We love guest posts – and we also love to be a guest blogger. Although we did not do much guest posting recently, we are totally aware of the power of guest posting, and it is one big point on our agenda for the next couple of weeks or months to be more active with guest posting.
There are so many benefits of guest posting like growing your brand awareness, getting your content in front of an already established, additional audience, growing your social accounts and simply building connections to other bloggers and professionals from your niche.
But when we first started guest posting a couple of years back, we were not fully aware of what we should have done in order to get even more out of our efforts. We have learned a lot since then. Running a blog ourselves that gets a lot of guest posting requests has opened my eyes even further.
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So here are 10 easy ways to get even more out of your guest blogging efforts:
1. Choose your host blog with care
Posting on one blog will be much more beneficial than posting on another for various reasons. Of course, it makes a difference if the topic and niche of the blog fits your audience or not. But there is much more to consider:
Some blogs give your author bio a prominent place – others don’t. If the information about you is hidden on a second website and much harder to find for the blog audience, than it is likely that your results from guest posting on this blog will not be the best.
Some blogs allow you to link back to your own website from the article; others don’t.
Some blogs are hard to communicate with; others are very open and friendly.
It is not only the traffic and social audience of the blog that can make your guest post a success; there is more to look out for.
And if your content is awesome, then a blog will be thankful for it – keep that in mind.
2. The Topic And Niche Does Count
The better the audience of a blog matches your target audience the better will be your results. If your business is targeting a close niche, it most of the time makes much more sense to guest post on a smaller niche blog with a topic that really speaks to your target group, than choosing a huge blog that has only very loose connections to your target group and writing about a totally different topic.
After all, one reason for guest posting is to show your expertise in your niche. Posting about an unrelated topic to a larger but untargeted group of people will most of the time not be your best choice.
3. Beware of the links
Even though Google declared guest posting for SEO dead a long time ago, the links you earn from your guest blogging still count for your search ranking. While you should not try to get as many crappy posts out as possible as long as they include a link back to your website, IF you are participating in guest blogging, make sure to link back to your website either in the post itself or in your author bio.
Some blogs allow you to link to your website within the actual article. If you do that, make sure your linked website really provides additional information. An unrelated link within the article that was clearly only put there for SEO reasons can easily be a reason to reject your post.Also, the guest author bio is usually a great place to set a link.
Also, the guest author bio is usually a great place to set a link.
4. Utilize your Guest Author Bio
The author bio is usually the place where you are relatively free to promote yourself: mention your company, a product or a recently released freebie. You can mention social accounts and websites – and link to them.
A perfect author bio also includes some more personal information. Do not make yourself sound like a robot or marketing machine.
It is an art to write the perfect author bio and with guest blogging most of the time you have to fit it all into 2-3 sentences. If you want to learn more about the perfect author bio, read this.
5. Build your social audience
Getting a link to your website is only one way of getting long lasting success out of a guest post. You can also use your author bio to mention your social accounts and build your social audience.
When I first started out with guest blogging my own social presence was almost nonexistent with just a couple of hundred followers on Twitter. And one well-running article on a larger blog easily helped me to double this number.
If you want to grow a targeted social audience fast without paying for ads: Guest Blogging is a great way to achieve that.
6. Build Your Email List
This is something I totally missed when I started with guest blogging. And I am not alone. Do you know that you can build your email subscribers with guest blogging?
Of course, you can guide people to your blog, where they can see a signup form and hopefully will subscribe. But that is not the most efficient way to do this.
You can also directly guide the audience to a subscription form. This will give you better results. But there is a better way: Why not offer a freebie in your author bio that matches the interest of the readers of your guest post? If they want the freebie, they have to give you their email address.
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This is one of the most efficient ways to build your email list if your blog and your own audience are still small.
5. The Power of A Call-To-Action
Now, I have already told you that you should mention your social accounts and maybe a freebie in your guest author bio. But did you know that HOW you do that can make all the difference?
So, instead of simply mentioning your social accounts or a freebie you offer in your author bio, make sure you also include a call-to-action. How? Let me show you some examples:
Instead of
She is also on Twitter.
Use something like
You can follow her on Twitter.
Or if you offer a freebie, instead of
She recently published an ebook on this awesome topic.
Go for
You can download her ebook on awesome topic here!
I am sure there are some even more efficient call-to-actions. Do some research and optimize your author bio. Your effort is going to pay back.
8. Optimize on Your end
Now, you included a call-to-action and links to your ebook and social accounts into your author bio. You think you are all set? Wrong! You can still do better!
You need to optimize everything on your end. Make sure your social accounts look appealing and post updates that are relevant to your target audience. A picture and a bio is a must.
If you are going for the freebie for more subscribers to your email list, what you need is a perfectly optimized landing page. Getting it right on your end can easily be the difference between success and failure. And you do not want to miss out on guest blogging success because you failed to optimize something where you have all the freedom to do as you like.
Guest blogging takes a lot of effort, and you have to comply with the rules of the host blog. Losing out because you failed to optimize your social accounts or your landing pages is simply stupid.
9. Give Your Post A Push
Once your post is published, you should always share it on your social channels. Even if your channels are still small and the impact your social shares will have on the reader numbers, there are good reasons to always share your guest posts.
For one, you can never have enough awesome content to share on your social channels. And second, a guest post gives you and your expertise additional credit. After all, you know enough to be published on this great blog, that’s awesome, and your audience will notice it. Do not miss out on your extra chance for branding yourself and showing off your worthiness.
10. Do not forget to monitor the numbersThere are so many benefits of guest posting. And there are also many chances of optimizing your efforts for more guest posting success.
Sometimes I get the feeling that monitoring is a totally underrated task in online marketing. Especially in a venture that includes considerable time and effort as guest posting, you should watch closely if you get out of it what you wanted.
Here are some numbers you should be watching – depending on your goals for your guest posting you may want to look out for some more or other numbers
referral traffic
social shares
comments
signups and sales
social media followers
And for long term results you should also monitor search traffic, brand awareness and your reputation.
Guest blogging is an awesome way of giving your online marketing a push in so many ways. Are you already participating in guest blogging? What is your experience? Do you have some more tips to share?
