How to Get the Biggest Bang for Your Guest Blogging Bucks – 3 Criteria To Find the Right Blogs

Yippee! I just got invited to be interviewed on the Women Entrepreneur Radio and the Screw the 9 – 5 podcast!
I will be sharing some pretty new insights that have come to me lately, on “Why the Guru Systems Are Not Working For You” and “How to End Elevator Pitch Shame.”

To be honest, it took a bit of ass-dragging to get back on the saddle after a summer of relocation and kids crawling on my head.

Thankfully it’s kinda like riding a bike, drinking water and scratching my nose at the same time – you pick it back up pretty quickly.

But of course, there IS a learning curve and like most, I started from scratch.

<– I worked up the guts and built up the clouts by guest posting on other blogs.

{{ psst… special pricing for the “Concise Guide for Blogging for Business Growth” is going away soon – get it while you’re here so you can start getting in front of a load of ideal clients in a way that positions YOU as the expert. }}

As an introvert with a flashier personality in words than in person, I found writing to be much more in line with my strength and personality than going to networking either 8 days a week, or jumping into “scoping” 3x a day.

Now, if you have contributor access to Huff Post, Forbes or the likes, you can stop reading and go eat cookies.

But for the rest of us smaller potatoes, we have to maximize our efforts and here’s why:

Most sites require original content that has not been published, which means for the time spent on creating content, we need to make sure we get the biggest bang for the buck.

We can’t just take the same article, piss all over the interwebs and mark territories like the old days. We need to be strategic when selecting what sites to write for.

Here are 3 criteria to select sites to pitch to, so your guest post will help you grow your business by building an audience and boosting your credibility:

1. The Right Fit

You want the site’s content to be in alignment with your value, conviction and point of view, on a similar or complementary subject matter you can present in a way that highlights your expertise and boost your expert status. (What’s in it for you?)

When you make your pitch, you would want to tell the host why you are relevant to his/her audience, what synergy you can create, and what value you bring to the table. (What’s in it for them?)

2. The Right Audience

Since we are talking about using guest posting to grow your business, we need to make sure you are reaching the right audience that would turn into leads and eventually clients or customers.

You want the readers to resonate with your content and want to find out more about you by reading and clicking through your byline.

That means you need to find websites your ideal clients visit. It does not need to be an exact match, but often the more overlap, the better.

3. Engagements and Promotion

You want to select sites with an engaging audience that comments and shares. Not only does that help get more exposure for that particular post, but it’s also stats you can cite when you are pitching to bigger blogs later down the road (They like it because comments boost SEO.)

You can look at a site’s previous posts to see the number of shares and comments to determine how engaged the audience is.

Here are a few posts I wrote that have gotten a good number of shares and comments:

• This post on “Honest Marketing” which received 37 comments and 108 shares so far has allowed me to build a relationship with Firepole Marketing which has a large and engaged audience. It opened the door to a second blog post in which I included a link to a free gift that resulted in over 50 new, high-quality leads in just a few days.
• This post on “How to Start a Successful Coaching Business” got over 200 social shares; while this post on “Mindset Upgrade to Boost Productivity” has 34 comments.
• This post on “How to Conquer ‘Technophobia’”, with my Twitter handle included in the title (and therefore any tweet that went out) got me @mention’ed on tweeter over 50 times in the span of just a couple of days, bringing in high-quality followers and putting me in front of a new set of audience.

After a guest post goes live, you can also check your stats to see how effective it is in terms of driving traffic and generating leads to determine if it’s a “keeper.”

Now you know what sites to pitch to, why not get the 11 essential ingredients for guest posts so you can knock it out of the ballpark, plus the exact email template I use to pitch writing opportunities?

About the author: Ling Wong

Ling is an Intuitive Brainiac. Through her unique blend of Business + Marketing coaching with a Mindset + Psychic Twist, she helps the multi-talented and multi-passionate maverick solo-entrepreneurs distil ALL their big ideas into ONE cohesive Message, nail the WORDS that sell and design a Plan to cut the busywork and do what matters, through her intuitive yet rigorous iterative process born out of her Harvard Design School training and 10 years of experience in the online marketing industry.

Ling helps her clients optimize the space between individuality + originality vs. “tried-and-true” marketing so they can express their WHY unapologetically and profitably without reinventing the wheel.

Find Ling and grab her free “How to Find YOUR Winning Formula” Training Series here.

This article was first published by Ling Wong