If you’ve been in the digital marketing space for a while, you would know that good content goes a long way when it comes to boosting brand visibility and authority. As per the words of digital marketing guru, Seth Godin, “Content Marketing is the only marketing left”. This doesn’t mean that any other strategy is fruitless. The right interpretation is that in whatever marketing strategy you implement in your business, the goal is always to speak to your audience and build a real connection with them.
Gone were the days when sugar-coated pitches combined with good charisma and relentless pursuit of the customer were enough to make them say yes. The traditional way was to avoid revealing too much or “over informing” customers of what the product specs or service inclusions are. Sales reps would even avoid bringing up anything written in the fine print as if their life depended on it. While this practice is not completely removed from today’s society, it is certainly less seen in this day and age.
Now that we live in the digital age, otherwise known as the “age of information,” sly sales tactics of old no longer work on everyday consumers. Now that more people have access to free information, more are educated on how to exercise their purchasing rights and demand for product honesty and transparency. As a digital marketer traversing through this new market, it is up to you to meet where consumers are at and provide what they seek – that is, reliable, trustworthy, and value-driven information.
Long story short, this has brought content marketing on the rise.
By delivering good quality content to consumers, providing them with the value they seek, and building a genuine connection with them through the posts you write and articles you publish. Even the contents of the digital media you post – reels, videos, graphics, etc. – should also prioritize the same. Your business’s marketing should be value-laden, cohesive, and consistent, if you want to make a significant impact in your industry.
When talking about content, apart from what you directly post on your own website, social media pages, and business pages, there’s also one other strategy that you can implement to reach a wider audience and introduce your brand to new eyes. It is what we call Guest Posting.
Guest Posting – Defined
In case this marketing strategy sounds new to you, let us explain to you how it works.
Guest posting, as the name suggests, is a type of content marketing wherein an individual or company, aka “the guest,” submits a piece of content to another website for publishing. It’s a simple, straightforward strategy that gives the contributing business a lot of advantages, both seen and unseen. Below, we list some of the advantages you can expect from running a guest posting campaign:
Increase In Website Traffic
One of the more measurable benefits of a guest posting campaign is an increase in your website traffic. When you contribute content as a guest to another website, they often allow you to place a link inside your content that redirects to your own website. This means that more people are ushered to your domain thanks to dozens of links you have distributed across different websites through your guest posts.
More Unique Visitors
Additionally, you’re not just getting any random clicks or returnees to your website. You can expect an increase in the number of unique visitors – meaning people who have never really visited your online domain before. This means you are getting fresh eyes on your content, product, services, and other things you wish to showcase on your website or social media pages. Unique clicks are important for any online business as it gives them the opportunity to sell to new potential customers.
Boost Brand Visibility
Next, guest posting gives your brand exposure. The thing with branding is that you need repetition. You need the right audience to get exposed to your business’s name, logo, slogan, and other branding elements over and over until such time that they create a correlation between your business and the industry you’re in. A successful brand doesn’t come into existence overnight. It requires continuous effort to expose your target market to unique branding elements until they can create a mental image of your brand themselves.
By doing guest posts, you can feature your brand across different websites, ideally in the same niche. This gives you more visibility to your consumer market and helps you build and solidify your brand in the market over time.
Build Website Authority
Guest posting also has technical advantages. Websites are ranked according to their perceived authority by search engines. In order to rank your website, search engines like Google, Yahoo, or Bing run your site’s metrics and take a look at your web of connections online. The more external connections your website has, the higher your website’s perceived authority would be.
It’s kind of like how researchers cite credible sources to back their data claims. The more websites link to yours, the more search engines perceive your website to be legitimate, authoritative, and relevant. It tells the system that there is something about your website that people want to see. Thus, the more inbound links you have, the better your standing will be in the SERPs.
Now, after reading all this you figure that this isn’t your cup of tea, you can always buy guest post backlinks and have the professionals do it for you. Either way, building your website authority through link associations is a must to advance your business.
Improve Search Engine Indexation & Categorization
As a continuation of the preceding point, building links through guest posting also helps improve your website’s categorization online. Search engines have bots, otherwise known as “crawlers,” that run through websites and everything else that associates with each website to determine what the website is all about. That being said, it is of utmost importance that you mind where you contribute posts to. Ideally, you should contribute guest posts to websites that are in the same niche or industry as your business. This will help crawlers categorize your site better and understand what it’s all about.
5 Important Tips To Get Your Guest Posts Approved 95% Of The Time
I think the first question that popped into your head is why 95% and not a hundred?
One word: Transparency.
As mentioned above, we’re all about transparency and honesty from this point onwards. If you want to do content marketing right, especially guest posting, you need to demand transparency from yourself at all times – no matter the situation, no matter the circumstance. So, we’re just practicing what we preach!
Truth is, no strategy or a shedload of tips will ever guarantee your success. Nothing is guaranteed in the world of digital marketing. What we have are carefully studied patterns, trends, and “likelihoods” that help us arrive at the results we want.
That being said, the 5% is what we would refer to as the margin of error – or the rate at which your work won’t be published even if you’ve followed all the tips listed here religiously. A guest post rejection, after all, might not even mean your submission didn’t meet the quality criteria. It could also mean that your content does not align with the industry they’re in or the marketing or branding results they are also trying to achieve. Remember that with this strategy, you are not only doing something that aligns with your interests, but it should align with the receiving party’s interests as well.
Moving on, here are 5 important tips that will significantly increase your chances of getting your guest posts approved.
It’s Not “You With A Little Bit Of Them” BUT “Them With A Little Bit Of You”
The one most important thing you have to remember when writing guest posting articles is that it’s not about you – and it shouldn’t be about you. You’re there to provide value in the best way possible and not to self-promote. In order to write an effective guest posting article, think about your readers, the audience you are trying to reach and put yourself in their shoes. Ask yourself, if I was reading this article and I’m curious to learn about this topic, what information would I find useful?
Keep writing with that train of thought and disposition and you will naturally come up with content that will be relevant to the people you intend to write the article for. The recipe is simple. Take your ego and your underlying motives out of the way and tap into that part of yourself that genuinely wants to provide value. Guest posts that are not salesy and value-driven tend to get approved easily as websites also want to provide their reading audience with articles, they’ll find relevant and helpful.
Do Not Overcomplicate – Use Human English
Keep your guest post articles simple. When people seek information, they gravitate towards materials that make complex information more “digestible.” That being said, your profound and flowery speech will not do them any favors. Your writing should be simple, readable, and easy-to-understand. You need to be able to deconstruct hard concepts to little chunks of information that even someone totally new to the space or industry can understand.
In other words, speak human English. You’re neither an AI nor an other-wordly species, so talk like a common person. Try to choose words that are easy to understand, cite examples that are relatable, and simplify your sentences.
Integrate Engaging Images For Better Visualization
Pages and pages of text will bore anyone out of their minds. Keep your paragraphs short and place intentional “breaks” in the article by integrating related images or photos that can help readers engage with your content. Reading thick paragraphs with complex text without visuals can easily make anyone get dizzy or fall asleep within the first 3 minutes. Help readers follow your article better and improve readability with the help of images.
Cite Other Reputable Sources; Be Mindful Of Negatively Impactful Websites
Apart from pretty pictures, you should also make it a point to include other citations in your write-up – especially when you’re mentioning facts or numeric data. After all, you really shouldn’t be pulling numbers out of thin air. If you are, you need to be able to cite the source of where you got the information from. Citing sources significantly increases your article’s credibility and reliability.
However, you also have to make sure that when you’re linking to other websites, you have already looked into their credibility and trustworthiness as an information source as well. If you cite flagged websites or domains that look fishy, your plan to add links to your article will only backfire and might lead to an instant rejection of your guest post. So always be responsible enough to fact-check your sources!
Submit Guest Posts Only To Publishing Sites That Involve Your Industry
Last but certainly not least, submit your articles to websites or publications that are relevant to your business or product. Reason number one is that your guest post will likely get approved faster if you are writing about a topic that is relevant to that website’s audience. Unless they are a general info type of website, they will likely be selective of what articles to feature on their domain. For instance, you can’t submit an article about “window cleaners” to a publication that focuses on new age fashion.
The second reason is that it may affect your own website’s categorization with search engines. As mentioned previously, guest posts also serve as a way to associate your website with other websites in the same niche, creating reliable connections that can boost your site’s authority. Now, what will happen if you have your website link featured in a bunch of random sites? Even the search engines will get confused as to what type of content people can expect from your domain.
That being said, if your business is in furniture, then submit guest posts to home improvement, furniture making, or lifestyle websites. If you’re in the restaurant business, then go ahead and submit guest posts to cooking, travel, or other food-related websites. If you’re in the digital marketing business, then go contribute to an e-commerce, B2B, or online business-related website. At any rate, just make sure that you are contributing to relevant niches to get the most out of your guest posting campaign.