Guest Blogging for Your Business

Guest blogging is a great way to market your business to a new audience using content. It allows you to demonstrate your knowledge in your niche or industry while gaining exposure, fans, and even new customers. Here is what you need to know about guest blogging for your business.

How Guest Blogging Works

Guest blogging is pretty simple in theory, but it does take an investment in time and content to succeed. Your first goal is to find some blogs that accept guest posts and that have your target customer base as an audience. To locate these blogs, you can try the following Google search queries.

“guest bloggers wanted” your keyword

“guest post opportunities” your keyword

“guest post by” your keyword

“writers wanted” your keyword

“guest post guidelines” your keyword

“guest blogging guidelines” your keyword

“submit a guest post” your keyword

Once you have a good list of blogs put together, you will then want to narrow them down by popularity. There is no need to guest post on a site that has minimal traffic. While you can’t find a blog’s exact traffic stats, you can determine whether they have an engaged audience by the number of social shares and comments per post.

If you have a large marketing budget, you can skip the manual search and use GroupHigh, an agency and enterprise-level blogger outreach software that will show you blogs matching your keywords and their applicable stats (Twitter followers, Facebook fans, search ranking, and more).

When you have decided on the target blogs you want to guest post upon, do a little run through of the topics they have covered recently and their guest post guidelines (if applicable). Then, based on the instructions in the guidelines, you will want to pitch some topics to the blog owner / editor that you would like to guest post about.

The keys to a successful guest post pitch are as follows.

• Personalize the e-mail. Make sure that you address the blog owner / editor by name in the greeting. Do NOT use generic greetings like Hi Admin, Webmaster, Sir or Madam, or assume that the last person who published a post is the blog owner / editor.

• Prove that you have read the guest post guidelines by following them to a point.

• Show that you are a fan of the blog by mentioning a recent article and what you liked about it. Preferably comment on that article ahead of time so the blog owner / editor recognizes you.

• Give the blog owner / editor a few writing credits - guest posts you’ve published elsewhere or posts on your own blog that will be similar to the one you are submitting.

• Propose a couple of topic ideas or submit a post that you think would be interesting to the blog’s audience (per the guest post guidelines).

• Make the overall pitch about them – how your post will benefit their audience, bring them traffic, lead to more social shares, etc.

If all goes well and your guest post is ultimately published, be sure to follow up by answering comments, sharing the post on your social networks, and even sending it to your mailing list. The more successful your first guest post is, the more likely you will be invited back to write another one. Also, one successful guest post can be a great credit to submit to an even larger guest posting opportunities.

Keys to Success

Aside from following the guidelines and creating awesome, unique content, the key to success for your business depends on three things: the blog you choose, your topic, and your author bio. Your goal is to find a blog with the right audience who will be interested in a topic that will lead them to click the links in your author bio. The links in your author bio (ie., the place you can promote yourself) should lead back to your website and to your top social networks.

Measuring Your Results

If you have goals set up in Google Analytics, you can easily track which referring traffic from your guest posts leads to sales and conversions. But there are other factors you can’t track such as when a visitor comes to your site from a guest post, leaves, then comes back later to make a purchase. Or when a visitor becomes a fan of your Facebook page because of your guest post, then comes to your website to make a purchase.

This is when it’s nice to have SumAll connected to your Google Analytics, social accounts, and e-commerce systems. You will be able to note when you published a guest post and then see its effect on traffic, social engagement, and ultimately sales.

To take advantage of this before you start submitting guest posts, create your free account today so you can eventually see your traffic, social engagement, and sales before and after you start guest posting!

Kristi Hines is a freelance writer, professional blogger, and social media enthusiast. You can follow her on Twitter and Google+.