Guest posting has been popular for a few years now. It is recommended by a huge number of experts in digital marketing as a great way to increase traffic to your website. Increased traffic to your website means increased customers and increased revenue, which is what we are all after in business!
Many writers spend a lot of their time writing various guest posts for different websites. It takes up a lot of time, so why are these writers putting in so much effort? In this article, we will explain just how useful guest posting is as a digital marketing tool and why you should most likely be doing it if you want to boost your business’s success!
Guest Posting Explained
“So, what exactly is guest posting?” you might be asking. Guest posting is the act of writing an article that is to be published on somebody else’s blog or website. You may be wondering, “why would I go to the time and effort to write an article for somebody else’s website?” The reason for writing guest posts is that they are a great way of marketing your own business. Writing guest posts exposes you and your business to a new audience – the readers of this other person’s website or blog.
How to Write Guest Posts
Writing guest posts is a particular art form and is very different from writing for your own blog or your own advertising copy or web content. Of course, when guest posting, you will still need to use good writing skills (such as spelling, grammar, persuasive techniques, etc.), but you may need to focus the tone of voice of your writing slightly. The tone of voice is the “personality” behind the writer. Suppose you are writing copy for a funeral directors’ business, this will be very different from the copy needed for a blog about stand-up comedy (an extreme example, but you get the picture)!
You can either write articles and then pitch them to the owners of different blogs or websites as guest posts, or you can approach the owners of these blogs or websites first and then write a guest post that matches their specifications and requirements.
Your guest posts are often best pitched to the owners of other sites that in the same industry, although usually not direct competitors! However, you can sometimes find creative ways to pitch guest posts to sites that are focused on different areas. For example, if you run a graphic design business, you could write about something that relates to design, even if it is not a graphic design-focused site. A light-hearted arts and crafts blog could be an excellent site to pitch a guest post to as long as what you write fits with their site.
In this example, you could find an angle that would relate to the readers and target audience of that particular site and use this angle and a matching tone of voice in the article. Instead of extensively detailing the specifics of graphic design, you could write an article about teaching your kids how to use graphic design tools like Photoshop in a way that they would find fun as well as educational. The only reference to graphic design you need maybe something along the lines of “you never know, your kids could have a wonderful future in graphic design one day!”, which would fit in with the article without going off on too much of a tangent.
The main thing to remember is that a guest post should include a link back to your own website or blog somewhere. It is no good for getting new potential customers to read your article if they do not know how to find you!
How to Contact Website Owners to Pitch Guest Posts
When choosing a website to pitch to, you can use analytics tools to determine what kind of site internet users find when searching for specific phrases. Click here to learn more about analytics tools. Focus on frequently searched phrases and are open-ended enough that people who search for them may also be interested in your services. Using the previous example, you may want to choose a site that ranks highly on search results for the term “art and design tips”.
The etiquette of pitching articles can be quite complex and formal when pitching to more extensive, established publications (for example, newspapers). Thankfully, when approaching the owners of smaller blogs, things are most likely a bit more informal. However, you still need to come up with an appealing pitch.
An appealing pitch should include points such as who you are and what your background and experience is, showing that you have read the site before and are familiar with the type of content that they post, and a description of what content you would like to write for them and – crucially – how it might be of interest to their readers and benefit them.
It is crucial to be polite and friendly when pitching a guest post article to a website owner. If you do not get a reply, don’t be afraid to follow up (although not too soon – usually leaving it for a few days is the norm). You may have to “sell” your pitch, but this should be done by convincing the website owner how it can benefit them, not just being pushy!
Building Relationships
Guest posting can build relationships with other business owners that can be useful and profitable in the long term. In addition to introducing you to a new contact that can be useful in the future, this contact may also be able to introduce you to their contacts. Guest posting can be a very effective form of networking.
Bloggers are always in search of new content. Keeping a blog running involves continuously looking for new articles, and most bloggers will be grateful for others reaching out to them to offer guest posts. A frequently updated blog tends to reach a larger audience, so your guest posts could even be helping that website owner to promote their own website and/or business!
Networking with bloggers can be an excellent thing for your business. Bloggers are often influential online on sites like Twitter and LinkedIn, and they can bring attention to websites and businesses such as yours. Don’t overlook the broader reach that bloggers can have and how having them as contacts or even friends can benefit your business.
