Why is guest blogging so important?
Guest blogging can be an essential part of your online marketing strategy, it is important to get it right. Firstly you need to decide and rank your criteria in order of importance. What you want to achieve from writing your guest post?
Criteria
Do you want to be more visible and gain exposure by driving traffic to your website.
Do you want to build links back to your own website (only aim for good links because these are the only ones that matter).
Do you want to become a respectable authority figure within your industry.
Guest blogging opportunities.
A good place to start is searching the internet for guest blogging opportunities, in Google type your industry name followed by guest blog opportunities, remember what your criteria is and what your personal goals are.
Start searching for the websites that are suitable to your industry and your target audience.
If the audience isn’t interested in what you are saying there is no point in guest blogging for that site. It is also important to check that the websites blog has got and had a lot of shared content, is it social media focused? for e.g. are they active and networking on Twitter, Facebook and Google+.
Target audience.
Read and research as many blogs within your industry as you can, become familiar with what names keep popping up time and
time again, look for good social bookmarked sites with high traffic and referral rates.
What level of audience are they writing for?
Who are the other bloggers writing for the site? check them out, always do your research.
Has the site had guest bloggers before or is it a regular poster that creates the content?
What type of content has been written previously?
Most importantly check out which blog posts have had the most success on social media.
Networking.
Don’t be hasty when pitching your blog post to your desired websites (blog owner), follow them on Twitter, share their content and let them know who you are by having a presence in their feed. Building a rapport before submitting your pitch will set you in good stead and personalise your pitch.
Read the submission guidelines.
If the owner has a submission page, read it carefully, if you haven’t they could possible discard your idea because you haven’t been bothered to read what they have sent time writing.
Think of your pitch as a CV, you want to show off your best assets, include the blog owners name to personalise your submission this shows that you have been bothered to do your homework before pitching your idea.
Add links to any of your previous posts (if you have written any in the past) select and send several of your post ideas, that way the owner can choose the one they want and you are also showing off your full potential. If they don’t like one particular post, the chances are they will like one of the others that you send.
A guest post should be informative.
A guest post should be informative and not an advert for you. If you want to be a regular contributor and a good valuable source of information, make sure your posts have great content and that they are not just all about you, leave that to your bio and link back to your website there instead of in the article.
Track your traffic.
Knowledge is key to learning about your audience, measure your results using Google analytics, track the traffic that has been created from your guest post. Where is your main audience coming from and use the information accordingly to network with them on Twitter.
If you find yourself writing more and more content for other blogs, why not think about getting someone else to write posts for your site. It is a great way to keep your content original and up to date just remember that guest blogging is a two way street.