Guest blogging has become one of the hottest topics in the marketing industry in 2023. As content becomes the key to boosting conversions, could it be time to spread your brand’s wings and start sharing your creations across your niche?
Blogging is a great form of lead-driving content. With the ability to target keywords within your niche, build organic backlinks and point your targets toward your converting pages with ease, blog posts have been known to improve your site’s SEO and can even frame your brand as a thought leader within its niche.
The question is, have you also thought about guest blogging? Currently, 50% of bloggers reach out to up to 10 contacts monthly for a chance to feature their content on a new platform. With the ability to target new audiences and build brand credibility industry-wide, guest blogging is a no-brainer.
If you’re new to guest blogging, stick around as we’re about to delve deeper into the benefits, trials and tips every aspiring guest blogger should know about in 2023.
Should You Start Guest Blogging?
Guest blogging comes with a range of benefits. From expanded reach and audience exposure to SEO boosts and quality backlinks, guest blogging is a great, low-cost method of generating leads in a competitive online climate.
Here are some of the key positives associated with introducing guest posting to your marketing strategy:
- Expanded Reach: Guest bloggers have the chance to tap into a new audience simply by sharing their content on a new platform. When you contribute your content to established websites or blogs within your niche, you instantly open up your brand to more exposure. You may attract target consumers within your industry to engage with your content and click the backlink straight to a converting page, boosting your chance of acquiring a lead.
- Gaining Quality Backlinks: Guest blogging’s true benefits come from the quality backlinks it produces. Not only can you use your post to backlink to your own site, but if your content is of value, other well-recognised bloggers may also reference a link to your content in their own work, and the linking list goes on.
- Building Credibility: The more backlinks you receive within your niche, the more credibility your brand will gain. If you contribute insightful guest posts that are well-researched, you are more likely to be considered a leader in your field. Better still, if you aim for authoritative platforms that are already well-trusted, target leads are much more likely to engage with your content and trust your brand going forward.
With this in mind, let’s have a closer look at how you can improve your own guest posting strategy in 2023.
How to Optimise Your Guest Posting Strategy In 2023
As a guest blogger, the competition has never been tougher. With more content being shared than ever before, those who want their content to appear on authoritative sites must prioritise exceptional writing and work hard at building strong B2B relationships.
Here are just a few ways to switch up your strategy for success.
Prioritise Exceptional Content
It’s one thing to write a guest post for your own blog, but crafting a guest post for another brand’s platform is tricky. Your voice has to not only align with your values but match theirs too.
The key here is to research, research, research before embarking on a guest blogging journey. Pick a platform that naturally covers the same content topics as you, and find a gap that you could fill in terms of expertise.
Offer unique insights, and present your information in a well-structured, easy-to-read piece that likely follows the format of previously published posts. This makes your content more likely to blend in and could even tempt regular readers to indulge.
Ensure that your piece is also original. Think about new angles. If your post sticks out, it is much more likely to be picked up by authoritative players and even reshared as a backlink in future industry content.
Reference Other Content
While it is important to link back to your own brand throughout your guest post, you should also reference other credible sources in order to make your piece more insightful and organically valuable to your readers.
This alone will help bloggers take your work more seriously and not write off your guest post as an attempt at shameful promotion.
Research the latest insights, and even find some sources within historical posts on your target publication. This presents your post as a piece of value. Better still, when outreaching your target publication, quote the most interesting statistics in a pitch email to gain more attention from your publisher.
Build B2B Relationships
Building relationships within your industry is the key to guest posting success. If you want to generate organic backlinks, you need to connect with the most authoritative players within your industry, sometimes even direct competitors.
Before pitching a piece to a publication, start engaging with their current content. Comment on their blog pieces, and share their latest posts on your branded socials. Appear on their radar. Once you’ve done this, you can approach a company via email with a list of potential post ideas.
This said, while 87% of bloggers come up with guest post ideas, only half of them do the actual writing.
There are plenty of ways to approach a guest-posting relationship. Some companies write their content in-house and are only open to link exchanges between blogs, while others outsource their blog writing to freelancers or a specialist guest blogging service.
The key here is to start small by approaching just a few closely linked brands before opening up your content to large SERP-dominating publications for more generalised exposure.
Choose Relevant Platforms
Last but not least, make sure you’re choosing relevant platforms to post your content on. If you’re new to the guest blogging game, you need to build up your credibility within your niche before you can approach the national newspapers, for example.
Not only is your target demographic more likely to engage with your content on a similar platform/branded blog, but it’s these niche followers who will share your content for wider exposure moving forward.
Guest Posting 2.0
Guest posting trends continue to evolve. As content writers and platforms become more competitive, your pitches must be polished, and your angles must be original if you are to score quality backlinks in 2023.
The key here is to start small and win big. While guest posting may seem time-consuming at first, these long-living backlinks will continue to pay off as time moves forward.
