If you wonder if there is any other thing you can do to grow your brand, consider guest writing.
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Whether you are a business owner or content creator, writing a guest post can help expand your audience reach. Doing so allows you to dig a goldmine of growth opportunities.
Why Guest Writing is Important
Guest writing is the process of publishing a piece of content onto someone else’s website. The rationale behind this is two-folds:
- You want to showcase your expertise.
- You want your blog host to help fill their editorial calendar.
This explains why guest posting is a great tool for digital marketing. For one, it allows you to spread the word about your brand. This can result in more and more people knowing that your business exists.
Second, you can build a reputable link profile for your business website. This can result in better search engine ranking and a robust online presence.
Third, you are providing something fresh and relevant that your blog host’s audience would want to read.
That said, here are six steps on how you can build a successful guest writing campaign:
Step 1: Identify Your Guest Writing Goals
As with any effective marketing strategy, it is imperative to identify why you want to do guest posting. This includes knowing what results you want to reap from this campaign and the websites where you want to publish your content.
Some of the benefits of guest writing include:
- Increased brand awareness
- Acquisition of high-quality backlinks
- Increase in generated traffic and leads
- Having a robust online presence
Identifying your guest posting goals will make it easy to determine what opportunities you do not want to miss.
Step 2: Look for the Right Opportunities
Here’s the thing: Guest posting is more than just reaching out to a publication, saying that you want to write for them. For this campaign to succeed, you need to find the right opportunities.
Imagine that you own a cleaning business. Where do you think it would make sense for you to write a guest post?
- A home and lifestyle website
- A blog about the Keto diet
If you pick the first one, you know how to look for the right opportunities. The key here is to look for websites that can make your brand relatable to its audience. That way, you can also build relevant backlinks for your website.
Your search engine optimization efforts will thank you later.
In addition, you should also identify the kind of content that a blog host publishes. That’s because not all websites publish a blog post. Doing so can help you determine whether you can send in a draft on time.
Step 3: Come Up With Ideas
While there are a plethora of ways to look for guest posting opportunities, this step is also crucial for your campaign’s success.
Once you have qualified the relevant websites where you want to become a guest writer, the next thing you should do is develop content ideas. Depending on your blog host, some are okay with just a title, while others ask for a content brief. On the other hand, some blog hosts would assign a topic to you.
Regardless, think of a topic that is related to the kind of content they publish. Doing so increases your chance of receiving a favorable response.
Step 4: Send an Excellent Pitch
Coming up with an exciting content idea is one thing; getting your guest post published is another. This is where sending a guest writing pitch will be helpful.
To do that successfully, here are some quick tips you have to keep in mind:
- Check if the website is open for guest writing
- See if they have a published guest posting guideline
- Look for the right person to contact
- Send a personal and compelling pitch
The last one is imperative. That’s because editors have an inherent skill of sniffing when someone is reaching out just for the sake of getting published.
Mind you; editors would like to build fruitful, professional relationships with their writers.
Step 5: Writing a Publish-worthy Content
Now that you have your approval, the next step is writing and sending your draft.
First, you have to ensure that your guest post adheres to their guidelines. Otherwise, it will be straight-out rejected. This can also prevent you from getting published on a specific blog host in the future.
Second, avoid being promotional. Sure, you aim to showcase your expertise and spread awareness about your business. However, talking about your business and what it can do will not work in guest writing.
Instead, what you can do is focus on providing value to your blog host’s readers. It is knowing when and where to publish a post about home cleaning tips versus why people should hire a professional cleaner.
Third, take the time to proofread your work. Doing so reduces the chances of having your content returned for revisions.
Lastly, this step can be long-winding. Your blog host can ask for revisions and many other things. Hence, we encourage you to have patience and know when to follow up.
Step 6: Measure Your Success
Your work does not end once your guest post is published. You must also measure if your guest writing efforts are paying off.
This means going back to step one and asking yourself whether you are achieving your goals. In addition, you need to identify the metrics you want to measure.
If your goal is to generate traffic and leads, you might want to measure the number of website visitors coming through a particular guest post. From there, check how many of them convert, such as becoming your newsletter subscriber.
Doing so can help you determine whether your guest writing campaign is successful.
Build Your Guest Writing Plan Today
As straightforward as it looks, guest posting can support your SEO, content marketing, and PR campaigns. Plus, it can help you achieve the following:
- Turn your business into an industry thought leader
- Let more people know that your brand exists
- Build high-quality backlinks
- Improve your online presence
- Increase your traffic, leads, and conversions
All it takes is to look for an opportunity to share something valuable with the right people. That said, refer to this post once you are ready to build your guest writing plan.