Have you ever loaded up your blogging platform and wondered why that amazing post hadn’t got the page views you were hoping? It can be frustrating. But there is a neat online tactic where you can help grow your readership. It might be one you hadn’t thought about doing before.
Guest blogging is essentially a method of outreach where you create content for someone else’s website. In reality, it’s not a million miles away from being a guest speaker at a conference to help drive contacts and business leads. But you might be wondering why you should spend a couple of hours writing for hits on another site.
However, if you seek out guest blogging opportunities, you’ll discover there are lots of benefits. These will not only help build your own website’s audience, but that can build your brand (or team members’ profiles) in the long run. And it’s that ‘long run’ bit that’s important. Like anything valuable online, this requires effort over many months to really bring benefits.
Get in front of a new audience
This is the most obvious benefit of guest blogging. You – your brand or your own personal profile – will instantly be in front of a new, readymade audience. This is a great way to showcase your brand, what you stand for or how you want to be seen by others.
Equally important is to ensure you’re in front of a relevant audience. If your company is focussed on engineering equipment, then there’s no point writing content for an audience interested in windsurfing. The exposure you get won’t be anything you can convert into a regular readership or customer base.
Become a thought leader
When you blog on different websites, a much wider industry network will become exposed to your brand. That audience will soon begin to see you as someone important in your subject area. It’s particularly the case if the subject you write about offers some kind of value to them. So if your brand is focussed on offering a particular technical service, then why not offer how-to guides? Then the next time those readers need that technical service then they’ll think of your company.
Inbound links (of course)
One of the more effective ways to get inbound links to your website, is via a guest blog post. This could come as a subject link within the content of your post or even an accompanying biography straight to your website. But it will certainly help improve your company’s SEO performance. This is especially the case if you blog across multiple sites, which offer multiple opportunities for links.
Social outreach
Even if people don’t click on a link to your website, there are still ways that you’ll be able go grow your social media channels. For example, if a brand tweets your blog post for them, then they’ll likely use your social handle too, and that can bring you more followers. Do that across enough different sites or influencers, your audience will slowly build.
In fact, guest blogging doesn’t need strictly need to be focussed on your website. The same approach can apply to social networks to keep the outreach content – for example, if you’re a photographer than a featured shot on someone else’s Instagram account might be a good way to get more followers. Likewise, if you’re a video blogger, then appearing on another influencer’s YouTube channel could help grow your subscriber base.
Relationship Building
Reaching out to influencers in your industry, using guest blogging as the method of contact, is a really good way to build up your online networks. The very act of searching will bring you in front of new faces, and if you keep that conversation going you could find more casual social referrals or even real-world partnerships.
Challenge yourself
When you write on your own site, you can end up surrounded by people who already understand your angle. When you write elsewhere, you’ll find that a different audience could question what you’ve written. That can be a healthy thing if you’re receptive to what people have to say, and the experience might encourage you to think about new ideas or even products for your business.
Vote For Us In The UK Blog Awards
We have been nominated for both the Digital & Technology and PR, Media, Marketing & Communications categories and we would really appreciate if you could spare a minute to vote for our blog in these awards.
Voting for the UK Blog Awards 2017 is live and closes on Monday 19th December. The public vote is an important aspect of the judging procedure as it allows the contestant’s community to have their say and show their support for the content on the blog. Once the public vote is over, the top entrants from each category will go through to Phase Two: The expert judging panel.