Do You Know That Guest Blogging Is A Marketing Strategy?

For people who don’t fully understand what guest blogging or as some like to call it, guest posting is, it is the same thing columnists used to do before the Internet took over. Guest blogging is the act of submitting articles to authority websites or blogs to build a reputation and generate traffic by tapping into their large population of readers. You don’t work for the sites, you’re just a contributor and if you do the right things you will benefit immensely from guest posting.
Internet marketing is essential for all kinds of business whether online businesses or offline businesses, and inbound marketing strategies such as email list, SEO, and content marketing have proven to be very effective for generating ROI. Guest blogging is one of the best inbound marketing strategies that is guaranteed to bring results over time. According to Content Marketing Institute (CMI), guest blogging is an important marketing technique to create offside contents.

Why You Need To Start Guest Blogging

You’ve probably heard that guest blogging is dead. Yes, thanks to the likes of Matt Cutts who wrote an article that called out a lot of SEO agents, content marketers, etc. who really didn’t put effort into creating valuable content instead only concentrating on backlinks. But, is guest posting really dead? Buffer was able to grow from 0 to 100,000 customers through guest posting, Gregory Ciotti used guest blogging to get more than 36, 000 email subscribers for HelpScout, and there are more testimonials from people who have achieved success through guest blogging. Clearly, guest blogging is not dead, so here are some reasons you need to consider guest posting as a marketing strategy and start doing it.

Reach A Broader Audience

Writing articles on your website or blog is great but with guest posting, you get to reach a new target audience in their large number, and that’s impressive. Being published on a high profile site brings several opportunities. One of which is the space to share a convincing Bio about you and your brand, an opportunity to sell yourself to the people who need what you offer.

Become An Authority In Your Niche

Besides reaching a broader audience, guest blogging can help you build a reputation in your field and place your brand among top brands in your field. What this means is that people will start to see your brand as a voice of authority. For instance, when people read an article about entrepreneurship on Business Insider, Inc.com, or Forbes, they tend to believe that the article is well thought out and offers real value. Hence, when you contribute to these sites mentioned above or other sites with domain authority (DA) of 89 or more, readers will think if you can get your article on Forbes.com for instance, then you must be trusted and be offering real value. Simply put, the trust people have in authoritative sites will rub off on your brand.

Drive Traffic To Your Site

This is one of the most important reasons for guest blogging. You reach a wider audience, and if you do the right things, some of the readers will click on your link and end up on your landing page. Some of them will subscribe to your email list. Email marketing is the best inbound marketing strategy, it generates 44.25x return but email marketing can’t work if you don’t have subscribers. Guest posting can grow your subscribers.
If you offer a product or service on your website, some of the readers will go straight to your website and buy the product or pay for the service because your article is on a website they trust.

SEO

Before search engines clamped down on guest bloggers who used to publish spammy contents that are filled with backlinks to their clients’ websites, guest blogging was majorly used to increase search engine rankings. Now, it is much more than that. However, SEO remains one of the major benefits of guest posting. You can use backlinks to your advantage by building links with high profile websites. The trick to doing this is to actually provide value.
Most businesses find it hard to write great articles that will solve the target audience’s problems and as a result, get flagged. The key to doing this is to find out a pain-point of the target audience, write an article that provides solutions, include a link to your website for the readers to get more valuable contents and publish it on an authoritative website. Before you know it, your website will start ranking high.

Industry Networking

Guest posting will also help you to connect with other brands and people in your industry. First of all, to be a contributing writer for a site, you will have to reach out to the site editor so that you can find out the requirements for pitching and writing for them. In doing so, you are building a relationship with the editor who is actually an authority in your niche. Now, imagine you reach out to multiple editors of different high profile sites in your niche to build a relationship with them. This is the opportunity guest posting gives you.
Also, when you publish on an authoritative website or blog in your industry, besides the consumers you’re trying to reach, other brands may also try to get in touch with you because of the value you offer in the article. Not to mention that host websites will give you more opportunity to guest blog on their website because they trust that you will add value to their readers. Another reason why you need to ensure that your article offers real value.

Conclusion

If guest posting was that simple, everyone would be doing it, but it is not. This is coupled with the fact that it is a competitive field and search engines, as well as authority sites, have made it only rewarding for people who are more concerned about creating value than just increasing their website ranking on search engines. Therefore, if you can’t guess blog on your own, you can outsource to content writers or guest bloggers to help you achieve success in guest blogging.