Improve Your Market Visibility By Guest Posting On Industry Blogs
Guest posting on relevant industry blogs is an excellent way to increase your market visibility and be recognized as a thought leader. In fact, it can lead to speaking engagements, prospective client meetings and more. Here are 5 tips to help you get started as a guest poster.
1. Research Your Industry
Besides Google’s Blog Search Tool, Technorati is a great place to research relevant industry blogs and gauge their influence in the marketplace. Look for blogs in your industry with a high Authority ranking. This number measures a site’s standing and influence in the blogosphere. The Authority number is based on a site’s back link, categorization and other associated data. Technorati Authority is ranked on a scale of 0-1000, where 1000 is the highest possible authority.
2. Email The Blog Owner
Based on your research, identify several relevant blogs and email the owner offering your services as a guest poster. In your email explain the topic of your post and how it will specifically benefit the blog’s audience. All blogs, but especially blogs with high Technorati authority, need fresh content and will likely be willing to accept your material. Be sure you ask for a link back to your company’s web site or blog as part of your pitch.
3. Offer Up Your Best Material
This may seem counterintuitive, but your very best blog posts should be reserved for guest posting and not your own blog. Offering your very best material helps ensure that you indeed provide high value content to a blog’s audience. This will in turn increase your chances of building your own audience and raising your social media profile in the blogosphere.
4. Properly Format Your Guest Posts
Most blogs prefer their writers to supply publication-ready posts, complete with images and formatted in the style of the blog. Be sure and check with the blog’s publisher to find out how they want to receive your post. If there are formatting requirements, you can have an assistant take care of that for you or do it yourself. By making the blogger’s life easier you’ll get a reputation for being easy to work with and will likely be invited to make future contributions.
5. Make Time For Guest Posting
With all the other things on your to-do list, how in the world do you fit in one more activity like guest posting on industry blogs? Block out one hour a week to focus on a specific topic, or hire a ghost writer to do it for you. Sometimes it’s easier to have someone write the post for you so you can simply edit it. The choice is up to you. The important thing is to get out there and be seen.
3 Ways To Get Qualified Sales Leads Using LinkedIn
Image via WikipediaMost people use LinkedIn as a contact management tool to connect with friends or former co-workers. Besides everyday social networking, LinkedIn can be used as a very effective sales prospecting tool. In this post I’ll show you 3 solid strategies to help you get qualified sales leads into your pipeline.
1. Nurture Your First-Degree Network
Other than sending or accepting a connection invitation, when was the last time you truly connected with the people in your first-degree network on LinkedIn? Many of these people may have hundreds of connections to your potential customers.
It’s a good idea to periodically reach out to these folks and offer them something of real value, such as an online resource or even a referral. And don’t discount the potential of a connection who isn’t in your same
industry. They might know someone who can help you. Take a look at their list of connections (if that capability is enabled) and see who’s on their contact list.
2. Use Advanced People Search
LinkedIn has an Advanced People Search function you can use to identify prospects who you can get introduced to through members of your extended network. This tool makes it relatively easy to build a preliminary prospect list using a combination of keywords, industry descriptions and job titles to find key decision makers at target companies.
Once you have assembled your list, you can sort your results by relationship. This makes it easy to identify people in your extended network who might be able introduce you to the person on your prospect list. But be careful when asking for favors from your contacts. This is why it’s so important to nurture them first in step 1. You don’t want to risk damaging your reputation by coming across as an opportunist.
3. Participate In Group Discussions
Another way to use the list you built using the Advanced People Search function is to identify the groups your prospects participate in, join those same groups and start participating in discussions. It is likely that you can offer significant value to group discussions by answering relevant questions and becoming a trusted resource within the group. This strategy takes some time to implement, but can often lead to excellent results. The key is to offer real value.
Continue to grow your network as you implement these three strategies by connecting with every new prospect and customer you meet. This will give you both a direct connection to your new acquaintance and access to their extended network of co-workers and friends. This will in turn give you even more potential prospects.
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