For everyone saying what a huge positive impact guest blogging had to their marketing success, you will easily find someone claiming that guest blogging is not worth the effort.
Who is right?
Both.
What?
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You can have huge success with guest blogging, and you can totally waste your time.
Yes, they are both right: Stumbling blindly into guest blogging can result in tremendous frustration. You can even be successful in the form of getting a ton of awesome blogs to accept your posts, publish them, get a ton of shares and reactions – and no measurable results for your blog or business.
Or you can have a select few guest articles published on some niche blogs and find yourself in awe of the follower gain, the number of new subscribers and even new customers.
So, what is making the difference?
There are multiple ways of wrecking all your guest blogging efforts – and most of the time what is wrong is not the guest blogging approach in itself but how it is executed.
When I first started guest blogging in early 2012, I did not know most of this.
Results from my posts in the form of traffic, signups and followers came more or less by chance. Some posts worked well and some did not. It took me some more writing and publishing to realize what I should focus on and what is absolutely mandatory for guest blogging success.
Here are 5 ways to turn guest blogging results into nothing:
1. The Wrong Topic
Choosing a topic you like instead of a topic that is connected to what you and your business are usually about will not give you the best results from your guest blogging efforts.
Just consider this: You are interested in generating traffic for your blog and find an awesome post.
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Realizing that it is a guest post you take a look at the author’s website and social accounts. You find out that the author’s website is about copywriting. Would you subscribe when you are looking for information on traffic generation?
Or if you have a blog about cooking and recipes but write a guest post about farming and growing vegetables: Can you expect the readers of the gardening blog to subscribe to your recipes?
Make sure you choose a topic that is related to your own business or blog. You want to attract an audience that would also be interested in you and what you are about when you are not guest blogging.
Targeting the best audience for yourself with a guest post means that you need to cover a topic that will be of interest to the audience you are seeking!
2. Wrong Niche Of the Hosting Blog
One very important reason to engage in guest blogging is to access an already existing audience: The audience of the hosting blog.
This existing audience needs to have a significantly large intersecting set of people who would also be interested in what your own blog or business provides.
If this is not the case, you will not be able to turn any part of this audience into traffic, subscribers or customers for your own purposes.
Never choose a hosting blog for fancy or vanity reasons or just because you can get a post featured.
Being featured on a hype blog that does not match your niche may be nice for your ego – but most of the time it will turn out to be nothing for your guest blogging success.
3. No Traffic On The Hosting Blog
What are you looking for as results from your guest blogging efforts? Traffic? Subscribers? Customers? Branding?
Whatever it is, if the blog you are posting on has no considerable audience, you cannot expect any considerable results in any of them!
And truth be told: The best blogs for you to post on with enough traffic and audience to be relevant will also be the ones that will get a ton of guest blogging requests. Do not wait for a blog to approach you – these blogs will often not be worth your time. They may just be looking for free content. Approach the blogs that YOU think would be perfect for you. If your writing is good, you provide great content – you have a good chance of getting a guest blogging gig on a blog with a considerable audience!
4. Not Paying Respect To The Author Bio
When I started guest blogging, I totally underestimated the power of the author bio. I focused on linking back to our website or articles from within my guest post – something I would not do today. And I totally missed out on the author bio: where you are not only free to link to your website or social accounts but can also add a call-to-action.
And then by chance one of my articles on Jeff Bullas’ blog got awesome reactions and a simple mention of my at that time tiny Twitter account brought me a couple of hundred new followers. That one guest post easily doubled my overall Twitter followers. And I got a first impression of the power of the author bio.
But it still took me some more guest posting and learning to realize that a carefully crafted author bio, a call-to-action and something to offer on my end would have the power to boost signups for our own newsletters.
5. Not Optimizing On Your End
You expect the big results from your guest posting efforts. You got the niche and the topic right. You wrote an awesome author bio and chose a blog with considerable traffic?
And you actually see some traffic to whatever place you are guiding the readers from your guest post. And then what? How will you capture these visitors? What will they do on your side?
Example landing page for a freebie offered in a guest author bio
Failing to have a clear notion about what you expect these people to do on your site and leading them to a dead-end can easily lead your guest blogging efforts to nothing.
You need a clear idea of what you expect from the people you address through your guest posts and optimize your end to lead them to the action you want: A landing page, a freebie, a signup form or even a sales page.
Whatever it is you want them to do, lead them there, use a call-to-action – and make sure the website or landing page is conversion optimized.
Whatever it is you want them to do, lead them there, use a call-to-action – and make sure the website or landing page is conversion optimized.
Even if you are just trying to build followers for your social accounts, make sure, your accounts are worth to be followed, are active and clearly show what new followers can expect.
Only when you get your part straight will your guest blogging efforts be rewarded.
How to turn guest blogging into everything
To sum it up: The secret behind success from guest blogging lies in the choice of the right blog, the right topic – and in optimizing things that you can influence: The author bio and the website or social account where you sent the readers from your guest post.
Just guest posting blindly on as many blogs that are willing to take your posts will often cost you more time than it will pay you back in traffic, signups or followers.
We help bloggers and businesses to grow an audience, leads, and customers through guest blogging by providing a step-by-step process to successful guest blogging.
Why are we the people that can teach you how to win with guest blogging?
Because we have done it ourselves.
We grew two business with guest blogging. We have published posts on various blogs like Social Media Examiner and Jeff Bullas’ Blog.
Do you want to succeed with guest blogging? Check out our book “Write. Publish. Grow. The Ultimate Guide To Guest Blogging“
