How Guest Posting Can Help You Grow Your Writing Business
Guest posting is a common marketing tactic employed by freelance writers and other content producers to boost traffic and build an audience.
In this post, we’ll cover:
- What guest posting is
- How it can benefit you
- How you can start guest posting
Let’s begin!
What Is Guest Posting?
Guest posting, also known as guest blogging, is a marketing technique where writers produce content for other websites as a way to promote their own blog or business.
Guest posting shouldn’t be confused with ghostwriting. While ghostwriters create pieces that are credited under someone else’s name, the author of a guest post is credited themselves, often with a short author bio or byline.
If you’re a freelance writer, guest posting can be a great way to establish your brand and secure more clients. Let’s find out how.
What Are the Benefits of Guest Posting?
While some websites may offer payment for guest posts, this isn’t always the case. But even without a monetary reward, guest posting still comes with major benefits for freelance writers.
Guest posting can help you:
- Reach a larger audience
- Increase traffic to your site
- Establish your authority on a subject
- Produce material for your portfolio
- Connect to and network with other professionals
We expand on each of these points below.
Gain Access to an Established Audience
Many websites that accept guest posts will already have an established brand and audience within their particular niche.
This is particularly useful if you’re new to freelance writing, as building up a reliable readership can take time.
By writing a guest blog post, you can take advantage of the followers and subscribers an established brand already has and broadcast your business to a wider audience sooner.
Increase Traffic Back to Your Website
One of the biggest benefits of guest posting for freelancers is increased referral traffic. This term refers to visitors to your website who have followed a link from another source.
Referral traffic is great for your business, and not just because it puts your content in front of more readers.
The more referral traffic your website gets, the more reliable and relevant your content appears to Google’s algorithm. As a result, referral traffic boosts your SEO and helps your website appear higher in search results.
Putting a backlink in your guest post will help direct referral traffic your way, but make sure not to undermine the quality of your writing by overloading it with links. A single link to your own website is enough – more than that, and there’s a risk Google will flag your post as spam and apply a penalty.
Demonstrate Your Skills and Knowledge
Guest posting is the perfect opportunity to show off your expertise in a subject.
You can establish your authority and skill as a writer by producing high-quality, interesting, and unique quest posts.
And if you choose to guest post for niche websites or brands that are well-respected within their industry, you can quickly build a reputation as an expert in that area.
Build Your Writing Portfolio
A portfolio is an essential tool for any freelancer, as it demonstrates exactly what potential clients can expect from your work.
But if you’re new to freelance writing, you likely won’t have much work to display yet.
This is where guest posting comes in handy. By writing guest articles for other websites, you can build a portfolio full of published content and show just why clients should work with you.
Network with Others in Your Industry
As well as providing more potential clients, guest posting can also lead to networking opportunities with writers, marketing professionals, and others in your industry.
You may find yourself developing partnerships and communicating with the brand that has shared your guest post, individuals who visit your website via backlinks, and those who comment or interact with your articles.
Eventually, you may even receive invites from peers who would like you to guest post on their own websites.
How To Start Guest Posting
We’ve established that guest posting can help grow your freelance business in a number of ways. Next up is how you can start guest posting yourself.
Set Your Goals
Before you start submitting your posts to blogs, understand what it is you want to achieve from guest posting.
Your goals for your guest posts might include:
- Improving your website’s searchability
- Increasing referral visits
- Increasing conversion rates
- Growing your follower count on social media
Remember to set goals that are SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound).
Your personal goals will help you choose where to look for guest posting opportunities and how to narrow down your options.
Find Opportunities
The next step is finding somewhere that will accept your guest post.
There are several techniques you can apply when looking for guest posting opportunities, including but not limited to:
- Performing a Google search using keywords relevant to your niche or services and phrases such as submit guest post, write for us, and submit an article
- Checking lists of websites accepting blog posts, such as LinkedIn’s collection
- Tracking down where other writers in your niche have shared guest posts
Once you’ve got a long list of potential candidates, focus on the websites, brands, and content that:
- Are relevant to your skills and services
- Have a good reputation in the industry
- Have an active user base or readership (i.e., with regular posts and frequent comments)
Use the goals you outlined previously to help you identify which websites you would like to guest post for.
Pitch Your Ideas
Once you’ve narrowed down which websites you would like to write for, you’re almost ready to pitch your ideas.
But first, take some time to get to know their content, the audience they’re writing for, and any particular blog post format (such as how-to articles or listicles) they prefer.
You should also check any guidelines a blog has for guest posts and follow any style guide provided.
And it’s always a good idea to check that your post or article idea hasn’t been written about on their platform before!
When your research is complete, and you’re satisfied that you can meet a brand’s requirements, craft a short email including:
- A potential headline, plus some variations
- A description of your proposed article
- A short bio about yourself and your writing
- Some examples of your work
Finally, check that you’re submitting your pitch to the right contact. You should be able to find the appropriate details in the website’s submission guidelines.
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