Guest blogging can be a significant step forward for your digital brand. Before you submit a guest post, there are a couple of important questions to consider. Look through this list of questions to ask yourself before guest blogging so that you can get a fuller understanding of why you want to start posting on other people’s websites.
Guest blogging is a big commitment that can improve your digital brand a ton. Let’s go through the list so you can become a better guest blogger today.
SEE ALSO: 4 Hacks For Driving Targeted Traffic To Your Site
Why Am I Guest Blogging?
Before you even consider guest blogging you need to ask yourself: why am I guest blogging anyway? Surely there are easier ways to gain backlink opportunities for your blog, easier ways to connect with a new audience, and easier ways to establish authority. On the other hand, guest blogging obviously works well. You want to focus on your why when it comes to guest blogging.
Before you submit any guest blog for a website, you want to be very clear about your goals. Do you want to promote an upcoming e-book, course, or just your email list? Are you trying to build authority around a topic? Do you want to connect with someone’s audience?
Guest blogs, in my opinion, obviously have somewhat of an ulterior motive. That motive isn’t sinister, but it’s important to acknowledge that it is there. Your need for guest blogging has to go past the superficial because guest blogging takes a LOT of work. You are taking some excellent content and putting it on a website that is not your own. There are easier ways to gain backlinks, but guest blogging allows for something that contacting bloggers for backlinks simply doesn’t do.
Guest blogging creates a more intense connection with you and their blog readers. You can build a better relationship with an audience through a post you write for them than you can through a related reading link at the end of a post. Think of your goals and then set out to find a blog that can help you accomplish those goals.
Who Is My Target Audience?
The next question you need to consider after you determine your goals is who your target audience is. You shouldn’t guest blog on just any blog, especially if their following doesn’t reflect something you want to see in your audience. You should already have a target audience for your blog, so your goal is to find a blog that has similar demographics to what you want on your blog.
Here are some things you may want to consider when thinking about your target audience:
- Age of the audience: What is the average age range of your target audience? Are you trying to reach a younger audience, a more established audience, a retired audience, or somewhere in between? Dig into what age you see being most helpful for.
- Audience Gender: If you have a particular gender in mind for who you help, you want to look for an audience that has a similar gender makeup.
- Audience Career: If you have a specific niche of people you want to reach, you may want to know this information.
- For example, if you are writing a piece that reaches authors, you want to work with a blog that already draws in authors or has the potential to do so.
- Audience career might also be a proxy for audience wealth.
- For example, if you are looking to guest blog on a blog that reaches students, you will not sell them a guest blog about luxury cars. Most students will not be able to afford the luxury cars you are selling unless you were a luxury car rental service, so a college lifestyle blog is not a place you should be guest blogging.
It is important to consider your target audience because guest blogging is about more than backlinks. There are tons of easier ways to get backlinks such as product reviews and comments. Guest blogging is about creating a connection with a new audience. The best way to create that connection is by considering your target audience.
SEE ALSO: Link Building vs Link Earning. Which Is Best?
What Do I Want Their Audience To Think?
You want to blow your potential new audience away.
As a guest blogger, you should be giving away some awesome content. To be honest, you may even want to provide better content than what they would see on the blog usually. You want your name to be synonymous with “brilliant content” not “okay content.”
Giving your best stuff away on someone else’s blog is not much fun, but it creates that connection. You want the readers of that blog to take action, and that action is to learn more information about you. You want them to scroll down to your bio and excitedly click over to your profile.
Impact the audience in some way with your work. The impact that you can make on them will drive page views, email sign-ups, and sales to your website.
Before you send in any guest blogs, you have to come to terms with your reputation. What do you want that reputation to be? Do you want to be known for long-form content or short, punchy blog pieces?
Your reputation is up to you.
When you are considering what blogs to pitch, though, you need to submit to blogs that feature the kind of content you want to be known for.
Do I Align With This Blog?
If the blog’s owner curses like a sailor, but you are completely clean, that won’t work.
Just because a blog checks all your content boxes doesn’t mean you should write for them. It’s easy to say that since you both chat about XYZ, you will make a perfect fit, but that’s not true. It has to go deeper than appropriate content. Your voice and style have to fit seamlessly into that blog. For your partnership to truly work, you have to fit like a glove. Your content can be fantastic, but if they aren’t used to hearing it that way, it won’t matter.
So, not only does your content have to fit, but your voice has to resonate.
Another example: are you a soft-spoken introvert trying to guest blog on the site of someone who is boisterous and extroverted? I am not saying that it won’t work, but you may have two drastically different teaching styles. Even if the audience loves your content, you may not be able to forge a connection with them.
Blogging is different from the classroom. On a blog, people are drawn to the type of content they want to read. In class, you are forced to learn from a teacher, even if their teaching style doesn’t fit you. So, in a classroom, many students prosper from being exposed to different teaching styles. On a blog, people don’t thrive, because they have picked that blogger for a reason. If you go into someone’s space online with a different style, you may not always be welcomed with open arms. The purpose of guest blogging is to create a connection, and you can’t do that if people reject your teaching style. Consider that before you guest blog anywhere.
Does This Content Fit Within My Repertoire?
Last, but not least, you want to ask yourself if the content you are submitting fits within your content area or repertoire.
When people see a blog with a high domain authority, they feel the need to submit something. You could even feel the need to submit a blog to a site which has an entirely different topic than you typically write about. DON’T DO THIS. Your goal as a guest blogger should be to grow your audience, email list, sales, etc.
So, let’s talk this out. Say you don’t usually write about Facebook ads, but you know enough about the subject, and you decide to send in an amazing piece about the topic. Facebook ads are an interesting topic, that doesn’t get enough coverage, even though they can change your business. You write this excellent post for a blog all about effective advertising. The audience eats up every word you write, and they are SO excited to check out your blog. Then they are disappointed because you don’t even talk about advertising, you talk about home decor.
It’s so easy to want to write content in the blog’s wheelhouse, but you need to find blogs in your wheelhouse to guest blog for. If you want to make the biggest impact on readers and make the most significant impact on your numbers, you have to be able to give the people more of what they want. If they came to your blog for your amazing Facebook ads content, you want to give them more of that content (or at the very least, content about social media.)
Not only that, but you also want to make sure that you can reuse the content that you write on their blog. Once you submit a guest blog, the blog probably doesn’t want you reusing the exact content, but there are so many ways you can repurpose content.
How To Repurpose Guest Blog Content
Here are a couple of ways you can repurpose blog content using our Facebook ads example:
- Livestream/Video
- You could do a livestream where you set up a Facebook ad using the tips you give in the post.
- You could take some of the best tips from that post and create a video discussing those tips.
- Reuse Listicle Titles
- If your Facebook ads title was “3 Tools To Help You Become A Pro At Facebook Ads” you could make a blog on your site listing 3 more tools to help while linking out to your guest blog.
- Create An E-Book
- If you found that you had a ton of things to say about a topic you guest blogged about, you could easily spend more time turning that topic into a quick e-book for your readers. You may want to create a series of quick Facebook ads related e-books for your audience jumping off of the information you wrote in your guest blog.
- PDF Cheatsheet
- A quick way to get email subscribers is by creating a PDF cheatsheet or checklist. Use the outline of your Facebook ads posts in this example to create a Facebook ads cheatsheet that your audience (and even the audience you get from your guest blog) can download and use as they are setting up their Facebook ads.
Your guest blog does not have to stop on the site you posted on. Having similar content on your blog will help you make that connection. So, while you are writing your guest blog, consider how you can use content that you already have, or how you can add to your content in the future using content you are writing for your guest blog.
Guest Blog For Digital Branding Institute
Digital Branding Institute is always looking for guest blog content. At the moment we are mainly looking for content in the following categories:
- Branding
- Content Marketing
- Social Media
- Email Marketing
- Search Engine Optimization
- Digital Advertising
- Online Reputation Management
If you discuss any of these topics, I would love to work with you to get your amazing content on Digital Branding Institute. Check out this form for more information and to submit your guest blog.
Extra Guest Blogging Resources
Are you still stuck on guest blogging? Here are some additional resources that will help you become a better guest blogger:
3 Ways Guest Posting Can Help Grow Your Online Audience by Goins, Writer
The Ultimate Guide to Guest Blogging by Kissmetrics
17 Foolish Mistakes to Avoid as a Guest Blogger by Hubspot
Have you ever submitted (or consider submitting) a guest blog? What was your experience with guest blogging? I would love to know, so leave me a comment below!
