Guest Blogging: How You Can Achieve Success

Guest Blogging: How You Can Achieve Success
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Guest blogging can build brand awareness and increase credibility for you and your business. It can also help to reach a highly engaged audience with your message and build third-party endorsed credibility.

Not only is blogging an efficient and cost effective way of publishing content, it also allows you to control what content gets shared. There are so many successful blogs out there right now, it’s worth approaching the one’s relevant to you or your business to ask if you can become a guest blogger.

To become a guest blogger you’ll need a successful pitch. Here are some tips for you to consider.

Do your research

It’s pointless to approach a blog that’s completely unrelated to the topic you want to share or the message you want to spread. That’s why it’s important to do some research to find the right blogs for you. Start by using some relevant keywords in Google to find some blogs and determine if they’d be a good fit.

When you do come across a blogger that you like, it’s worth checking out other bloggers that they follow and interact with on social media. This will allow you to strengthen your list of contacts even more.

Quality is key

Creating content with the audience in mind is incredibly important. You need to think about what they’ll get out of reading the content, and so you must ensure that your guest blog post is of high quality, creative, and original.

You should look into writing content that readers can put to use or find value in. This might be a how to article, a list of top tips, or even an explanation on some trending news or developments in the industry.

In order to create a good blog post, you need to consider the following:

· Provide information that is interesting, helpful or insightful

· Features subheadings that make the content easier to read

· Grammar and spelling are free of mistakes

· Avoid sales language and terms, your aim is to inform the reader

· Most importantly, use images

Develop your pitch

When you’ve finished building a list of blogs that you’d like to target, it’s time to connect with them. Many bloggers tend to have a form of contact (such as an email address) listed on their site, but you could also utilise social media platforms such as Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook to strike up a conversation.

Remember that bloggers are not journalists. Bloggers have a highly personalised medium where they engage with their readers though comments on their blog, which takes up a lot of their time. Because of this, the pitch needs to clearly explain your idea within the first paragraph.

Spend some time outlining your idea and why their readers would enjoy it. If it’s possible, you should also provide links to previous work, such as something from your own blog.

If you have a large number of connections, or followers on social media you might want to mention this, as it opens up the possibility of new readers for the blogger.

Spread the word

After you’ve nailed your pitch and the guest post has been published, share it across all of your social media channels and with your database. Not only will it draw attention to your blog post, but the third-party website will get some attention as well.

If you’re looking to enhance your online profile, increase your credibility and expand your audience reach, guest blogging is an option that should definitely be considered.

About the author

Catriona Pollard is the author of From Unknown To Expert, a step by step framework designed to help entrepreneurs develop effective PR and social media strategies to become recognised as influencers in their field. www.unknowntoexpert.com

Catriona is also the director of CP Communications, which merges traditional PR tactics with cutting-edge social media strategies that engage consumers as well as business. www.cpcommunications.com.au

Follow Catriona:

Twitter: @catrionapollard

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