A couple of days ago, I discussed the overall concept of guest blogging and why it has become such an important strategic tool for most internet marketers. In this post, however, I’m going to be more specific about the different types of benefits that bloggers, in general, and small businesses, in particular, can take out of guest blogging.
But just as I mentioned in my previous post, the real advantage of guest blogging can only be taken if it is used as a tool to achieve a well-defined objective. You need to be clear about what you want to achieve through guest blogging. Otherwise, you might end up wasting both yur time and efforts without any significant rewards.
Here are some of the major benefits that you can take out of guest blogging depending upon your ultimate objective.
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Guest Blogging Gives You Targeted Exposure
For any new small business, to make quick online sales, the first step is to let the world know that you actually exist. It amazes me how so many business owners assume that they will automatically start getting traffic and sales leads just by setting up a website. This just does not happen anymore. You need to go out there and tell your target customers that you actually exist and have the right solutions for their problems. The best way to do this is by guest blogging on the most established blogs in your niche that your target customers visit regularly. A quality guest post on a few top blogs will not only announce your brand to the world but will also persuade your potential customers to know more about you. Click Here to Learn More About Guest Blogging Gives You Targeted Exposure -
It Gets You Qualified Traffic
One of the biggest advantages of guest blogging is the quality of traffic that it can attract to your website. While other internet marketing techniques like SEO and Social Media Marketing can also help you get traffic, it doesn’t always send you the most relevant visitors. Traffic alone is useless. Your aim should be to build traffic channels that can send you highly relevant visitors who are genuinely interested in what you have to offer. This is where guest blogging is extremely effective. With a quality guest post, you actually take advantage of the already loyal community of visitors on other established blogs and route them to your own blog. In my personal experience, the traffic attracted through guest blogging is always much more likely to take action on your website than traffic from any other source. Click Here to Learn More About It Gets You Qualified Traffic -
It Builds Your Credibility
One of the major advantages (or disadvantages) of the internet is that anyone can claim to be an expert in their niche. In most cases, there’s no real way of physically verifying if a company is really as good as it claims to be. However, if a company or brand has endorsements from the industry leaders and influencers, then that is usually a strong indicator of its credibility. When you manage to land a high value guest post on any of the leading blogs in your niche, it is actually a very strong endorsement for your brand from that particular blog. This instantly makes you credible in the eyes of your target audience and increases your chances of converting them into paid customers. These endorsements not only establish you an expert in your particular niche, but also project you as someone who deeply understands the technical aspects of your niche. Click Here to Learn More About It Builds Your Credibility -
It’s an Awesome Networking Channel
Perhaps the most important, and long term, benefit of guest blogging is the way it gets you connected with the most influential people in your niche that include decision makers, entrepreneurs and industry experts. In every industry, offline or online, there are certain influencers who indirectly control the purchasing decisions of customers in that industry. Almost everyone wants to get their attention and seek their help for promoting their products and services. Naturally, not everyone gets the nod, since the influencers have their own reputation to maintain as well. Guest blogging helps you go through all those barriers and gives you the spotlight in front of all the major players in your niche (assuming that your post contains value, otherwise it can get you ignored forever as well). And trust me; most influencers are very well connected with each other. The moment one of them endorses a new product, service or individual, everyone sits up and takes notice. This can potentially open the floodgates of traffic, recurring sales leads and lots of new business opportunities for you. Click Here to Learn More About It’s an Awesome Networking Channel -
It’s a Very Effective Link Building Tool
Although I personally do not consider link building as the primary objective of guest blogging, but it still is a very important part of your internet marketing strategy. It’s even more significant now because of the recent search algorithm changes by Google where quality backlinks hold a lot of value. Not many high quality blogs allow you to use backlinks within the content of your guest post. However, they do allow you to use one or two backlinks in the author bio at the end of your post. Make sure you use your target keywords as the anchor text for these backlinks. However, you need to be careful in selecting the blogs for guest posting. Low quality backlinks can hurt your rankings as well. Try to target blogs with a higher Page Rank than your own. One of my best friends online, and a highly respected guest blogger, Bamidele Onibalusi, recommends going for blogs in the medium PR range (around Google PR 4 and above) instead of focusing on blogs in the top range only. Click Here to Learn More About It’s a Very Effective Link Building Tool -
It Opens Huge Social Networks and Email Lists
Almost every blog shares its latest content with its social media followers. So when you get published on any of the top blogs in your niche, almost every one following those blogs on different social networks will be notified about your post as well. And the content on popular blogs gets shared a lot anyway. This can be a huge window of opportunity for you to build your own social media following. The same goes for email lists as well. Every email list subscriber will get your post in his inbox. If you utilize this opportunity intelligently you can find yourself with lots of email subscribers yourself. Click Here to Learn More About It Opens Huge Social Networks and Email Lists -
It Opens Up New Business Opportunities
Once your guest post reaches thousands of subscribers and industry experts, you’re likely to be approached by a few people with new business opportunities (assuming you have a quality product). You can also explore the possibility of connecting with businesses that offer complimenting products and services. Being a freelance writer, I have not only found new clients through guest posts but also received several partnership offers from complimenting businesses. Click Here to Learn More About It Opens Up New Business Opportunities -
It Gets You More Guest Post Offers
If you manage to land a guest post on one of the leading blogs in your niche, you are likely to be approached by other leading blogs for a guest posts as well, especially if your post gets a lot of social shares and comments. This can trigger a chain reaction for your business where you publish quality guest posts on leading industry blogs and keep getting more guest post offers from other leading blogs. Every guest post would carry the same benefits as the first one. You may even be contacted by the same blogs for follow up posts as well. Every editor loves quality guest posts that attract visitors to their blogs. Click Here to Learn More About It Gets You More Guest Post Offers -
It Improves Your Blogging Skills
In order to get published on the leading blogs of your niche, you need to produce content of the highest quality that not only gives valuable insights about a particular topic but also offers actionable points to the readers. Most blogs have guest post submission guidelines as well, that are designed on the basis of prior experiences of the editorial team. They know exactly the type of content that works well with their readers. Therefore, when you follow the submission guidelines and produce content that does well on a top blog, it gives you a very good understanding of the type of content that works well with your target audience. Not only can you utilize these learnings to improve your future guest posts, but also mold the content on your own blog and increase the overall engagement of your readers. Click Here to Learn More About It Improves Your Blogging Skills
Conclusion
As I said at the beginning, the benefits of guest blogging vary according to your objectives. If your objective is clear, the quality of your post is good and you target the right blogs, then guest blogging certainly is one of the most effective ways to speed up the growth of your business and build a rapport with your readers and potential customers.
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