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 Easy Ways to Start Web 2.0 Marketing
I talk to a lot of people who have heard that they need to do “Web 2.0 marketing” but have no idea what that involves or how they would begin doing it.
Here are 3 simple starting points:
1. Go find 3 blogs that are relevant to your target market and start reading them on a regular basis. Particularly look for blogs by thought leaders in your industry, competitors, business partners, and prospects.
You can use Technorati or Google Blog Search or just do a simple Google search – search on keywords that are important to your industry and add the word “blog”.
For those who are new to reading blogs… You don’t actually have to visit the blogsite regularly to check if there is a new post. Most blogs give you the ability to subscribe so new posts are sent to you automatically.
When there is a blog post that resonates with you, post a comment on the blog. If you see another comment on the blog that you think is particularly good, comment on the comment. Or rate the comment, if that is an option.
2. Find an online community that is relevant to your market. The best places to look are on the websites of the top publications for your industry or on an association’s website.
See how they let you participate. More likely than not, there will be discussion forums. If subscribing to their forums is an option, do that. (You might want to put a filter on your email client so these emails go into a folder you can check when you have time rather than cluttering your inbox.) Otherwise, check back every week or so (depending on the volume of traffic) to see what’s new.
Is there anything else you can do in the community? Upload an article? Comment on a blog? If there is anything that strikes your fancy, do it.
3. Get a Twitter account. Don’t worry about tweeting yet. Just search on keywords that are relevant for you, and choose a dozen people to follow. As with the blogs, good people to follow include industry thought leaders, editors, consultants, competitors, partners, prospects and customers. (Don’t be surprised if they follow you back.)
Then check back every day or two to see what’s going on. It’s fine to just lurk. But if there’s a discussion you have an opinion about, go ahead and contribute.
There you go – 3 easy ways to get your feet wet with Web 2.0 marketing.
And if, by chance, you are wondering why you would even want to do Web 2.0 marketing…
Web 2.0 is all about going out to your market and talking directly with your customers and prospects. It’s about building connections, collaborating, sharing information – being more transparent than you have been in the past – and getting prospects and customers more involved in your business and with each other than they have been before.
Here’s a recent article in the Wall Street Journal:
The Secrets of Marketing in a Web 2.0 World
Here’s a slightly older blog post from FutureLab that has some good insights too:
15 Golden Rules for Web 2.0
Read My Blog
Alex Mandossian, an Internet marketing guru, tried something interesting recently. He sent out an email to his list, which probably numbers in the 100,000+ range, and asked people to read his blog.
First, he surveyed his list and asked whether people wanted 2 posts per week or 3. By a tiny margin, they said 2.
So he asked people to go visit his blog every Tuesday and Thursday because he would have a post there on those days at 8:44am.
And he asked them to promise to read his posts and comment on them.
Wow!
First of all, that’s a lot of nerve. But kudos to him for having the courage to ask.
And I am one of the people who agreed to do it. Now, I’m not going to take the trouble to actually go there, but I set up a Feedburner and have his posts brought to my email. And most weeks I read them, which is something I would never have done if he hadn’t asked.
But he did ask, and I’m doing it.
Pretty impressive.
There’s a lesson here… If you want more people to read your blog, try asking them.
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I Blogged About You
Here’s an idea courtesy of Joan Stewart, who writes the Publicity Hound, a great email newsletter about generating PR for your business.
She is writing about how to get the attention of journalists, but this is also a great way to get to know anyone who blogs – including influential people in your industry whom it would be hard to meet otherwise.
I disagree on one point though… You don’t have to necessarily send them an email to let people know you blogged about them – in fact, I probably wouldn’t. Read more
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