It is not a secret. Guest posting is a mandatory skill for every new blogger, content marketer, and small business owner. The reason behind this is that when you are just starting out, it is obvious that you won’t have much traffic of your own. As such, you need to go beyond the “publish and pray” strategy and seek out blogs that already have a sizeable audience of their own And then you need to captivate them by creating some awesome content that blows them away.
But the problem with most bloggers that I find, is that they end their guest posting process there. But guest posting is not just a publish and move-on strategy. It is a fundamental part of a content marketing strategy and therefore, goes much deeper than that. Not promoting your guest post is one of the biggest content marketing mistakes that you can make.
Here are some solid reasons why you must promote your guest posts-
Websites with low inter-linking can leave your guest post dead – If you don’t know the basics or are a little bit out of touch, here’s a brush up (Point 6 of this post on SEO trends explains this further). A site’s Domain Authority (DA) is a score allotted by Moz which shows how strong the link profile and SEO of the site is. However, the Page Authority (PA) of an individual page of the website shows how strong the SEO of that individual page is. If you have a link from a page, the Page Authority matters more than the Domain Authority unless the site has a DA above 70. And, even if the site has got a DA above 70, it is always better to have both high PA and DA from where your site is linked to. That way, you get more link juice passed to your site. Thus the more links you can get to your guest post, the better it is for your own content to which you link to from that post.
Win-win for all!
You fail to create a good relationship with the site-owner – Yes. All blog owners who accept guest posts are busy creatures, which is why they accept your guest post in the first place. When you send them a guest post, you are lessening their work. However, it is a golden principle that one should spend 4x time promoting their content than the time they take to create it. Therefore, if you take the time and effort to actually promote their content and get to it some shares and links, it goes a long way!
You fail to brand yourself in your niche – What’s the main reason you guest post other than cranking up your SEO? It’s branding. SEO has evolved to the point where Google puts far greater importance on brand names so as to determine their SERPs.
However, that’s not all. It has been seen that nowadays most users skip even the search results at the top of Google’s search and prefer to click on a website which they recognise and have previously visited and know to produce great content. Thus, if you can make a name for producing great content on the web, you will see more direct visitors to your site as well as more people clicking at your website links in the author bio. You will also see a noticeable boost in your CTR in Google search.
Top-notch blog owners may reject your guest posting pitches – Top-notch bloggers have no dearth of guest posting requests, which is why they are very They require extremely high-quality content in the first place and then they require a good amount of commitment from your side. However, they don’t have the time or energy to interview you and witness your finesse first-hand.
And, that’s why almost every time you will find them asking you for some of your previous guest posts on other blogs. And what’s better than showing them some content that raked up huge social shares and links on other blogs. It shows that you spend the time and commitment to go the extra mile.
Top-notch bloggers and influencers love this type of guest poster and therefore it goes a long way in getting your guest posts featured at their blogs.
Now that the whys are out of the way, let’s deal with the “how”.
How to Promote Your Guest Posts
Although promoting your guest posts are very important, I don’t recommend overdoing it. Your primary focus should be on your blog and therefore the following tips shall show you how you can promote your guest posts without doing any extra work.
Link to your guest posts from other guest posts – This is very less time-consuming. When you are writing a guest post for some new blog, share some link love to your previous guest posts. That way, you won’t have to do any extra work; plus, linking to relevant webpages have been shown to increase SEO of pages as it shows Google that your content contains citations and reference to other webpages.
Share in your social media channels – Whenever your guest posts are published, just take the time to open your social media platforms (all of them!) and share the URL of the post and tag the site-owner. It’s a very important content marketing practice that you should incorporate.
Notify your email list – I’m guessing you probably have an email list. If you don’t, drop everything and focus on building one – it’s super important for any blogger in any niche whatsoever to build an email list. Anyhow, if you have an email list of subscribers, share with them your guest posts. I don’t understand why most content marketers are so stingy with sharing content on other blogs with their audience.
Know that you are doing yourself a favour!
Make roundup posts – This can actually promote your guest posts without you doing a thing. People love to share stuff where they are featured. So, when you create some awesome content be sure to take the help of other influencers or experts in your niche. A great way to do this is via HARO and I have explained it in the later section of my post on building exposure and links using HARO. I recommend you check it out!
Anyhow, after your roundup post gets published, be sure to hit up all those individuals whom you mentioned in your guest post and let them know. Share with them the link as well and voila, you’re done! Just sit and relax while your guest post gets blown away with shares and links!
Mention other influencers in your guest posts – This is kind of similar to the previous one on the list except that here you can just mention some research or quote by some expert in your niche and your job is done. Just let them know that you mentioned them and you got good chances your post will get shared by them.
Wrapping it up
Now that you know why promoting guest posts is important and how to promote them effectively without spending much time on them, one key component still remains.
Guess what?
It’s letting the blog owner know that you have successfully promoted their blog content. As soon as you find that their content is getting shared by your known associates or when you link to your guest post from some other guest post, let the blog owner know.
A simple email is enough.
That way, they will know that it isn’t chance that is bringing traffic to your guest post it is you who is working behind the scenes.
And, that’s all. If you like this post, be sure to share it with your friends. And, do leave a comment. I’d love to hear your thoughts!
