Which Are The Things You Must Do Before You Ever Accept Guest Posts
Guest posting can be an
incredibly valuable marketing tactic. For most, guestpost is all about publishing your content on other websites.
However, there is also a big opportunity when you allow others to guest post on
your website.
Accepting guest posts is a great
way to grow your blog without having to do a ton of work. Guest posters will
share their content when it’s published and will subsequently promote your
blog. Free marketing! That free marketing can lead to more social media
shares and, hopefully, links to your site.
1. Figure out Your Goals
·
Your click-through rate?
·
Do you want more social media
followers?
Whatever
your endgame might be, it’s important to put some thought into it before you
allow people to start guest posting. You can then prepare your website to best
utilize the extra traffic to meet your specific goals. A big mistake companies
make is running toward this strategy hoping to reap all the benefits, and
oftentimes their website is unprepared and they end up actually missing opportunities
2. Create Guest Posting
Guidelines
Once you open your blog to guest
posts you’re bound to get a lot of inquiries about your expectations for posts.
You can save yourself some time and easily address these questions by posting a
guidelines page (check out SEJ’s rules for guest contributors page as one example). This will also let visitors know
that you’re open to guest posts and hopefully encourage them to contact you.
Consider including information
about how long you want posts to be, some possible topics you’re interested in,
your preferred style of writing, and any incentives you might be willing to
offer.
3. Highlight Your Stats
Again, no one is going to write
for you for free, so make sure you can explain why it’s worth it for them to
choose you. You should have statistics readily available like how many monthly
visits your site attracts, audience demographics, or how many people
are signed up for your newsletter or email list.
4. Create a Plan for Promoting
Guest Posts
Another thing that guest posters
might be wondering about is how you plan on advertising their post after
they’re done writing it. It’s just as important for your success to have a plan
in mind as it is for theirs
They might want to know how many
Twitter followers you have, or what your following looks like on LinkedIn or
Facebook. While they have access to some of this information without your help,
it will look good if you can immediately answer their questions with some hard
stats.
5. Make Sure the Content on Your
Home Page Is the Best You Have to Offer
This has more to do with you than
with your guests, but it’s important nonetheless. Think about what message you
want to send to all these new visitors.
What’s the first thing
visitors going to see when they arrive on your page? Is it representative
of your brand and your company? If not, it’s time for a revision.
Think specifically in terms of
content — if a visitor reads one post and ends up on your site, they might be
motivated to read more. You want to make sure the articles they see first are
some of your best work, and it doesn’t hurt to feature a few with engaging
headlines (as long as the content inside the article is valuable, which it
always should be).
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