Written by Danica on 03.02.2015

5 Dead-Simple Strategies to Win at Guest Posting

We already know how guest posting can bring about a wealth of benefits, such as driving qualified traffic, boosting credibility, opening up new business and networking opportunities, and more. But what most do not know is that there is no secret formula to being an ace at guest posting, only several golden strategies that you can remember in order to make your guest posting initiatives a success. They include:

Strategy #1: Outline your very own content strategy

At the core of your content strategy is your goal of writing, in which you decide WHO your guest post should reach out to. Before guest posting on a particular site, it also pays to first read the site’s writing requirements and guidelines, so that no time is wasted in submitting half-cooked content that would be turned down anyway. Watch out for guidelines that contain:

• content expectation (what does the content say?)
• tone and manner of the soon-to-be-submitted content (what’s the content’s voice like?)
• formatting (how will it look like?)

I find that literally mind-mapping out your content strategy on large sheets of papers helps immensely! Otherwise, go for online mind-mapping tools such as MindMup and WiseMapping.

Strategy #2: Editorial calendar

To avoid tripping over yourself submitting gazilions of guest posts to numerous sites, you should first prepare an editorial calendar. This helps you save time and see the big picture as you plan your posting schedule according to writer availability, content completion and other important aspects. You can start by:

• building a list of up to 50 QUALITY blogs that you would love to post on
• peruse the list and try to create potential posts that would be a great fit for the sites (ask yourself if your audience would be happy to see these posts there?)
• send the blogger or webmaster a personal email introducing yourself, outlining a possible win-win relationship where you provide quality posts for his or her site, including links to blog posts you’ve previously placed, and then pitching your potential content from an interesting and compelling angle!

Strategy #3: Vet and proofread

No self-respecting guest poster will allow a delicious piece of content to be submitted before proofreading it, lest this delectable dish be spoiled by sprinkles of unsavory grammatical errors and unsightly wall of texts.

Strategy #4: Provide credit where credit is due

Providing a link back to resources you’ve used or quoted is always a good thing to do. Not only do you genuinely want to offer as much useful resources to your audience, but you are also linking back to the publication you’ve used and directly thanking them for research well done.

Strategy #5: State your call to action clearly and concisely

At the end of your guest post, you’ll want to increase engagement by getting your audience to do something you want. It may be asking them to share the post via one of the many social media channels or it may even be to comment and ask questions, thus enabling you to reply, provide more value to your audience and at the same time, build your community.

Conclusion

Like I said before, there’s no magic formula to succeed at guest posting overnight. What you CAN do is, remember these basic strategies (anyone can do it!) and develop your own as you go on.

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