Managing your own blog is not enough for its development. Taking care of contents as well as comments other than your blog can be useful too. It helps you to build your blog authority and even increase the traffic. So, how to do that? In this case, you should try to submit a guest post. Guest posting is publishing a content on someone else’s blog or website. However, this activity is not as simple as it used to be. Guest posting improperly can be valueless or even detrimental to you. To prevent that, here we have prepared guest post strategy you can try.
1. Guest Post on Sites With Same Industry
Most bloggers already know that it is very helpful to submit a guest post. However, you must not post on any sites just like that. You must do proper outreach for guest posting. You have to learn the content of your post first. Next, try to match it with the sites you are targeting. If both are relevant to each other, then you can post it. For example, let’s say you wrote something about women’s bag. It would be better if you post it on a fashion blog that focuses on women’s bag. Besides being highly relevant, the audience will show their interest in the post too. You may also post it on womenswear blog, but the result might not be as high as the first one. On the other hand, posting it in a culinary blog is simply valueless. The audience might consider it as a waste of time since it is not their interest.
2. Contribute To Worthy Sites Only
Even if the sites are relevant to your contents, you still have to hold off the publication. You must make sure whether or not the sites are worth your time. Ask these questions to yourself first before guest posting on any websites.
- Do they have active users or audience?
- Does the host site often reply to comments?
- Do they have the potential to drive my blog traffic?
On the first question, check whether the website has an engaged audience. If it has only a few or none at all, do not bother yourself to guest post on there. It is useless to post there since no user will come to read it. That means your blog will show no improvement. On the second question, if host sites often reply to comments from the audience, it shows how they care a lot about engaging with their audience. Also, the blog is quite active. On the last question, a site might not be able to help driving traffic due to many distractions. However, you can still guest post on such website since they have engaged the audience. Sure they cannot help you much with traffic. But, at least you can still show the quality of your content and blog.
3. Post Something Informative and Useful
To get a successful result, do not only post something interesting. You must submit a guest post with informative and useful content. That way could capture the audience’s attention. Besides being relevant with their interest, it could also help them in a related case. If they can relate to your posts, it is possible that they will become your new audience.
4. Promote Your Post
Publishing a post does not mean it is the end of your job. There are still a bunch of things you have to complete. Promoting your post is one of them. Simply waiting for someone to respond your post only wastes your time. Make use of your social network to share every post you have published. In fact, you can actually be the first one to start a discussion. When you share it on social media, put a caption in question form. Insert a link that leads back to the related post. You will earn more audience that way. Moreover, that allows you to help your partner’s site to grow too. As a result, you have gained their attention, and they might help you more in the future.
5. Engage With The Audience
Once you have obtained a lot of audiences, there might be some questions from them in the comment. Do not ignore those questions. It is very important to always engage with the audience. That will show them how good your attitude is. Such frequent engagement is enough to earn their trust to visit your own site. Therefore, keep in mind to always reply to every comment that comes to your post.
6. Create Interesting Author Bio
In most guest posts, you will see a few lines of text complete with a photo of the author. That is what we call an author bio. Usually, you can see it at the bottom of a post. This is one of the most important parts of guest posting. So, you better not write something too simple there. It has to be something interesting that could persuade the audience to come to your site. For example, tell them your name and explain about your blog and how it can help the audience to solve their problem.
7. Put a Link
Putting a link into a guest post is quite common. However, do not simply put it in your attempt to promote your blog. No users want to waste their time with advertising link. Your link has to be special to them. It has to link to a landing page with content that could be useful. Furthermore, you also have to know where to put your link. Putting them lower down in your content is recommended. That allows your audience to finish reading your post first before heading to the link you include. You can also put a link on your author bio. Instead of your homepage, you can link that part to a page that audience need. As an example, the link will go to free guides to become a successful entrepreneur.
That’s all about the guest post strategy we can share with you. Hopefully, it can help you to create a better and more valuable post. There is one more thing we want to say. Do not expect your post will get many responses right away. Some posts might fall flat. But, do not let it stop you from guest posting. In fact, submit a guest post more often with better contents. Someday they will open other opportunities for you.