Most businesses use blogs as a way to engage with their community. It’s the perfect way to connect, give information, and get feedback from the people who are most important to your business. It’s also a great way to establish credibility in your area of expertise. Guest blogging amplifies that. When you have more than one source for your blog, it gives you even greater credibility. That alone is a great reason to guest blog on other people’s sites, and it can do a whole lot more!
Of course, an extremely obvious reason to guest blog is that it extends your reach. Getting featured on another person’s or company’s site opens up your expertise to their audience. That means hundreds, and possibly thousands, of people seeing you for the first time. That is a huge opportunity to create new business!
Guest blogging can also increase your SEO. When you guest blog, and the blog links back to your website, it creates back links to your page. That can definitely help you when it comes to getting found on various search engines.
There’s also a lot of opportunity generated when you allow other people to guest blog on your site. First, it creates stronger community ties with other businesses. Kind of a “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours” scenario. Second, the people who love and follow your guest blogger will come to your website. That’s a monster opportunity for greater exposure! Finally, it allows you, as the facilitator of the site, to engage with new people creating a stronger community for your business.
At BottomLine Marketing, we believe that guest blogging is one of the great avenues you can utilize to market your business. Here are four tips we give to our clients so they can get the most out of their guest blogging adventures.
- Make sure you choose complimentary businesses for guest blogging. Ideally, you want to create a referral partner. So if your business is a yoga studio, you’ll want to look for businesses that support people’s healthy life choices in a different way, like health food stores, massage and physio therapy studios, or an herbal supplements supplier.
- Understand your demographic. You need to know the aspects that make up your ideal client and ensure the audience you write for matches that audience. For example, if you know your audience is males who are 18-25, you don’t want to guest blog for someone who has a predominantly female audience, or an audience that is significantly older than your target market.
- Know the numbers. Before you commit to guest blogging you want to know the number of followers for the blog. The whole point of guest blogging is to increase your exposure and gain new business. If they only have an audience of 50 people, it might not be worth your time, unless the audience is perfectly targeted to your demographics.
- Be ready to give this information to your guest bloggers. Just like you, they want what’s best for their business. If you provide them with this information when you extend the invitation to guest blog, they’re going to know you’re professional, you understand your business thoroughly, you have exactly what they’re looking for their business, and because you think ahead and you have it all together, you’re going to make a great referral partner.
We’ve helped hundreds of business owners improve their marketing strategies. Let us help you expand yours! Give us a call at 403-464-7559 today!
