Stop making these mistakes when guest posting
Fri 5 Jun 2015
It’s no secret that guest blogging (or guest posting) can be a real boon to your business, helping you to gain exposure and grow your audience and authority. However, it’s easy to make fatal errors in your posting that can spell disaster for the benefits that you could be reaping from guest posting. According to Globex Outreach – A Guest Posting Agency offers these tips regarding mistakes to avoid.
Guest Posting Mistake #1: Failing to stand out from the crowd
It’s not enough to get people to read your guest post. That’s great, but it won’t do much to increase your authority, audience, and influence. For that, you’ll need to find a way to get people to subscribe to your blog. If you’re going to be successful in doing that, you’ll have to find a way to stand out from the crowd. What makes you different? Why should the host blog’s audience trust, believe in, and follow you?
It’s not always easy to make your content standout from other guest bloggers on the blog as well as from the blog’s regular contributors. Take the time to create the kind of posts that provide value and compel people to want to read more of what you have to say.
You can also utilize content like videos or a downloadable product to add additional value, too.
Guest Posting Mistake #2: Posting infrequently
If you are going to use guest posting as a way to brand your business, posting only once in a blue moon isn’t going to be effective. To be effective with your branding, you’ll have to guest post with a high degree of regularity. You’ll never stay top-of-mind for your audience if they only hear from you once in awhile. Posting frequently boosts your authority, keeps you on the minds of your readers, and helps you to establish a good reputation for your brand. The more exposure you have, the more trustworthy you will be perceived to be.
Guest post on your target blogs more than once – as frequently as possible. This is especially important if you are a new blog or website looking to make a name for yourself. When readers begin to see your name attached to content regularly, you’ll situate yourself firmly on their radar screen. If you can then deliver high-quality content regularly, those readers will start to follow you, subscribe to your website, and more.
Whereas guest posting on a one-time basis could garner you a small boost in site traffic, frequent posting will result in a much more significant impact on your traffic. To achieve this, set up a schedule for yourself and publish on a regular basis.
Guest Posting Mistake #3: Targeting the wrong blogs
It can be very tempting to focus your guest posting energies on the wrong blogs. “Wrong blogs” can either be construed as blogs that are not a good fit for your content or blogs that are only at the very top tier of influence. It’s a good idea to swing for the fences when it comes to targeting the power player blogs in your niche, as those blogs have the most influence. However, you shouldn’t stop there. It can actually be even more effective to target smaller, lesser-known blogs that have a motivated, engaged audience. It’s often much easier to get featured on a less-popular blog and to get your content noticed than if you were to try to stand out on a very popular blog among a sea of other posts.
Target blogs that are within your subject area, but not necessarily in your niche. This will get your content before an audience that is interested in your topic but that has not necessarily been already inundated by posts on your topic already. For example, if you want to write a post on menu planning, you could post on a menu planning blog, but there’s a good chance the impact will be lost. Instead, guest post on a blog about parenting or feeding picky eaters. The audience will still be interested in what you have to say, but won’t have already heard your message in a 100 different iterations before.
Try publishing on lesser-known blogs as well as the big dogs, as well as targeting opportunities that are in your industry but outside your niche. By pushing the limits this way you maximize your reach and generate a much larger audience than you might otherwise have been able to do.
Guest Posting Mistake #4: Being too modest
Guest blogging is about create opportunities to get yourself out there. It’s no time to be modest! Use your guest posting opportunities to promote your business. Always keep the goal of guest posting in focus: to get people to visit your website! So, self promote!
That’s not to say that your guest post should be all about how wonderful you are. Not at all. However, there are a few ways in which your guest post should be different from a post that you might feature on your own blog:
Guest posts should have more “bonus” content than your own posts do. This can take the form of images, videos, graphs, infographics, etc. This will help the reader gain additional insight into your content. Your own audience doesn’t need these additional bits of information, as they will already (hopefully!) be familiar with your business.
Your guest post should always include some sort of incentive, or “action call” for people to subscribe to your blog. This can take the form of a discount code, a downloadable product, or other incentive. Give them a reason to subscribe.
Include lots of value in your content, but don’t lay all your cards on the table. You want people to be motivated to visit your own site! Include a call to action at the end of your gest post that encourages people to head over to your own site to read more.
Guest Posting Mistake #5: Failing to optimize
When you write an article for your own blog, you probably ensure that it is optimized, both for search engines and for social media sharing, right? Don’t forget to do the same thing when you guest post. Take the time to do your keyword research!
