Blog owners love when they get another person to write a great guest post for their blog. Writing a great blog post takes a lot of effort. When someone else does the effort for you and does a great job it feels amazing.
What’s even better is when the guest author, and/or their team, work really hard to promote their post. They bring more traffic and interest to the blog. They bring more attention to the brand associated with the blog. Perhaps a business of some kind.
Guest posting is still a good online marketing strategy. You get access to an audience. You can showcase your authority and bring attention to you and/or your brand. But writing a great guest post often isn’t enough if you want to really get the most out of the effort.
Here are some things you can do to really boost the popularity of your guest posts.
1. Share Multiple Times On Social Media
The post goes live. You probably take the link and share it on social media. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, maybe even on Instagram if you put the link in your profile. This is a great thing to do.
But many people stop here with the one-time sharing. Instead, plan on sharing the post this way multiple times over the next several weeks. And also keep a list of all the guest posts you’ve ever written. And make a habit of sharing a random one from the list every week or so on your social profiles. There is nothing wrong with sharing a post you wrote several months or even years ago.
Also change up how you share it. You can highlight a certain snippet the first time. Then highlight another. Describe the post in different ways. Maybe tag someone that was involved with it. Maybe tag someone that inspired something in the post.
2. Share Via Your Personal Email Newsletter
Email newsletters seem to be becoming more popular. And particularly I’ve seen an increase in what could be characterized as personal email newsletters. They’re kind of meant to be sent in a professional manner. But often they are sent to a person’s entire inner circle including friends, family, colleagues, coworkers, etc. And many often also ask for subscriptions via social media and even a personal website.
For example, I have a friend that works in consulting. But he has also been a journalist and I believe he writes freelance articles still. Some for pay and some not. He seems to enjoy doing it.
Anyway, every month or so he sends out a little email sharing notes on how and what he’s doing. He usually links to a few of the articles that he has had published.
3. Share Via Direct Message
LinkedIn is a great tool for any professional. It’s a way to network, find new jobs, and for marketing. One of the features you can use is the direct message feature. Mostly to your connections, which are probably friends, family and those you’ve worked with.
When you have a guest post, identify 10-20 people in your LinkedIn network that you think would enjoy reading it. You don’t want to overdo this one so try to really think about people you think would actually take the time to read your article and get something from it.
Then share your post with them via message. Briefly explain what it’s about. Maybe mention the work that went into it. And share it with them. Some will ignore, but others will definitely read it.
You can do the same with other social networks too, but I’ve found that LinkedIn can work really well.
4. Cold Email
This is using email differently than the personal email newsletter. This is about examining your article and seeing if you can reach out to other blogs, writers, etc. and share your new post with them. Maybe you linked to an article that mentioned some stats they discovered in their own study. Email them and mention how much you appreciated their work and that you referenced it in your guest post.
5. Write New Articles and Link to It
I’m guessing that if you’re writing guest posts that you probably have your own blog. It’s okay if you don’t, but if you do, continue writing posts as normal. And get into the habit of linking to past posts. Both those on your own blog and guest posts you’ve done elsewhere.
I usually write a post and then go back through and see if there is an opportunity to link like like to about two or three posts. I don’t always do it. And sometimes I’ll write something and immediately remember a past post I wrote and I’ll quickly search for it and insert the link.
Conclusion
These are all great ways to give more life to your guest post. It’s a win for just about everybody involved. The more eyeballs you get on your guest post the more benefit you get. The owner of the blog or site will love that you’re working hard to bring them more traffic. And hopefully all the readers will get value.
These are things I’ve done over the years and they’ve worked well. Hopefully they work for you and/or they spark other ideas you can use.