5 Guest Posting Strategies you can Steal

This guest post is written by Grant Hensel

Guest blogging is quite literally taking the world by storm. The model makes perfect sense: the host gets free content and the guest gets exposure.

If you already knew that, congratulations! You’ve mastered Guest Posting 1.0…and it’s time to take your game to a whole new level.

The following 5 guest posting strategies have been implemented successfully by some of the best bloggers in the industry. Each approach by itself will make your guest posts far more successful, but used together they can provide a quantum leap in effectiveness.

The first major mistake many bloggers make when guest posting is only focusing on generating traffic or links or attention. A good post will give you all of those benefits, so why not maximize overall effectiveness?

Guest posts can provide all of the following:

TrafficSubscribersCredibilityBacklinksSocial shares

Create an excel spreadsheet to track the above metrics for each of your posts. Add another column describing everything you did to promote your post. Try to attach a dollar value to each metric – how much is a visitor or a subscriber or a link worth to you? After you’ve collected some data, determine which combination of topic, host blog and promotion produces the greatest overall return.

Want to turn yourself into an instant celebrity? Go on a guest posting blitz.

Danny Iny used an all-out guest post barrage to catapult his Firepole Marketing website into the spotlight. The same strategy worked wonders for Josh Hanagarne, and earned him a chance to share his story on Copyblogger.

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Here’s how to launch a guest posting blitz of your own:

Build a list of 20-30 blogs you would like to post on. BloggersPassion has a great list of blogs that accept guest posts.Browse each blog and develop headlinesfor potential posts. Try to have 2-3 post ideas for each blog. Make sure your topics are relevant for the host blogger’s audience but haven’t already been covered.Send email pitches to the first few bloggers on your list. Start with a personal introduction to demonstrate you know who the blogger is and what they write about. Conclude with a request to publish a guest post, proposing the headlines that you developed in the previous step. Include links to samples of your past work if you have them.Research and write like crazy! Once bloggers start accepting your requests, get to work! These posts are your first contact with the host blogger and his or her audience, and you only have one chance to make a good first impression.

This tactic works amazingly well in conjunction with the strategy that we just discussed. As Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz and the Blog Tyrant will tell you, use your guest posts to join the conversation!

Presumably all of the bloggers on your list for the Blitz strategy above are in the same niche. If you used their blogs to research your guest posts, give them the credit they are due and reference their work with a link. This demonstrates your industry knowledge and shows that you have something to add to the conversation.

After your post is published, send a quick email to the owner of each blog you referenced. If your original post was successful, you can even propose writing something for them on a related topic. This strategy allows you to leverage each of your posts to gain access to increasingly prestigious blogs. It also allows you to build your skills as you go, so that when someone like Chris Brogan finally accepts your pitch you’re ready to knock his audience’s socks off!

This is my favorite strategy because the potential return is absolutely astounding.

Despite its power, this approach is theoretically quite simple:

Write an amazing, jaw dropping postPitch your post to bloggers at the very top of the food chain

As an example of what I mean by ‘jaw-dropping value,’ check out this post on Chris Brogan’s blog, which was shared over 100,000 times. It’s a mammoth of a post, the topic is general enough to appeal to all audiences and the quality of the content is mind-blowing. In a follow-up post on Income Diary, Tommy explains how he managed to write this masterpiece.

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What’s the takeaway here? Sometimes one amazing post on a huge blog is more effective than hundreds of guest posts on smaller websites.

Here’s a secret: Maneesh Sethi was the first person to truly convince me of the power of guest posting. Maneesh wrote a great post on Scott H Young’s blog and gave away enormously valuable information at the end, exclusively for Scott’s followers.

This strategy not only built Maneesh’s email list but provided his readers with an incredibly valuable eBook as a special thank-you present. This is a great way to add a personal touch to your posts while building your business at the same time.

This approach made such an impression on me that I’ve decided to give 1,000 copies of my new eBook, “One Question that will Transform your Struggling Blog into a Titan” completely free. Skip the sales page on my blog by using this backdoor link, which will let you pick up the eBook for free. Get your copy before they run out!

Don’t just read and move on, it’s time for you to put these five strategies to work! What can you do right now to optimize your guest posts for multiple goals, go on a posting blitz, reference A-list bloggers, create posts of amazing value and give your readers special benefits?

Implement these strategies and I promise your blog will never be the same. Thanks for reading, and enjoy the free eBook!

About the Author: Grant Hensel is the CEO of Viibrant.com a startup that allows experts in any field to create and sell online courses. You can read more of his work or contact him through the Viibrant Expert Blog.

P.S. Grant has also been deeply moved and inspired by Bamidele’s work ethic and success – congratulations on finding his amazing blog!