Guest blogs have long been a reliable strategy for growing search ranking, growing traffic, growing website authority, and growing careers. Unfortunately, the overwhelming majority of guest blogs fail spectacularly in their attempt to achieve these lofty goals. Most end up as little more than walls of text that do not excite and engage their readers.
An effective guest post is one that delivers tangible benefits for both the host site and the guest blogger. The good news is becoming a high impact guest blogger is an achievable ideal. Applying the following tried-and-tested principles can help greatly in this regard.
1. Answer a Question
At anyone time, there’s a topic that is not quite well understood by the majority in an industry. This knowledge gap is an opportunity for guest bloggers to shine. Posts that answer questions are not only more likely to go viral but they will also, generate plenty of reactions and comments as your audience seeks to share their two cents.
There are several ways to identify these kinds of questions. Start by looking at the comments on the site you’ve been invited to as a guest contributor. If there’s a question that regularly comes up in the comments, you already have a captive audience ready and waiting for your answer. You could also check out comment sections in prominent blogs in your industry.
2. Spark Controversy
Like a moth to a flame, humans are drawn to divisive topics. It’s the reason many organizations discourage employees from discussing their religious, political or sexual views with customers. Fortunately, you don’t have to infuse your political, religious and sexual opinions to your blog post to make it attractive to readers.
Taking a contrarian view of a popular position or running an X versus Y poll could do the trick. For it to have the desired effect though, your position or the premise must adopt a logical, persuasive thought process. Going contrarian for the sake of it could make you a laughing stock and rapidly erode your credibility.
Also, read: 5 Ways guest posting can boost your website traffic
3. Catchy Headline
Your headline is the hook that captures reader interest. It’s what will be displayed in search engine results. Ergo, you have to make it catchy. There’s no magic formula for a catchy headline. Still, you are unlikely to go too wide off the mark with listicles, how-tos, whys, guides, definitions, and statistics.
4. Article Length
Length does matter. You cannot really cover any topic well with just 200 or 300 words. A good quality guest post ought to be at least 800 words though 1,500+ words are the sweet spot. Longer articles are also preferred by search engines and will be ranked higher up all other factors remaining constant.
That being said, don’t inflate the number of words for the sake of it. Each sentence should be helpful, purposeful, relevant and deliver real value to the reader. Few things will lose your audience’s attention faster than what appears to be endless, meaningless rambling.
Also, read: Your article marketing campaign is only 12 steps away
5. Case Study
It’s all well, for you to articulate how effective a given strategy, technique, product or tool is. But you won’t get much headway with your readers if you cannot back up your assertion with real-world application. People want to see a practical example of your concept before they try out the idea themselves.
Take time to articulate at least two case studies that support what you say. If there are already YouTube videos that document these case studies, the better since you’ll only need to embed them in the post.
6. Share On Social Media
The world is going decisively mobile thanks to the portability, affordability and rapidly growing computing capacity of smartphones. In 2016, the number of mobile internet users surpassed desktop users for the first time. The list of the world’s most popular websites is not necessarily synonymous with a list of the world’s most popular Android and iOS apps. The latter is decisively dominated by social networking apps.
This is important for guest blogging as it means you can greatly expand the reach of your post if you share it on the leading social media apps such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
Social media can give your blog life of its own with likes, shares, retweets, and comments dramatically accelerating the number of people who see it.
7. Attractive Images
The images you use for your guest post are just as important as the content of the piece. The featured image accompanying your post will be one of the things potential readers will see in social media previews.
A good image should be clear, relevant and attractive. It should complement the text and, where necessary, illustrate what it is you are talking about.
8. Encourage Reader Comments
At the start In this article, we talked about how the comment section is a great place to pick up questions that need answers. This is one of the reasons you should open up your article for comments. It could create a whole new discourse that would only further increase the viral spread of the article.
Don’t leave any comment that begs for your response hanging. Respond quickly-less than 2 hours is ideal but it should be no more than 24 hours. Dialogue is attractive and makes readers feel they are engaging with a real person.
In the sea of guest posts that go live each day, these tips will help you create posts that is outstanding therefore generating traffic to your site and strengthening your credibility.
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