7 Tips to Start a Successful Guest Blogging Program on Your Blog

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• Advantage of Sourcing Guest Blogs
• Tips to Host a Successful Guest Blogging Project
• Conclusion 
• FAQs

In the era of digital marketing, guest blogging is one marketing tactic that many digital marketers swear by. Since online marketing is primarily content-driven, guest blogging can offer tremendous benefits to all parties involved if done the right way.

Hosting a guest blogging program entails inviting third-party writers to contribute some blogs on your blogging platform (usually a website or a blog). The invitees usually hold expertise and opinions in the same field or industry as yours. Thus, guest posts are a great way to engage your audience with diverse and fresh content and offer them a change of pace from what you usually publish. Inviting third parties to contribute blog posts also allows you to get in touch with qualified professionals in your industry and expand your professional network.

Advantages of Sourcing Guest Blogs

Source

In digital marketing, blogging is a highly rewarding means of gaining traffic and widening the audience base. Quality blogs that are engaging and provide impactful insights into a topic are highly sought after. 

But, as much as you want to publish credible blogs on your blogging platform, it can be difficult to come up with exciting ideas every day. Guest posting is a great tool for dealing with such problems. Additionally, posts written by guests can pave the way for a plethora of benefits for your blog.

Here are some of the prominent benefits guest posts can offer you.

1. Better content in limited budget

Budget constraints can have a serious impact on your digital marketing strategies. If you are on a tight budget but still want to get the best bang for your buck, resort to guest posts. Since blogs require comparatively fewer resources, you can hope to get great content for less money.

2. Audience growth and retention

Posting quality third-party content tells your audience that you care for them. And hopefully, they will thus stick around for long.  Blog posts from guest posters also hold the potential of attracting more people to your website. This will, in turn, grow your audience base by a significant margin.

3. Increased web traffic for the host

With the influx in your audience numbers, web traffic for your website will also see an incline. As more and more people flock towards your website, you can hope for wider exposure and a better reach on the internet.

4. Increased blog-posting frequency

The frequency with which you publish blogs also determines the traffic for your blog. The higher the frequency the greater the traffic. Externally sourced blogs allow you to obtain more blogs in a short amount of time. Thus, guest posting can help you increase your blog posting frequency by a notable margin.

5. Increased brand value and market reputation

The more and better content you post on your blog, the more value you will gain in the market. Sourcing quality blog posts from outside can help you increase your worth in the market and build a reliable image of your brand. And as your brand gets more market rep, your customer base is bound to go up.

Tips to Host a Successful Guest Blogging Project

Now that you know the perks that third-party blog posts can bring to your blog, it is time to leverage them. If you are considering inviting guest writers for your blog, abide by the following guest blogging tips.

1. Conduct an assessment of your blog before you bid on third parties

Consider the following assessment points before you venture out to invite writers to contribute blog posts for your blog.

• Do you only want a lot of content on your blog? If yes, then you should step back. Why? Because the purpose of sourcing blogs from outside is to enrich your blog with content other than what you have been posting, not flood it with whatever you can get your hands on.

• Is web traffic your only concern? If yes, then you should think twice before inviting guest posts. Sure web traffic is important but more important than it is the quality of content you post on your blog. If your content is good enough, visitors will surely get attracted to it. Don’t make traffic surges your primary agenda.

• Do you have set goals for your blog? If not then third party posts can do you more harm than good. First, make a list of all that you want to accomplish with third party posts. Only then go for accepting blog posts from others.

2. List the instructions that you want your guests to follow

Before you outsource blog posts, you need to set aside some guidelines that you want the writers to follow. This is a crucial step as it allows the writers to understand what you want from their blogs. If you skip out on this tip, there are high chances that you will end up with blogs that do not resonate with what you normally post on your website. This will put on you an additional burden of editing and making revisions to the blogs.

3. Complete all negotiations before you sign a contract

When you connect with a third-party writer, making your intentions clear is the first step in establishing a professional relationship. Communicate properly and make sure that the other party is aware of the incentives that you are offering in return for their posts. This helps you maintain a consistently professional attitude and saves you from some of the worst mental trauma that you might otherwise suffer from.

4. Maintain a delivery calendar

When you contract out blog posts, maintaining a delivery schedule can help you obtain the blog posts on time. This in turn will help you sustain a consistent blog-posting rate and provide your audience with new content regularly.

5. Do not publish a blog without scanning it thoroughly first

The worst you can do to your blog is post content on it blindly. If your blog ends with factually or grammatically incorrect information, it will be a major turn-off for your audience. This, in turn, will blemish your blog’s reputation and credibility. And chances are that your audience numbers might reduce owing to the mistakes.

Before posting a blog post, make sure to proofread and fact-check it. You can also add some of your revisions to enhance the blog.

6. Keep a check of your contributors’ quality

As humans, we are bound to have good or bad days. Not everyone is consistent enough to offer exemplary performance every day. Hence, when you ask someone to write blogs for you, make sure to assess their blog’s quality to ensure only the best is going to be put up on your blog. You don’t have to be too strict or naggy if you notice anything wrong. Just make it a point to remind the writer about how you give prominence to writing quality.

7. Have someone take the responsibility

If you are planning to manage everything on your own, you might want to reconsider your decision. Sure, having only yourself to manage the incoming blog posts can seem financially beneficial. But, after a certain point of time, you are bound to get overburdened. Thus, assigning the task of managing guest posts can allow you to focus on the other important aspects of your blog and ensure that the blogs arrive in good shape.

Key Takeaways

• Guest blog posts are highly advantageous from a digital marketing perspective.
• Outsourcing blogs can help increase traffic, build a market rep and establish a trusty brand image.
• When acquiring posts from third parties, editing and proofreading them should be a priority.
• Maintaining strict guidelines and a fixed delivery schedule is necessary to sustain consistency in terms of quality and publishing frequency.

Conclusion

According to Demand Metric, organizations and businesses that use blogging as a digital marketing strategy attract 67% more leads than the ones that rarely blog or don’t blog at all.

This implies that blogging is still a highly rewarding digital marketing technique. Since content marketing is a prominent part of online marketing, the need to post high-quality content on websites regularly is nowadays a necessity to stay ahead in the game.

However, one can do only so much to devise and create new and different content every day. Thankfully, guest blogging is one such means that ensures the availability of original and quality content in good amounts.

If you are one such marketer who is looking to leverage a guest blogging program, make sure to keep in mind the tips mentioned above and ensure that you do not miss out on quality in pursuit of quantity.

FAQs