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By Kostas Chiotis IrisSignals.com Copyright 2014© IrisSignals.com
By Kostas Chiotis
IrisSignals.com
Copyright 2014© IrisSignals.com
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Legal Disclaimer: This guide is for informational purposes only. Any case studies, examples, illustrations
are not intended to guarantee, or to imply that the user will achieve similar results. In fact, your results may
vary significantly and factors such as your market, personal effort and many other circumstances may and
will cause results to vary. While every attempt has been made to verify the information provided in this
guide, neither the author nor his affiliates/partners assume any responsibility for errors, inaccuracies or
omissions. In particular, the author and/or sellers of the product and materials does not warrant that any of
the information will produce a particular economic result or that it will be successful in creating particular
marketing or sales results. Those results are your responsibility as the end user of the product. The author and
publisher accept no liability of any kind for any losses or damages caused, or alleged to be caused, directly or
indirectly from using the information provided. The information presented herein represents the view of the
author as of the date of publication. Because of the rate with which conditions change, the author reserves
the right to alter and update his opinion based on the new conditions.
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Table of contents
-Introduction...................................................................................................................................4
-What Is Guest Blogging And What Goals Should I Aim For?....................................5
-Goals for Guest Blogging Campaigns.......................................................................5
-Choosing the Goals for Your Guest Blogging Campaign.....................................................8
-Preparing Your Website and Blog........................................................................................11
-Service Provider Vs eCommerce: The Right Links for Your Guest Posts...............12
-What Type of Links and Landing Pages to Choose To Achieve your Goals?................ ...13
-Finding The Best Target Blogs For Your Goals...............................................................15
-Be Sure to Spy on Your Competition.................................................................................18
-Don’t Forget About Social Media......................................................................................19
-Connecting With The Target Blogs......................................................................................21
-Contacting Blog Owners and Writing The Guest Posts...............................................23
-What to Write?.................................................................................................................24
-Keeping Track of Everything...........................................................................................25
-Writing the Perfect Guest Post.........................................................................................25
-Your Guest Posts Are Published - What Now?................................................................28
-Measuring the Effectiveness of Your Guest Posts and Guest Blogging Campaign........29
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Introduction
The Ιnternet is full of different ways for small businesses to grow. Whether through helping a startup establish a name for itself or by connecting them with buyers ready to purchase, technology has changed the way we do business.
In recent history, guest blogging has proven itself to be one of the best results-generating marketing strategies out there, used by a number of large corporations.
To a novice, getting a single guest post approved may seem like an insurmountablechallenge. Forget considering trying to put together and carry out an entireorchestrated guest blogging campaign.
Luckily, guest blogging isn’t as difficult as many business owners, marketers andsalespeople think. It does take some time to learn the ropes (and you’ll probablymake some common mistakes), but once you understand the design and flow of apowerful guest blogging campaign, the entire process seems simple.
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Guest blogging has been around for a number of years, long before it became apopular marketing method. It began as a way for knowledgeable experts and bloggersto share their insights with readers of other websites.
For today’s business owner, guest blogging involves writing high-quality blogposts and getting them posted on various blogs in your industry. Bloggers are gettingfresh, insightful content for their sites and your business is getting exposure to theblog’s readers and devoted followers.
Many people think that guest blogging is simply a way to increase traffic and buildlinks. While these are two great ways that guest blogging campaigns can help yourcompany, they are far from the only practical uses.
Goals for Guest Blogging Campaigns
There are numerous different goals that businesses set for their guest bloggingcampaigns. Your individual goals will help determine the blogs you target, the articlesyou prepare, and where you link the posts’ readers to.
A few of the most common guest blogging goals include:
1)Networking and Building Relationships – Ifyou’re looking to enhance your company’s long-term prospects, consider networking and buildingrelationships with your industry’s top bloggers.
In many fields, leading blogs aren’t just the placeswhere people go to stay current with industryhappenings. They’re the sites that decision makersand potential buyers frequent to research products,services or strategies for their businesses. These
sites commonly have a significant amount of influence.
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Forming a professional relationship with blog owners can lead to your business beingportrayed positively in front of thousands (possibly tens or hundreds of thousands) offuture customers for free.
2)Establishing Expertise – Guest blogging isalso a great way to establish expertise in yourfield. Whether you’re new to the spotlight andtrying to get exposure or you’re a long-runningbusiness looking for another accomplishment tobrag to clients about, guest posts can meet yourneeds.
Using guest blogging to establish expertise can bedifficult, but its benefits often far outweigh theworkload.
One of the biggest challenges of this goal is thatyou’ll be targeting the most well-known,respected blogs in your industry. These guestposting opportunities don’t come easily, and a lot of your time may be spent trying toget the attention of the site owners.
You can get bloggers’ attention in a variety of ways, such as engaging with theirsocial profiles, commenting on their blogs and mentioning them in your blog posts.You may also want to get guest posts published on a few mid-tier websites to providelive examples of your work.
When you do get in contact with site owners and have your pitch approved, you’llneed to be ready to create some dynamite content. Guest posts working to establishyour expertise should be informative and comprehensive resources like case studies,and try to make them the most in-depth articles on their topics available online.
3)Getting Traffic and Increasing BrandAwareness – If you’re looking to increase yourcompany’s exposure and market position, guestblogging can be a great way to get your name out.While you should never waste time with low-quality blogs, campaigns aiming to drive trafficshould be casting a wide net, posting on a varietyof different websites.
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Unlike other goals which are best achieved by working with top bloggers in yourindustry, this one is less concerned about a website’s clout and more about theamount of traffic it’s receiving.
Sure, top-notch websites may generate the most traffic, but the effort needed to getyour guest posts published is often significant. Instead, focus on blogs that muchmore easily accept guest posts while still having a solid amount of traffic.
Be prepared to write a good number of articles because increasing brand awarenessand generating traffic is about maximum exposure. Not only will you want to post onwebsites within your niche, but also on ones related to the interests of your potentialbuyers.
Perhaps the most important part of guest posts for driving traffic is the call-to-action.Without a strong reason for readers to visit your website, you’ll be hard-pressed tosee much success.
Focus on creating powerful bylines that motivate readers to visit your landing pages,and consider creating landing pages customized for each niche you’re targeting.
4)Generating Leads – Lead generation is one ofthe most common reasons why businessesimplement guest blogging campaigns. By givingreaders a reason to visit your landing page andsign up for your list, you can see big sales gains ina short period of time.
When trying to generate leads, the content of yourguest posts is highly important, but so are yourlanding pages and the copy on your own website.
Readers are looking for answers to specific problems. Your articles should serve as aguide for them, pushing them to receive more information and advice on yourwebsite. This makes your byline links very important.
Once you get readers clicking through the links in your bio, it’s on you to ensure theyfollow through and convert. Your landing pages should be highly customized to eachwebsite or niche you write for. Your landing page should provide some furtherinformation about the topic, but be careful not to give too much away for free!
To get visitors signing up for your email list, landing pages should be offering
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something valuable to them, such as an in-depth report or online course that furtherexpands upon the problems they’re facing.
5)Building Backlinks – Recently, Google’s faceof SEO, Matt Cutts, announced that using guestblogging as a tactic to build backlinks is no longerbeneficial. While there is some truth there, it is notexactly correct.
Building backlinks through guest blogging shouldnever be the main goal of your campaign though.In the past, unscrupulous business owners woulduse spammy guest posts with low quality content
and irrelevant blogs to jump up in the SERPs. Google has been working recently toprevent this.
That doesn’t mean that there aren’t SEO benefits from guest blogging. Google islooking out for “unnatural link building”, such as having hundreds of guest postspop-up on unrelated, low-quality blogs within a matter of days.
If your guest blogging campaign is targeting quality blogs with unique content withinyour posts that are relevant to both the target blog and your business and you providevalue both by the content and your links, you’ll benefit from the backlinks.Using guest blogging to build backlinks should be a secondary (or even a passive)goal – one that you may not spend much time focusing on, but will still reap thebenefits.
To make sure your guest posts aren’t viewed as spam in Google’s eyes, you should:
Link to high-authority sites (especially other blogs you’re targeting).Use relevant pictures and videos throughout your posts.Not use exact anchor texts for your linksEnsure links to your site direct visitors to informative, resource-quality pages rather than your sales or product pages.
If you’re solely considering guest blogging as a way to build links, however, youshould rethink your plan. Look at the other ways in which guest blogging can helpyour business, or focus a broader link-building strategy.
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Choosing the Goals for Your Guest Blogging Campaign
Every business will have its own unique goals for its guest blogging campaigns.Some companies may even have multiple campaigns targeting different outcomes, allrunning at the same time.
There are a number of great ways to find the goals that are right for you, including:
1. See where your business is lacking and has room to improve. If you’re a new startup in an industry of established giants, gaining exposure and traffic could be a great place to begin.
2. Take a look at the kinds of guest blogging campaigns that your competitors are running. This can be as easy as catching up on some of the more popular blogs in your niche. Seek out guest contributions, follow the links, and dissect your competitors’ campaigns piece-by-piece.
3.Consider short-term and long-term expectations. If you need to see immediate results, think about creating traffic and generating leads. Over a longertime frame, building relationships with bloggers and establishing yourself as an expert may have the biggest impact.
Understanding the power of guest blogging and determining the structure of yourcampaign is a must-do before you begin. By starting out knowing the goals you wantto achieve, you can plan the path that you need to take to get there, check thefollowing blog posts for more details:
What Exactly is Guest Blogging and Just How Can It Help Your Business?What are the Goals of Your Guest Blogging Campaign?Powerful Tips for Building Beneficial Relationships Via Guest BloggingUsing Guest Blogging to Become a Recognized Expert in Your Industry
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Supercharge Your Website’s Exposure and Brand Awareness through GuestBloggingHow to Generate Leads through Strategic Guest Blogging CampaignsHow to Best Use Guest Blogging to Boost SEO ResultsWhat Should Be the Goals of Your Guest Blogging Campaign?
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Guest blogging campaigns focus a lot on identifying, contacting and preparingcontent for target blogs, but they also rely heavily on your business’ own website.
Before beginning a campaign, your website should be not only complete and testedfor functionality, but it should also have a regularly updated blog.
If you don’t have a business blog, you’re going to run into difficulty getting yourguest post pitches accepted, and an even harder time generating results from yourefforts. That’s because most article readers click through in order to find moreinformation – if your website doesn’t offer that, they’ll be quick to head on their wayto the next link.
Not only is having a blog on your business website highly important for guestblogging, but it also offers other benefits like:
Organic traffic from the search engines
Integration with social media platforms
Engagement from potential buyers
With a healthy blog in place, the website owners that you’ll be contacting can get afirst-hand look at your business, level of expertise and writing style. It will alsoprovide you with a great place to link to in the bylines of your guest posts.
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Service Provider Vs eCommerce: The Right Links for Your Guest Posts
Landing pages can come in a wide range of shapes and sizes, and should varydepending on your business model and the goals of your guest blogging campaign.They’re important pieces of your overall strategy, but they can be easy to create ifyou’re following proven techniques.
If your company provides a service to buyers, your landing page should go on to offeradditional solutions to readers’ problems. By expanding upon the content in yourguest posts, your landing pages showcase your business as being highly knowledge inyour field and able to help clients achieve the best results.
The landing pages for a service provider should be highly informative and verycomplete resources. They can also offer comprehensive reports or courses inexchange for visitors filling out their contact information.
For owners of eCommerce businesses, it may be tempting to link guest posts directlyto your products or sales pages. Even for this type of business, having a blog is veryimportant.
Not only does linking directly to your sales pages come across as “spammy” toGoogle, it can also be too straight-forward of an approach for many consumers. ForeCommerce websites, linking to an informative blog article can help increasecustomer confidence and encourage more sales.
Linking to their homepage is also an acceptable practice and often the best strategyfor eCommerce companies. That doesn’t make your business blog any less necessary,and it should still be an integral part of your website.
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What Type of Links and Landing Pages to Choose To Achieve your Goals?
In addition to choosing landing pages based onyour business model, you should also take yourcampaign’s goals into consideration.
You still have to put some effort into your landingpage, however. Some visitors will still make theirway to your site, and you should aim to maximizeany traffic you get. You also need to avoid“spammy” landing pages, as this will turn awayblog owners.
For building relationships and networking with bloggers¸ your choice of landingpages isn’t as important as with the other goals. Here, you want something that willappeal both visually and informatively to bloggers, but the details aren’t vital. Yourhome page or blog is usually the best choice!
When you’re guest blogging to show your expertise, you should be showcasingyour professionalism through your guest post links. This includes linking to yourwebsite’s homepage or social media profiles.
If you’re trying to generate traffic and increase brand awareness, your link andlanding page choice becomes much more important.
You want links that will encourage readers to click through, and that means usinglanding pages that are highly relevant to visitors’ interests. You may even want tocreate unique landing pages for each article, so that your traffic will always be guidedto pages that are related to what they were seeking help for.
Since your guest posts will cover a range of target blogs both in and outside of yourindustry, one or two generic landing pages won’t be targeted well enough to appeal tothe majority of your traffic.
Your landing page and link selections are perhaps the most important whenyou’re guest blogging to generate leads.
The landing pages should be extremely targeted to your readers and expand muchmore in-depth on the problems they’re seeking answers for (that your company canhelp them solve). Not only can these landing pages be labor-intensive to create, butyou should also spend the time optimizing them to convert as highly as possible.
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To garner signups, these landing pages may also offer free resources through e-mail,such as an online course or eBook, as long as they’re related to the questions readerswant solved.
Again guest blogging to build backlinks should always be a secondary or tertiarygoal, however even if that is your goal you should not link to your product/servicepages. The reason is that by doing that you don’t offer any value to readers and thatkind of links can be easily spotted as unnatural by google. Instead you should focusin creating in-depth resources that provide solutions to whatever your possible clientswould be looking for! That kind of resources are also much easier to rank comparedto service pages
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If you want your guest blogging efforts to succeed, you need to make your posts count. Finding the best target blogs for reaching your goals can make or break a campaign.
How can you decide which blogs to target? Should you only choose ones related toyour business, or should you branch out into other similar niches? It all depends onyour goals.
Blogs within your industry are great sources of targeted traffic, but can mean alimited selection of websites for smaller niches. This can be bad if you’re trying toget your brand’s name out there, but is perfect for building relationships withbloggers and establishing expertise.
Being open to blogs in other, related niches gives you a much larger pool of targetwebsites to choose from. This means that you’ll have the opportunity to reach a lotmore potential buyers, making this choice perfect for generating traffic and buildingyour email list.
Sometime it’s Who You Know…
The first place that you should start looking for target blogs is your existing contactlist. You may be surprised at how many site owners you already know.
Have friends or business acquaintances in the same industry as you? If you’re notcompetitors, they may very well be open to the idea of accepting guest posts.
You should also take a few minutes to go back through the articles on your ownwebsite. Have any other site owners posted comments? That means they’re at leastfamiliar with your brand and may be more receptive to receiving contributions.
Another thing that you should take a look at within your business blog is which otherwebsites you’ve linked to in your articles. Blog owners love inbound links, and maybe more likely to accept your guest post pitch if you’ve linked to and engaged withthem in the past.
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… Or Where You Look
Google can also be your friend when trying to find guest posting opportunities. That’sif you know how to use it.
By using specific Google query commands, you can make sure the search enginereturns only the most relevant results for tracking down target blogs accepting guestposts.The most effective way to narrow the list is to use the “inanchor” command.
By using:
inanchor:”keyword/keyphrase”
You’ll return only the webpages which feature your keyword within a link. This isperfect for finding pages related to your industry, but by adding other query termsyou can slim down the results to search for only guest posts.
The following search:
Would show all of the webpages that have your keyword within a link’s anchor text,as well as the phrase “guest blogger” somewhere on the page. The possibilities hereare endless.
Other query modifiers to try include:
“contributed by”“guest post”“author bio”“about the author”
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You can also hunt for blogs’ guest posting guidelines pages through Google. Includeyour “keyword/keyphrase” in the query alongside commonly found phrases like“write for us” or “become a contributor”.
To make your search easier, the Google query common of OR can prevent you fromhaving to conduct dozens of different searches.
One way to use OR to track down guest posts would be:
Another great way to use Google for tracking down target blogs is to look through theportfolio of professional guest bloggers. These professionals get paid to write guestposts on hundreds of different sites, often within the same industry.
A quick look though the archives of any blog accepting guests posts will often turn upmultiple posts from frequent contributors. Although each guest post may be different,most professional guest bloggers use similar bylines from guest post to guest post.
To hunt down other websites an author has written for, Google their name, along witha section from their standard byline.
For example, if a byline read “Barack Obama is a professional writer who contributesto numerous blogs” , you should search:
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You could also use the inpostauthor Google query command, which helps searchthrough articles with Google authorship assigned.
inpostauthor:”Barack Obama”
Would return articles which the writer Barack Obama has claimed Google authorshipfor. Most leading professional guest bloggers use authorship in order to rank better inthe results.
Be Sure to Spy on Your Competition
If you’ve seen that your competitors areconducting guest blogging campaigns of theirown, searching through their backlink profile is agreat way to see the guest posts they’ve written.This will lead to relevant blogs that are likelyaccepting new contributions.
There are a number of great tools that you can useto track down your competition’s backlinks. Someare free, while the most powerful usually come
with a fee.
A few great free tools include:
SEO SpyGlassBacklink WatchSmall SEO Tools
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If you’re willing to invest a little bit of money up front, these great paid tools canhelp you find potential target blogs more quickly and in greater numbers:
AhrefsMajestic SEOOpen Site Explorer
None backlink checker will be able to locate all of the links pointing towards adomain, but the most comprehensive and professional checkers will often offer manymore results, sometimes in the tens of thousands.
Guest blogging communities are another great resource. They’re dedicated tobringing together bloggers looking for guest posts and business owners hoping to findguest post opportunities.
The most popular ones are MyBlogGuest and Blogger LinkUp.
MyBlogGuest is a community platform which gives you the option to post contentthat you’ve written or list the topics you’d like to write, browse forums and interactwith other businesses and blog owners, or search through lists of articles and topicsthat blog owners are currently seeking.
Blogger LinkUp is a slightly different concept. Instead of having only a website tobrowse, they send out a comprehensive email list at different points throughout theweek. Each list is split up into “Guest Posts Available” and “Guest Posts Wanted”,allowing you to easily peruse through all of the available options.
Don’t Forget About Social Media
With today’s heavy reliance on social media, itcan be one of the best places to find guestblogging opportunities.
Check through your friends and extended contactson there. Interact with a related Facebook pageregularly? See if they’re accepting guest posts.
You can also use sites like SocialSearcher andAllMyTweets to search for helpfulterms like “write for us” or “guest blogger” acrossthe entire social media world.
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Oftentimes, you can contact the blogs seeking writers through social media directlyon their profile page. This can make getting in touch much easier than contactingthrough email or a blog’s contact form.
For more information on blog prospecting for guest posting check the followingposts:
Guest Blogging: Which Blogs You Should Target?How to Find Guest Blogging Opportunities Using Your ContactsHow to Use Google to Find Blogs Accepting Guest PostsHow to Spy Your Competitors to Find Guest Blogging OpportunitiesUsing Guest Blogging Communities to Find Bloggers Seeking Guest PostsBlog Prospecting: How to Take Advantage of Professional Guest BloggersUsing Twitter and Facebook to Find Guest Blogging Opportunities
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With your list of target blogs in hand, you may be ready to start firing off emailspitching your guest posts.
Regretfully, guest posting is quite popular and many bloggers receive many guestpost requests daily, so you may have to do a little bit of ground work building arapport with blog owners to get noticed.
Connecting with blog owners is important because they often field five to ten guestpost requests every single day – and that’s only the med-popularity blogs. For largeones, your emails can easily get lost in a sea of other pitches.
By building up the beginnings of a relationship before making your pitch, blogowners will be much more likely to recognize your name and open your message.
A few great ways to connect with target blogs and their owners include:
Commenting on their blog posts. This shows them that you’re not only aregular reader but also lets them see your writing style and level of knowledge.
Interacting with them directly on social media. This could be posting to theirwall or mentioning them in a post on Facebook. For Twitter, you can respond totheir tweets and interact with them directly.
Sharing and recommending their content. Blog owners love when people sharetheir posts. If you’re doing this regularly, they’ll take notice.
You can also use your business’ own blog to reach to blog owners.
If you’re linking to blogs within your posts, the site owners will see it in their blog’sdashboard. When done out of context this can look like spam, but when used as arelevant resource to aid one of your posts, it will put a smile on any blogger’s face.
These outbound links are not only great for building relationships with your targetblogs, but they can also help your own website rank better in Google and other searchengines.
Even though site owners will usually be informed when you link to one of their post,
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don’t hesitate to send them a message anyway.
Tell them you found their content interesting and informative, and wanted to share itwith your readers. If nothing else, this is a great way to make initial contact.
The following posts will give you a better idea on how you should approachbloggers:
Connect with Bloggers before Pitching Your Guest PostsHow to Use Your Blog to Get the Attention of Other Bloggers
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When it comes to getting your guest post pitches accepted, the key is in the way thatyou present your offer.
Your pitch message should be professional and straight-forward, but you shouldavoid writing it like a formal business letter. Instead, imagine you’re communicatingwith a professional acquaintance that you’ve known for years.
A few points to take note of:
Don’t send your email from a free provider such as Gmail or Yahoo. Instead,use an account from your business’ domain.
Refer to the blog by name (instead of like www.targetblog.com), both in theemail’s subject line and the body.
Always refer to the blog owner or editor by their first name if you can find it.Even if not prominently displayed, most bloggers will list this informationsomewhere – often on the “About” or “Contact” pages.
Your pitch email is an opportunity to stand out. Make sure you show that you’reknowledgeable on the topics you’re asking to write about, but don’t come acrossas cocky or overconfident.
Don’t inquire about whether the blog is actively accepting guest posts, or aboutother things already mentioned on their guest post guidelines page. You shouldalready have researched this information early on in your campaign.
When you receive a positive response from a site owner, always take the time to writethem back. Acknowledge their message and verify that you are beginning to work onthe guest post.
If your pitch is denied or ignored, don’t give up. Continue to communicate with theblogger, reiterating that you would enjoy writing a guest contribution for theirwebsite. Try to figure outwhy your offer was rejected. Take the time to showcasethem other guest posts, and make them understand that the content you’re offeringwill be top-notch.
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Email isn’t always the most effective way to get in touch with site owners, however.Many bloggers are highly active on social media, making platforms like Facebookand Twitter great for pitching your guest post offers.
A quick search of popular social platforms can often turn up bloggers’ profiles. Ifyou’re not having luck locating them that way, explore their blogs and even theirguest posts on other websites. You’re likely to find social links on most blogs’homepage, as well as in the author’s bio box.
One reason that social media often trumps email when pitching guest posts is that it’smuch more personal – social sites allow bloggers to associate your name with a faceand identify you as a real person. Email can be much more impersonal, making iteasier for your message to be skipped over and deleted. Your social profiles also offermore insight into your business and level of expertise.
What to Write?
Some people advocate writing articles before even pitching ideas to blog owners.While this can help progress the campaign more quickly, it often leads to wasted timecreating content that’s not customized to a specific website or not exactly what theblog owner had in mind.
You should work with each site owner to come up with topics that are highly relevantto both your business and their blog.
That means staying away from titles that are highly promotional or otherwise lookmore like an advertisement than a quality guest post. Instead, peruse through thetarget blog, getting an idea of the specific types of articles it publishes.
Once you understand what type of content the website is looking for, coming up withtopics is easy. Oftentimes on the blog guidelines page, site owners will list exactlywhich topics they’re interested in receiving. You can also browse similar blogs forpotential content ideas.
A great way to choose concepts that bloggers will love is to offer an article thatsupplements other existing posts on their site. This not only means new, relevantcontent for the blog owner, but also a guest post which adds more value to thepopular content they’ve already written.
Use this information to suggest 2-3 different topics to bloggers. The best titles are
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ones that are catchy and crafted to generate a large number of clicks.
Keeping Track of Everything
With many guest blogging campaigns, especially those focused on sending traffic toyour company website or generating leads, you’re going to be working with aconsiderable number of target blogs. Without proper recordkeeping, this step in theprocess can quickly become confusing.
The solution? Keeping track of the bloggers you’ve contact, responses you’ve gottenand requests you’ve had approved. By far, the best way to do this is with the help of aMicrosoft Excel or Google Docs spreadsheet.
The spreadsheet should be all-inclusive with as much information related to yourpitch requests as you can gather.
How and when did you attempt to contact a blog owner?
Have they responded?
What topics have you suggested?
When did you promise to have the guest article completed by?
Not only will this help keep track of who you’ve spoken with and who hasn’tresponded yet, but it will also help determine which guest post pitches are working,and which techniques are failing to generate results.
Writing the Perfect Guest Post
When it comes to actually writing your guest posts, you may think that you’ve finallyreached the easy part of the campaign. After all, you’re already highly knowledgeableon the topics you’re writing about, right?
While the articles’ content may not be much of a problem, you still need to pay closeattention to the style and tone of your writing. While a specific word count isn’timportant, your posts should be long enough to fully explain your topic. They alsoneed to meet the requirements set by the site own.
Before you even begin typing the first sentence, take a moment to go back over the
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blog’s guest post guidelines page to refresh yourself on any specific instructions thatsite may have. Nothing frustrates bloggers and editors more than a guest author whoignores instructions.
You also need to plan out your post to fit in well with the other content on the blogand be interesting to the blog’s regular audience. At the same time, the style should beconducive to your goals.
For example, if your campaign is focusing on establishing expertise, make sure thatyour guest posts are highly-informative with unique insights and a strong display ofyour professional knowledge.
Likewise, articles meant to generate leads should leave the reader satisfied with thesolution you’ve provided within the guest post, but intrigued to find out more aboutthe subject on your website. Nobody likes boring blog posts, so be sure your writingexcites readers and motivates them to learn more
You should also be writing the guests posts to appeal aesthetically and be easy toread. This means using simple words, short sentences, subtitles and bullet pointsthroughout the content.
Links are also important. On top of linking to other posts on the target blog you’rewriting for, you should also link to resources on your business blog, as well as on theother websites you’re targeting in your campaign.
Each guest post should have a concluding paragraph that helps bring together thedifferent concepts you’ve presented, as well as pique readers’ interest in following thelinks in your byline.
For most goals, the byline is the most important part of your article. This shortsentence or two provides insight into you and your business, and should contain apowerful call-to-action directing readers to perform the action you’re hoping for,whether it’s following your social profile or clicking through to your landing page.
Although your byline should consist of a call-to-action, it shouldn’t come across as“spammy” or overly promotional. Be direct and to the point, and convince readersthat your company is the best, rather than just telling them so.
How to Write the Perfect Guest Post PitchUsing Social Media to Pitch Your Guest PostWhat Topics Should You Suggest to Bloggers?
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How to Keep Track of Your ProgressHow to Write the Perfect Guest PostHow to Write the Perfect Author Bio
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Your campaign may be winding down once your guest posts get published, but it’sstill not quite over. The next step is to take the time to promote your various livearticles, driving traffic to the target blogs and as a result your website.The promotion of your live guest posts is important because it:
Is ultimately promoting and helping accomplish the goals of your guestblogging campaign.
Makes site owners more likely to invite you to contribute in the future.
Helps you remain active and connected to current followers and clients, andincrease their engagement with your brand.
There are a number of great ways to promote your guest posts including social media,your own site’s blog, and linking to them within the other guest posts you’repreparing.
Making the effort to promote your guest posts is a win-win situation for everyoneinvolved. Viral marketing tactics can result in a huge influx of additional readers andpotential customers.
In order to maximize the effectiveness of your posts, as well as increase your chancesof being invited guest post in the future, make sure that you’re interacting directlywith your articles’ readers.
This can be as easy as engaging with people who share your article across socialmedia or replying to questions and comments left by readers directly on the post.
By actively encouraging conversations among the posts’ readers, you’re adding valueto the target blog and increasing your potential clients’ level of engagement at thesame time.
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Measuring the Effectiveness of Your Guest Posts and Guest Blogging Campaign
In the end, you should go through the different published guest posts and documentthe results of each one.
Just like with keeping track of your guest post pitches, tracking the results of yourarticles is best done through a spreadsheet.
A few of the different metrics you should document include:
The number of comments each article receives.
The SEO metrics of each blog that published your guest posts
How much traffic is being sent from each article to your website or landingpage?
Are visitors to your website actively engaging with it, or quickly leaving?
If you’re generating leads or promoting visitors to take a specific action, whatrate of traffic is converting?
By tracking the various different aspects of each post and conducting A/B testing onyour landing pages, you can identify what’s working to help you reach your goals,and what isn’t.
If you’re still continuing to post guest articles as part of your guest bloggingcampaign, you can make the changes needed to optimize future contributions. If thiscampaign is over, the results can still provide insight that will make your nextcampaign much simpler and more profitable.
After everything is said and done, your entire guest post campaign should bemeasured against the goals you set early on. Did you reach your targets, or did yourun into unexpected problems along the way?
Some goals are easier than others to measure. For example, you can set quantifiablegoals for how much traffic you hope to receive from a campaign, but measuringperceived expertise or how well relationship-building is going can be much tougher.
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A few ways to determine if your campaign was an overall success:
Networking and Building Expertise – Are the owners of your target blogs pleasedwith your contributions and willing to accept future guest posts? Do you maintainregular communication with them?
Establish Expertise – Are customers and clients responding positively to your posts,and are they well received in your industry? Are they the most informative resourceson their topics out there?
Getting Traffic and Increasing Brand Awareness – How much of an increase haveyou seen in traffic from your posts? Are you receiving more traffic from other sourcesdue to familiarity with your brand?
Generating Leads – Is your website seeing an increase in traffic and are conversionrates at the levels you had hoped for? If not, conversion optimization may be the nextstep.
Link Building – Have your pages moved up in the SERPs? Are you seeing moreorganic traffic to your website?
If you’re finding the results you’ve been hoping for, your campaign was a successand you can take the lessons learned and apply them to future guest blogging efforts.If your results fell short of your expectations, sit down and determine where thetrouble arose in order to help ensure success and avoid making the same mistake nexttime.
Guest blogging isn’t always easy, and can take some effort and trial and error to getright, but it is still one of the most effective ways to grow a small business.If you need more information on what to do after your guest posts get publishedcheck the following posts:
Promoting Your Guest Posts for Maximum SuccessWhy You Should Interact with Your Guest Posts’ Readers?How to Measure the Effectiveness of Your Guest PostsHow to Measure if Your Guest Post Campaign was a Success
All-in-all, putting together a successful guest blogging campaign takes time,knowledge and dedication. It’s a long-term process, and not one that will generateresults overnight. Guest blogging can generate powerful long term results though, andis one of the best ways for small businesses to increase revenue and experience high
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levels of returns on their marketing budget.
“If you don’t have the time to develop your own guest blogging campaign, or simplywant to take advantage of our experience and knowledge to generate the best resultspossible, we offer customized guest posting services designed specifically for yourbusiness’ needs.”
Thanks For Reading! :)
Kostas
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