5 Easy Steps To Build A Guest Posting Strategy That Rocks

These days, one doesn’t have to prove that guest posting is useful. However, today’s guest posting isn’t what it used to be – you cannot use the same strategies that were in vogue several years ago, unless you want problems with Google.

The question is: what are you supposed to do to get results? Let’s find out.

Step 1: Finding Viable Guest Blogging Targets

Before you start your guest posting campaign, make sure your efforts are going to pay off. You should find viable targets for guest posting – blogs and resources which backlinks that will increase the authority of your website and bring you traffic and potential clients.

You cannot just go around randomly offering to write for different blogs –take into account whether they accept posts, what their niche is, and whether they are an authority in their field.

There are dozens of tactics aimed at it. For example, Passive Marketing claims that one of the most effective ways of finding guest posting targets it uses is, ironically, making it widely known that you accept guest posts yourself.

Action Item

Find blogs that accept guest posts and suit your niche. You can do it in a variety of ways:

• Google search strings;
• Already existing target lists (sorted by niche);
• Author Bios in your niche;
• Blog comments;
• And many others.

Step 2: Reaching out

Sometimes guest posts appear after somebody reaches out to you and asks for one. Yet sit in one place and wait for somebody to come, and you are going to wait very long; and important blogs are very unlikely to ask people around like this. This means you have to reach out to bloggers, administrators and webmasters on your own.

Kate Erickson from EOFire provides an interesting case study based on her own experience, providing insights into what you should do to persuade important bloggers to publish your posts. There is also lots of other advice on how to approach this stage, for example be actively engaged in networking or promote your own brand.

Action Item

Actively reach out to the bloggers you’ve chosen:

• Interact with the blog so that they know you;
• Clearly define the blog’s topic and the kind of content they publish;
• Analyze the blog’s style;
• Brainstorm the ideas and titles for your posts;
• Suggest writing a guest post, with the ideas and titles at the ready.

Step 3: Preparing Sales’ Pitch

Be honest with yourself: when you reach out to a blog and ask them to publish your post, it means that you need them, whereas they can do without you. If you are dealing with big authority blogs (and what’s the point of it otherwise?), you’ll have to deal with some serious sales resistance.

Mary Jaksch, chief editor of Write to Done, deals with a lot of pitches in her line of work, and in this excellent post she enumerates the tricks she uses herself, and finds them attractive when used by others.

Action Item

Approach each blog individually. Be respectful yet confident. Focus your letters on what the blogger you are talking to needs, not what you need. Make it short and snappy.

Step 4: Work On Your Guest Bio

At the bottom of most guest posts, you usually see a couple lines of text, a link and author’s photo. As far as you are concerned, it is the most important part of a guest post, so treat it accordingly.

Take a bio from this article, for example. It reflects the author’s personality, gives you a reason to click the link, and is memorable – being barely three lines long.

Action Item

Use your guest bio wisely. If you are not given a word limit by the blogger, impose one on yourself. Link it to your landing page. Be interesting and original.

Step 5: Promote Your Posts

The fact that a post is published doesn’t mean that your job is done. On the contrary – you have to do a lot to squeeze as much out of it as possible, both for your own benefit and to improve your standing with the blogger.

Jawad Khan recounts an experience with a guest post that brought many more social shares and comments simply because the author actively promoted it via social media. It resulted in greater benefits for all concerned and an altogether different attitude from the blog’s team.

Action Item

Make sure to draw traffic towards your guest post – from your own blog, from your social media accounts. Promote the post by answering comments – in other words, do everything to show how great you are as a guest blogger.

Opinions on guest posting as a promotion strategy vary from “complete rubbish” to “the best way to draw traffic your way”. Some of these opinions are personal preferences; but in the long run, how well it is going to work for you is only determined by how well you understand it. Hopefully, these tips will help you.