You’ve written a great blog post. It’s timely, poignant and well written. Most of all, it is stuffed with valuable information for your audience. What if I were to tell you that you should share that post with another blog and publish it as a guest post? You would probably call me crazy and ignore my advice.
When you work really hard on a piece of content it is easy to be possessive. “I want my best post to draw traffic to MY blog, and my blog alone!” But posts like this can do even more for your blog and business on another blog. It can expand your audience in ways that your blog alone can’t.
Why Submit a Guest Post?
Guest posting on established blogs and outlets is a great way to spread your influence among their already established audience. If your content speaks universally or even to a niche of their audience, you’re likely to get some eyes on that post you maybe never would have been able to reach before.
Guest posts can also help with search results. If a guest post of yours gets viewed enough, it can show up highly in searches for your company or name. This means more of the top results are related to your business, and there is less opportunity for your competitors to move up in the rankings. If the article is timely and the outlet is well-respected, you’ll even get listed in the all important “News” list of Google search.
Follow The Rules
Every website accepting guest posts has a different process. Some have a less structured system that requires you to reach out to and establish relationships with their bloggers and editors much like you would when pitching a news story. Others that accept guest posts on a regular basis may have a strict policy. If this is the case, be sure to follow their instructions to a tee. You don’t want your post to be ignored simply because you didn’t format it correctly.
In addition, many guest post outlets will have content calendars that help guide their themes every month. Don’t try to shoehorn your topic into one of their themes, instead find the theme that fits your topic best. Your post can wait (unless it has a specific news angle) so it doesn’t need to be published right away.
Speak to Their Audience
Ideally, when identifying guest post outlets, you’ll want to find outlets with audiences that are close to yours. By finding these outlets, you won’t have to spend as much time adjusting the content to speak to their audience, and more of their readers are likely to begin to follow your blog.
But this doesn’t mean you must stick to blogs that only cover your subject matter. You can expand beyond your immediate industry, but be sure to make your post relevant to the audience of the blog on which you’re guest posting. If you’re going after a marketing blog, be sure to approach your subject with a marketing angle.
Share, Share, Share
Once your new guest post is live, you must be willing to share all across your social channels. Get your audience to embrace your post and the outlet. The publisher will do the same.
In addition, be sure to follow up with the publisher once your post is live. You’ll want to get information on how many shares and views your post got. That way, you can use these stats as support for your guest post pitches in the future.
Ready to start guest blogging? At Duct Tape Marketing, we publish guest posts weekly. If you are interested in reaching a small business marketing audience, you can apply to guest blog here: https://ducttapemarketing.youare.ninja/blog/contact-duct-tape-marketing/
Alex Boyer is a Community Manager and Content Ninja for Duct Tape Marketing. You can connect with him on Twitter @AlexBoyerKC
