How To Grow Your Blog Audience Through Guest Posting
A step by step guide to effective guest posting
Don’t stop at your own blog! Guest posting is one of the most important ways to begin growing your audience. Compare it to a celebrity interview. Talk shows would be pretty boring without the special guests. Having a guest come on is a great way to attract new eyes and grow your platform.
Example:
Let’s pretend I have a podcast about music. Katy Perry is going to come on the show for an interview. She shares the podcast with her audience. Her audience is now exposed to my podcast. It’s a win-win.
Blogging is the same way! Whether you’re the one inviting guests or you yourself are the guest, you can grow your audience at a much more accelerated pace. This especially comes in handy when you are trying to reach a specific audience.
Build Relationships
Being a guest blogger adds value to someone else’s blog. Bring well-written content to the table and others will do the same for you. Build that relationship. Once you have that relationship, it will expand to other areas outside of your writing, such as your social media. Growing your online presence makes you more credible, which in turn, creates more opportunities to share your work and build even more relationships.
How To Be A Reliable Guest Poster:
- Promote it as if your own blog
- Respond to comments
- Share on social media as much as possible
- Add useful links in the post
- Communicate with your host and build a relationship
What If Someone Wants to Guest Post On My Blog?
If you are guest posting on blogs, open up your own blog to it as well! This is a great way to return the favor to a blog host you may have written for. Don’t forget to add in those backlinks to promote each other’s blogs! If you find a mutual relationship like this, you can work together to make your content as valuable as possible.
How To Find Guest Posting Opportunities
Google is your best friend. Stick to researching your niche or whatever specific topic you are writing about. Search for blogs that focus on these things and could benefit from your expertise on the subject.
Google Search Tips:
“Niche keyword”+ “guest post” or “accepting guest posts”
Be careful, there are a lot of blogs out there that are a waste of time. Be sure to do your research before writing to a crowd of zero.
Twitter is a great place to find guest post blogs. Search the same keywords as you did on Google to find guest posts and blogs that are accepting submissions from guests.
Ask yourself these questions before reaching out:
- Does the blog have decent ratings?
- Are they active on social media?
- Have they had guest bloggers before?
- Is their audience engaging?
- Does my writing fit in here?
Get to know the blog you are interested in writing for. Keep up with their posts for a while before reaching out to guest post. They will be more likely to host you if they notice you are an active reader and support their work.
Conclusion
If you’re not taking advantage of all guest posting has to offer, you should start! Sometimes it can be difficult to let another creative into your space, in this case your blog. You worked hard at building it. Don’t let this steer you away from this great opportunity to grow, though. With time, guest posting will allow you to become a trusted writer in the blogging community and it will strengthen your own writing skills! Start building those relationships.
