Every business wants new leads – but if you are trying to pick through all the options to get your business off the ground, guest posting should be considered as an essential content marketing strategy to include in your daily efforts.
In fact, content marketing produces 3x more leads per dollar invested, compared to many other marketing channels.
The reality is that many old marketing channels do not produce the same results as they once did. For example, people are becoming blind to most display advertising.
The average CTR (click thru rate) across all ad formats and placements is a meager 0.05 percent, which means you need literally thousands of impressions to start getting any sort of uptick for your business.
This is primarily because of three reasons:
- A total overload of ads has created indifference in the consumer
- More “trustworthy” sources of information are readily available
- Ad blocking software makes it possible to completely remove any ads
What’s the lesson here?
People respond much more positively to inbound marketing approaches.
Creating awesome content, providing value to your readers, and connecting with prospects for a reason is far more effective than bombarding crowds of potential customers in the hopes of catching a small portion of their interest.
Content marketing is a broad term and can encompass many different strategies, but for the sake of this article, I am going to share three reasons why it’s vital to use guest posting as part of your growth strategy.
1. Build Authority in Your Industry Through Guest Posting
For some crazy reason, people usually want to work with someone who knows what they are doing. However, this isn’t something that is always easy to prove to potential customers.
One method of doing this is by sharing your knowledge and expertise and ultimately becoming established as a thought leader by guest posting on topics related to your industry.
When you publish an article as a guest post, it automatically gets a boost in authority because you are demonstrating third party validation.
It shows that other people value what you say enough to share it on their own website. This will build trust with your prospects and help you to convert more leads.
2. Tap into New Audiences
Even the most amazing content will have minimal impact if it is relegated to a quiet company blog.
Without SEO juice driving traffic to your site – a lot of your best content will go unnoticed.
However, guest posting is one way to get your incredible content in front of a new and engaged audience.
Many publications have built up an audience that is actively seeking new, interesting, content from their favourite source.
When you share great content on that publication, you will be tapping into a new audience that is eager to hear what you have to say.
This will drive traffic to your site and make you look good in front of tons of new people.
3. Build Out Juicy SEO Backlinks
Guest posting is a great way to build out backlinks to your website and important pieces of content that you might be trying to rank for a certain keyword.
This doesn’t mean that you can just link anywhere you want all willy-nilly – editors and readers do not like spammy link bait 🙁
However, there are usually two places in a guest post where you will be able to create a backlink:
- Most editors will allow a contributing writer to include one backlink in their bio. This is your chance for a little self-promotion – but don’t go overboard!
- Most editors will accept links that leads to valuable resources or content that expands on the value of what you are writing about – link to a study, white paper, blog article on your site that is relevant and important to what you are saying!
You have to be respectful of a website’s guidelines, but if what you are doing has value – then it is usually ok 🙂
A Few Tips for Guest Posting…
Guest posting can be tough, especially for those who are just starting out.
It’s not an overnight process. It is something you need to work at on a consistent basis before you really start to see a return.
There is a lot to be said about how to guest post, but there are a few basic elements that will help you succeed:
- Always produce content that leads with value. People don’t want to read spammy, self-promotional posts – provide advice and people will listen.
- Build your author profile with time. Don’t expect to guest post for Forbes on your first day. Start small and grow big 🙂
- Don’t give up! Guest posting requires consistent effort – if an editor rejects your article, go somewhere else or re-write it to be even better.
David is the Founder and Director of article-writing.co, the fastest-growing content creation agency in North America. He has transformed companies by offering high-quality content that has impacted their SEO ranking, revitalized websites with engaging and industry-relevant blogs and website copy, and championed successful email campaign copy.
