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As a blogger, one of your main goals is to increase your visibility to build a powerful branding and to constantly increase your amount of traffic. To reach this goal you may focus your marketing strategy on publicity which means that you will center your attention on purchasing ad space on other blogs or by creating PPC ads campaigns.

Another strategy may be to focus on promotion which is more oriented on trying the product. In the blogging context, the promotion means to demonstrate your strength and your authority by presenting your articles and your knowledge to a wide range of readers. In fact, both strategies – the publicity and the promotion – will help you to reach your goal in a different way. In fact, the best tactic would probably be a particular mix of both strategies.

In this article I want to focus on one of the most popular and efficient way to promote your blog: the guest blogging strategy. As for any marketing strategy, the success of guest blogging relies on the application of several golden rules.

1. Find The Most Relevant and Major Blogs on Your Niche.

You may already know what are the 4 or 5 more major blogs on your niche. However, if you don’t, you’ll need to find them to properly understand your external environment and to create your guest blogging blog list. In fact, they should be findable pretty easily by typing your keywords on Google. When you’ll have them, I would recommend to prioritize them using the following criteria:

The most targeted blog first. The more targeted the more impact! If you don’t choose to guest blog on blogs that specifically target the same audience than you, you’ll be doing entertainment, not marketing!

The blog that receive the higher amount of traffic. Obviously, the more traffic, the better exposure! Guest blogging is a marketing strategy to promote your blog. Don’t be afraid to target the most popular blogs on your niche. Be audacious and persistent!

The blog that perform better on social media. As social media are fabulous places to brand your name and maximize your exposure, choosing blogs that perform well on social media increase your chance to reach your promotion goal.

2. Determine who Your Audience is And Find the Right Topic.

Of course, the audience should be relatively the same as yours if you selected the right blogs. However, they may have other concerns or other questions. If you want to have a big impact, you need to fill a need! The best way to find the right topic for your guest post is to analyze the following elements on the targeted blog:

Observe the most popular posts. The most popular posts is a great way to determine the topics that really concern the audience. Take the time to read these articles carefully. Also, bring your attention to the posts type; is it news posts? Is it in the list form? If you don’t find any popular posts section, just browse through the articles and find the most commented ones or those who received the higher number of social media votes.

Find the readers’ questions. In many major blogs, there are a post, a section or a widget (like Skribit) that aim to receive the readers’ questions. This kind of information is very useful to choose a relevant topic for your guest post. In fact, you couldn’t find anything better since it comes directly from the readers themselves!

Read the comments. Comments are also a good indicator to determine what is important to the targeted audience. Take the time to read a lot of comments from different articles on the blog. The chance is that you’ll need to read between the lines to find the readers’ concerns, but it really worth the time investment. Never hesitate to create a new comment to start a relevant discussion thread; it may help you a lot!

3. Write a Remarkable Article on a Relevant Topic.

If you really want to have the best exposure possible, you need to create a very valuable article. In fact, the more quality you’ll put in, the better distribution you will have and the best results you’ll get! This is as simple as that! Here are some other simple elements to follow if you want to maximize the impact:

Include 1 or 2 links that point to relevant articles on your blog. Including 1 or 2 links to relevant articles on your own blogs gives you 1 or 2 valuable backlinks. Moreover, it will give you the chance to demonstrate the readers what you publish on your own blog. In fact, it just throws the invitation to visit your site and to subscribe to your blog if they like what they read. Don’t insert more than 1 or 2 backlinks; more than that may work against you when you’ll contact the targeted blog owner.

Take the time to create an attractive headline. As usual, the headline is very important. The more creative and attractive, the more you’ll create a movement to read your article. Also, a very original headline has better chances to perform well on social media networks. So take the time to brainstorm and to choose the best one!

Include a credit line with a link to your blog. Even if most blogs insert a credit line themselves while posting a guest post, you better think about an original way to introduce yourself and to insert a link to your blog. The most important is to give the chance to each reader to know who you are and where they could reach you.

4. Ask With Respect and Confidence.

Doing guest blogging means that you’ll publish your own article on somebody else blog. And, most likely, this blog is actually well established which means that the owner invests lots of effort until now. Being accepted by a blogger to publish our article is a privilege! In fact, we always should consider this as a generous opportunity to gain more exposure. Now here are some simple rules to help you creating a good contact with a blog owner:

Demonstrate your respect. I don’t think I have to say much about this one. Hopefully, you are asking to publish your article on a blog you highly appreciate. Demonstrating your respect for the blog and the blogger seems to me like something natural. Of course, it doesn’t mean to write an whole page on how the blog is fabulous and wonderful (even if you really mean it); few lines to express how the blog is valuable to you is just great.

Include your complete article in attachment. Including your article in the first message will give you more chance to be accepted. Even if the blogger doesn’t have the habit to publish guest posts on a regular basis, it could be very difficult to refuse a remarkable and relevant article.

Ask the blogger to confirm the publication of your article. Some bloggers may accept to publish your article and some may not. The essential is to be aware about this decision. Ask the blogger to let you know about it. This way, you’ll be able to make the proposal to the next blog on your list if the previous blogger refuse it. Of course, if all bloggers refuse to publish your article, you may question it seriously; Is it relevant? Is it quality content? Try to find the true reasons behind this situation.

5. Respond to Every Comment.

Guest blogging is not a marketing strategy we throw away and wait. Guest blogging gives you the chance to demonstrate your authority and to interact with a new audience. As you already demonstrate your respect to the blog owner, I consider that the community of this blog worth the same respect from you. In fact, it’s one of the best opportunities to get in direct contact with a large amount of targeted people. Now if these people take the time to give you their feedback about your article, I think that getting back to them is just something obvious! Here are some points to remember while getting back to the commentators:

Demonstrate your gratitude. No matter how you express it, just make sure you do it! Only a very small ratio of readers leaves comments and feedbacks about the article they read. So when those people give you the opportunity to get in contact with them, take the time to show them your gratitude and respond to their comments.

Take the opportunity to show your authority. Getting back to comments is a terrific chance to show your authority. Take the time to create an original and valuable answer to every commentator. The article you publish is static, but your answers are alive because it is very personal and targeted for every commentator. Just ask yourself the following question for every commentator: is there a concrete action I could do to help him/her?

Focus on relationship. I said it, I say it and I’ll always repeat it: blogging is all about relationship! The commentator is not just a commentator. You must change your mind about that. Every commentator is a potential friend, a potential partner! Getting a comment about an article you write is a precious gift. In fact, you may see that as the first step of a potential communication that may lead to a great and valuable relationship. Never forget that loyal readers may be win one by one.

Don’t hesitate to give me your feedback about this article. Tell me about your personal experiences, your successes and even your failures. What works for you? What doesn’t works? As well, don’t hesitate to ask me questions or any additional information! I’ll always be pleased to help you.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 11th, 2008 at 9:09 am and is filed under Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.