How To Use Guest Posting To Build Your Digital Brand

There are lot of things you can do when looking to build your digital brand. Guest posting is one powerful tool you can use to beef up your online presence.

Why You Need A Strong Digital Brand

In the old days of marketing, your sales reps were likely the first point of contact between customers and your business. Today, that is not the case. Most people do research online to determine which products, services, businesses, and brands they want to associate with.

This is why you need to have a strong digital brand that is well represented across the web. It will be the first impression potential customers get of your business, and, unfortunately, can be the last if your digital presence is not well-executed.

Ultimately, you want to drive targeted traffic to your website and social media pages, grow your subscriber base, take control of your digital reputation, and build relationships. Guest posting can help you do all of these things.

SEE ALSO: Why SEO Pros Should Care About Branding

Consider The Behavior Of Your Target Customer

Sports teams and athletic brands have some of the best marketing tactics out there, so in some cases, take a few pages from their playbook. When you guest post, you are using a powerful traffic generating technique. You get access to a whole new audience that might be much larger, or much different from yours. You also get to leverage the credibility of wherever you are posting.

Sports teams, even if they haven’t performed well in years, still have people watching them and spending their hard earned money on tickets to games and merchandise. People also post about them on social media often, which is essentially free marketing.

Can you think of any other business that gets such support regardless of how it performs?

The Magic Of Marketing

Guest posting as one of magic of marketing

Think about it. If your business performed poorly for years, people would likely not come back, and eventually your reputation would stop people from working with you altogether. So, why do people keep pouring their time, energy, money, and loyalty into sports teams that might not have performed well in years?

The answer is that these teams have used branding and marketing to create a following.

How Sports Teams Create Followings

Often, successful branding comes down to creating a relatable and engaging narrative. While this narrative will vary depending on the company, and there is no one-size-fits-all solution, sports teams tend to use similar narratives to bring fans in.

Sports teams will often create heroes to beef up their brands and draw in fans. They will often revolve around making particularly talented team members seem like superhuman superstars that are making great feats in the face of adversity, but who are humble and likable for the cameras.

Teams that can do this well get massive and devoted followings.

SEE ALSO: Is Emotional Storytelling the Future of Branding?

How Can You Create A Following?

While having an athlete who is a sweetheart in interviews on deck might work for sports teams, that might not apply to your consulting firm travel agency. So, how can you take these ideas and use them to create a following for your digital brand and business?

To start, you can create a blog. Blogs are an amazing way to build a relationship with an audience. Your company blogs and social media channels are a powerful tool you can use to connect with new and old customers, clients, and business associates.

Building a readership can seem overwhelming and almost impossible, especially if you don’t already have a built-in audience. If you are unknown in your area of expertise, how can you build a strong brand and make your business well-known in the digital world?

Use Hero Power To Your Advantage

If you don’t have a built in platform or audience already, don’t panic. Most people don’t, but that doesn’t mean you can use this strategy. You will have to leverage the hero status of others who have platforms and audiences via guest posting.

Remember, you will not be able to do this by hiding quietly behind your keyboard. You will need to reach out and form relationships with established bloggers, personalities, authors, and influencers in your field. No one is too big to reach out to. It is always worth a shot.

Get Strategic

While it is great to have your guest posts on other people’s blogs, and to host guests on your own blog, that alone is not enough. It is all about who you build relationships with in this way, and not just doing it for the sake of doing it.

You want to work with the right people that reflect your brand values and connect you with the right audiences. You will not only be benefitting from backlinks, exposure, and traffic, but from the relationships you will build. The goal isto build relationships with beneficial bloggers and audiences.

Know Which Blogs To Target

guest posting should focus on which blogs to target

You want to find rising bloggers and personalities in your niche or similar niches. However, you don’t want to be too exclusionary. A blog that is small now might blow up later, resulting in a lot of traffic for you. However, it is impossible to say with complete certainty which blogs will be successful and which will not.

Blog Targeting Tips

It is impossible to know the exact future of any blogger, internet personality, or person, but there are a few things you can keep an eye out for. These will give you a general idea of whether a blog is on the right or wrong track.

  1. The Writing: Look out for consistent, engaging, informative writing.
  2. The Look: Does the blog look clean and professional, or is it amateurish and cluttered with ads?
  3. Their Post Frequency: You want a committed blogger with a somewhat regular posting schedule who has built a following with consistent content.
  4. Their Social Media: Pay attention to when, where, and how they use social media.
  5. Comments: Are people interacting with their posts and do they reply back? These are signs of a blogger who is building a digital relationship with their audience.
  6. Relationships: What kind of relationships have they built with other content creators and people in their professional niche?

Consider these 6 things when figuring out which bloggers you want to work with.

SEE ALSO: 5 Important Questions To Ask Yourself Before Guest Blogging

Guest Posting Is A Powerful Tool

Guest posting can be a powerful tool for anyone trying to build a digital brand. It helps you build important relationships with both others in your niche, and whole new audiences. You want to not only guest post on other blogs, but host guests on yours too.

While backlinks and traffic are important goals, they are actually natural results of building smart relationships in the digital sphere.

Which bloggers would you most like to work with?

Written by
Juntae DeLane

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