Have a strategy
You need to have a strategy in place to give you direction and guide you through the process. Identify what you want to achieve from a guest blogger strategy – your goals will shape your strategy and the tactics that you need to deploy to be successful. Research the keywords that you are targeting to help shape your strategy. You may harbour an idealistic view of what will be successful, but often the metrics will contradict your initial thoughts – be scientific in your approach to your strategy – work with numbers and not your emotions!
Identify guest post sites
If you want to use the blog as a machine to help raise your ranking position in search engine results pages (SERPs), you need to reach out to the right blogs. Ask yourself the following questions when deciding on what blogs to reach out to:
- Do they have an engaged audience? Look at the blog’s comment section; are people leaving positive feedback? If so, and the comments are genuine, then you’re onto a winner.
- Do they share their own content via social media? Nowadays people tend to turn to social media for content updates. Therefore, if a publishing site shares their articles over Twitter and Facebook, you’re going to garner more exposure.
- Does this blog speak to my target audience? There’s no point selling cat food on a fashion website, is there? Make sure you’re reaching out to blogs who will be speaking to your preferred audience.
- Is the blog active? Check when their last post was and how often they post content. If they don’t do it enough and have large breaks between articles, then they may not be too bothered with engaging with their audience!
Usually, blogs looking for guest writers will include a ‘write for us’ section on the page. However, if you can’t this phrase, there’s no harm in reaching out to them with genuine questions.
Content
The content that you write needs to appeal to the publishing site’s audience. You need to write for the audience rather than for yourself. It’s tricky to master and easy to get wrong. Have a look at the most popular posts on the site – the number of comments, likes, and shares – to get a picture of how to frame your keywords and style and tone of the article. Successful and quality content is unique, engaging and helps you achieve your defined goals.
Keep outreach records
You need to keep records of who you have contacted and pitched to. Create a simple spreadsheet to record who you have communicated to and what you have pitched. You don’t want to be bombarding the same webmasters with the same guest blogging requests. Always ask for feedback on the guest blogging request being declined, so that you know how to pitch your ideas for the future.
Tip: record the status of your communication too, i.e. email sent, accepted or declined.
Guest blogging can be an effective tool to increase your online visibility and gain a higher position in the SERPs – if it is done correctly. You need to manage your guest blogging experience just like every other aspect of your business. Develop a strategy, do your research and make your content stand out from the crowd – and never, ever, forget the basics – accurate spelling and grammar.
