
• Well researched
• Relevant
• Shirt and crisp
• Includes your portfolio

Here is a pitch template to help you get inspired: 

3. DO NOT FORGET TO FOLLOW UP

Don’t give up if you send 100 guest post proposals and receive only 20 responses, all of which are denials. It’s okay! 

 Some editors may not respond out of a lack of interest, and may truly forget. That’s why, unless specified on their website, it’s crucial to always write a follow-up email. 

However, do not spam them! Make sure you follow up just once after 2-3 weeks. While writing a follow-up email make sure you stick to the point and do not exceed 100 words and use the same email thread for convenience.

Here is a quick layout you might use:

4. WRITE YOUR GUEST POSTS

Even if your pitch is accepted, you still need to perform at the top of your game to be published. Additionally, you want to make sure that anyone who reads your article is impressed and curious to learn more about your company if it is accepted for publication. 

BEST PRACTICES FOR GUEST BLOGGING

1. Build and stick to a well-researched editorial calendar to ensure there is no information overlap and well-thought-through content connectivity between different posts (including guest blogs)
2. Clearly mention the full name of the guest bloggers with his brief bio-data and web presence web-link added –website /social media (ideally with his picture)
3. Add relevant pictures or images along with the content to add to the overall content appeal and credibility
4. A guest blog post needs to cross linked and referenced to another similar blog /social media posts to boost cross linkages
5. Splash the details of these smart/prominent guest blogs in your email, social media, and ePR campaigns
6.  Digital content especially guest blogs attract wide global attention and hence we need to pay great attention to overall language hygiene – grammar and vocabulary. Word and sentence errors can easily sink your guest blogging initiative. Staying updated on the latest updated terminology and using these in a simplified manner is a great asset in boosting a guest blog’s popularity and authority (as too much technical jargon can sabotage content attractiveness).
7. Think Global, act Local: For organizations or experts with a global business footprint it is a smart move to have guest bloggers in different counties or regions to boost the global attractiveness of their business.

5. WORK ON SEO

If you can assist bloggers in enhancing their SEO, they will admire you even more. Incorporating internal links to already existing website material is one approach to achieve this. So we recommend you focus on this as well. You can do this by focusing on keywords, internal linking, backlinks, and readability along with the blog content.

6. LINK SMARTLY

Consider sending visitors to a landing page with a specific offer on your website rather than sending them straight to your homepage. This way you may offer them more value and draw them into your sales funnel. 

For instance, in exchange for a visitor’s email address, your landing page can give a free PDF of your book or a free chapter. 

Alternatively, you may emphasize that your email subscribers receive useful advice on a monthly basis. The more readers you get from your content, the more probable it is! Your guest article should work as an appetizer, and leave readers demanding for more.

7. TRACK YOUR RESULTS

The outcomes of your guest posting should unquestionably be evaluated if your goal is to increase visitors. If you have created distinct landing pages for each place. It will be very easy to discover which guest blog posts are generating the most revenue. You must also track your email sign-ups and website analytics through Google analytics. Tracking your blogs will nudge you in the right direction helping you discover your weak points.

8. THANK YOUR EDITOR AND ENGAGE WITH THE AUDIENCE

Once your guest post has been published, remember to thank the editor in an email. 

If the host’s website allows comments, spend some time answering the readers as they come in. To let readers know that you’re lurking in the comment section and eager to converse, you can even submit a comment as soon as your post goes live.

CONCLUSION

Guest blogging on trustworthy websites is a fantastic method to capitalize on the popularity of blogs that are already well-known in your area.

We have listed out various steps above in this article to ease this process. Let us summarize these here for a quick recap:

1. LOOK FOR OPPORTUNITIES
2. DRAFT A PITCH
3. DO NOT FORGET TO FOLLOW UP
4. WRITE YOUR GUEST POSTS
5. WORK ON SEO
6. LINK SMARTLY
7. TRACK YOUR RESULTS
8. THANK YOUR EDITOR AND ENGAGE WITH THE AUDIENCE

Do you incorporate guest blogging into your online marketing plan? What further steps would you advise a company to improve the success of its guest blogging?