What’s Guest Blogging and Why Does it Matter?

Blogging is one of the most effective forms of content marketing available to business owners. The fact that it helps with SEO and provides content for social media marketing is a bonus, but what blogging actually boils down to is providing your target audience with authoritative and expert information that increases their trust in you.

There’s going to be a lot of topics that you are comfortable and confident talking about in your blog. These will usually be around your bread and butter services or products, and things you have come across as a business owner that you want to share with your audience.

So as a marketing consultant I will have blogs on the different aspects of marketing and related subjects, as a busy working Mum I’m also going to share tips on time management, being productive and balancing work with home life too.

There are some topics that I know little about but are relevant to my target audience, website design and SEO are prime examples. It’s important for my audience and clients to understand how they fit in with marketing but I don’t have the expertise to provide reliable information, so what do I do?

Invite a guest blogger to share their expertise with my target audience

Inviting other business owners to share their knowledge and experiences with my audience is an excellent way of expanding the content on my website whilst being helpful. I want to provide a knowledge bank of useful articles on a range of subjects that matter to my clients and ideal customers, and it’s impossible for me to know it all.

Inviting new contributors to my blog is also a great way of providing a new perspective on things. A new voice with a different style of writing can bring a new audience to my website, particularly if the author has their own followers who they can promote their guest blog too.

It’s also a chance to build relationships with different business owners and influencers. Giving me a chance to tap into their network and audience and opening up a whole new world of opportunity that would otherwise be closed to me.

But guest blogging works both ways, there are a number of benefits for me to write guest posts for other business owners.

Guest blogging is a powerful marketing strategy in itself

The audience to my blog is limited to my efforts to promote it online, i.e. my social media followers, current clients and the people I network with regularly. Occasionally my blog will get shared and attract new readers, but it’s something I have little control over once I’ve published the content.

So naturally, writing a blog for someone else’s website will attract interest in me from an entirely new and different audience. Increasing my website traffic, attracting new followers to my social media profiles and gaining new clients can all come about from providing a guest blog or two.

Blogging away from my website also expands my authority and reputation as a marketing consultant further afield. Having blogs on reputable websites provides further credibility to me as a business owner, creating trust and rapport with my target audience.

In terms of SEO, having backlinks from other websites gives that a boost too. It’s not just the link itself that counts, but the website it comes from. Website authority matters when it comes to Google, so having a link from a good website in that respect helps give my own website’s SEO a boost in terms of credibility.

What’s the best way to get started with guest blogging?

Make it known that you’re accepting guest blogs on your website.

You can do this by reaching out to business owners you trust and respect asking if they’d like to contribute, or looking for collaboration threads in Facebook groups where you can post what you’re looking for.

Do be selective about who you accept as an author for your website.

You’re creating a link to their website and being promoted on their social media so be confident that you’re happy for your business to be associated with them, and that they clearly do know what they’re talking about.

It’s a wise move to keep an eye on their website and social media every so often to ensure everything’s a-ok.

Ask business owners if they’re open to contributors

Directly asking people if they’re open to guest blogs at the moment and providing some ideas is a great way to open doors. Cold emailing isn’t always the best approach, so focus on building a relationship on social media first, or ask at networking events when you already have a rapport in place.

Treat it like you would any other marketing

This is you, your business and your brand on the line here, whether writing for someone else or accepting a blog from another author. Make sure it’s in line with your business vision and goals, that the information shared is trustworthy and reliable, and that this will contribute to your target audience’s perception of you in the future. When done well, guest blogging can be incredibly powerful and rewarding.

Guest blogging is a fantastic way to broaden your marketing and gain new audiences so why not give it a try today? If you’d like to contribute a guest post for my blog get in touch with me today to see if we’re a good fit.