I think that anyone in business today who is Internet savvy knows the value of using blogging for business purposes. Get a lot of attention for your business through blogging, and you’ve made use of one of the least expensive but most expansive methods for promoting your business. Yet, many people don’t recognize the full power-potential of the blog.
One of the most powerful things that you can do, or get done, in order to use blogging for your business promotion is guest posting. You can have guest bloggers come make contributions to your blog, or you can be a guest blogger at relevant blogs yourself. When I say “relevant”, I mean other blogs that have something to do with yours or your business.
For instance, let’s say that you sell multimedia marketing solutions and materials. You can guest post at blogs that are about website design, copy writing, video marketing, sales strategies, voice-over work, photography used for marketing purposes, multimedia strategies, customer database management, inside sales methods, and so on.
You can also invite guest bloggers to come to your company blog and contribute material. You will give them full credit for their appearance, and they will get a back-link to their website. This makes it attractive for them to appear.
What You Want in a Guest Blogger
Alright, so…what are you looking for in a guest blogger? This of course would also indicate the type of guest blogger that you should be for others.
- Someone knowledgeable about the subject matter.
- Someone who writes well; that is, someone with good grammar skills, someone who pays attention to spelling, someone who has a flair for language, and someone who knows how to communicate clearly.
- Someone who is willing to make you look good.
- Someone who has a good online reputation. You don’t want guys who have sex with underage girls, people with reputations for causing a lot of trouble on Face Book, “SEO black hatters”, and that sort of crowd blogging as guests for you.
Clearly, you should have these traits for yourself, too.
What Guest Blogging Does for You
When you get guest bloggers at your site, you establish a reputation for providing high quality content. This is more important than ever now that we live in the world of Google Panda and the higher SERPs standards set by Bing. This is why you don’t want any “SEO black hatters” or people who only understand how to stuff keywords. You want good writers.
You build good back links to your blog with guest bloggers. When you have good guest bloggers make posts at your site, they link back to their websites. This gets you back links that matter to web crawlers, and it gets you convenient links that you can use as your own resources.
Guest bloggers help you stay fresh and creative. There’s no one of us who’s as smart as all of us. Guest bloggers can come up with unique angles and original thoughts that you or your in-house writers might not think of. It is very important to have a constantly refreshed blog. A blog that is constantly being “remade” gets higher SERPs rankings, plus it establishes you as an up-to-date online voice.
When you do guest blogging, you also benefit the people that you write for. In return you of course get to create a link back to your own business at the other business’ site. You can establish yourself as an intelligent, authoritative voice in the field, and you can establish yourself as a partner or additional resource for those who are looking to use the services that the other business offers.
Clearly, you want to guest blog at other sites that are not those of businesses that compete with you. You want to guest blog at other sites that complement your business. Remember the multimedia marketing example above. Likewise, you only want complementary businesses guest blogging for you.
So, keep your blog looking professional and get yourself great outreach online for free. Make use of guest blogging.
Kurt Billies – Blogger, experienced marketer and online promoter.
