According to Megan Garber, New York Times revenue is up…and not because of strong SEO but rather the strong brand they built.
This makes it a stronger business for the long haul, and has to make us wonder about our own SEO strategies…especially in the face of recent updates like Panda and Penguin.
For example, companies like About.com have good SEO going for them, but not so great brand building. And by no means am I trying to throw SEO out the window, it’s just a reminder that a strong online strategy includes both strong brand building and superior SEO techniques.
So how do you build that killer brand that will raise revenues? Let me show you.
Do you even know what your brand is?
If you are like a lot of people and companies, you don’t quite get branding…and you don’t quite know where to start. So, let’s set a foundation real quick with this short little guide:
- Start with why – Why do you exist? What are you trying to accomplish? Your answer shouldn’t be “To make the best product.” Nobody really wants to do that. Instead, define your brand by virtues that you care about. Think about what you love…what problems you can fix. This is why you exist. Your products are just a means to that end.
- Create your own market – If you find that the market place is crowded…then redefine it. Find a place in the market place that is not getting served…then serve it and dominate it.
- Create an awesome customer experience – Your business lives or dies with how your customer experiences your product. If it sucks, then they’ll leave. Always start with your customer in mind and give them what they want.
- Stay edgy – You may be a company who has gotten some success and even built up a pretty reputable brand, but don’t be satisfied with that! Shake things up to make sure people are still paying attention to you and that you are not getting outdated.
Now that you have the foundation for your brand laid out, let’s focus on some specific strategies.
Develop your guest writing strategy
In general, content marketing is a great way to build your brand and guest posting is the content marketing tactic you want to use. See, ask any online celebrity how they got the success that they have and they will likely tell you that they built up their brand by guest posting.
Brian Clark did it. Chris Brogan did it. I do it.
Guest posting is a direct line to getting noticed. So, how do you go about writing that guest blog? Whether it’s your first or your hundredth, you need to start out with your strategy:
- Slow and methodical – This means you will post two or three guest posts a month…if even that. This will help you ease into the role of guest posting. This method will also let you focus on blogs that are a little harder to get writing gigs for, but one post on a big blog like Lifehacker and you could get some serious traffic and subscribers.
- Fast and furious – The other method is to write as many blog posts as you can. Danny Iny has made a science out of this approach, churning out 11 guest posts in a 6 day period. Sometimes more. If you decide to use this method, then you’ll need to pretty much just accept any guest posting gig anywhere, kind of like what the World’s Strongest Librarian’s did when he wrote 42 blog posts in a 7 week period. The best way to promote this approach is to announce it on your blog or simply email as many blogs as you can.
Of course the approach you choose will determine the quality and quantity of your posts.
Find the perfect blog to write for
Once you’ve decided about your strategy, your next step is to find guest blogging opportunities. Keep in mind that while you are doing these searches that you are looking for blogs that fit into your industry…so use keywords as you try the following techniques:
- Google – The easiest thing to do is to jump on Google and start searching. Type in phrases like the ones below. With each phrase make sure you include your keyword. For example, “web designer guest posts” or “gamification guest posting submissions.”
- “Guest post”
- “Guest post by”
- “Submit a guest post”
- “Guest posting submission”
- Ask prolific guest bloggers – If you see some blogger who always seems to be guest blogging, follow up with him or her and ask them if they can give you some suggestions.
- Competitor backlinks – Run a backlink analysis of a competitor and see which links are pointing back to their site…and which of those sites has a guest post they wrote.
- Social search – Use a social search tool like Twitter search and enter the keyword “guest post” to see which people on social channels are sharing the links back to their guest posts. When you find the links, follow them back.
- MyBlogGuest – Post your request that you want to write guest posts on MyBlogGuest, an online community of bloggers who share information about guest blogging.
Once you’ve got options where you want to guest post, your next step is to contact them.
Building a professional relationship with your target blogger
Of course you could email a blogger and tell them that you want to blog for them. But that’s sort of like cold calling…which doesn’t work very well.
There are better ways to do it.
Social media makes it easy to start a relationship with A-list bloggers. You can follow them on Twitter or Facebook and even comment on their blog. Those are great places to start!
If you are using Twitter and share their content, make sure to share their Twitter handle so they see what you are doing…
Then take some time to leave high-quality comment on posts.
Another way to get a hold of these guys is to connect with a blogger who has written for this blog in the past. I like this approach because if you can get a recommendation that the blogger knows…you are more likely to get accepted.
I think meeting bloggers at conference is also a major way to meet bloggers. There is nothing like meeting them in person! Buy them a drink or dinner and make a good impression on them. Ask them questions and then trade emails before you leave.
Once you have that connection with the blogger, take care of it. Email them and tell them you’d love to help them in any way you can. Suggest a small commitment to help them answer comments…as you of course, but in an effort to ease that bloggers work load.
Or you could offer to write a free report for them…or find some gap in the content on their website and offer to write the post that fills it.
Why is it important to connect with an A-list blogger? This is all part of building your online brand…and a top-notch blogger can really help you get into the big leagues in half the time if you tried to do it on your own. Besides, this person is capable of greasing the slide of success.
And you really need to take care of these people…as they will take care of you!
Write for the target audience
Once you found some blogs that you want to write for and you’ve made the connection, and they’ve accepted your request to write for them…
Now you have to figure out who you are writing for. Fortunately there is a fool-proof plan you can use to create content people can’t resist.
- Read a ton of popular posts on the blog – If you are looking to write a guest post for a big blog like Copyblogger, then read all of their popular articles. Some blogs have a widget that shows a series of different popular posts based on weeks or even months.
- Read guest posts – Next, hunt down all of the guest posts that other people have written. You can scan them…but what I really want you to do is follow up with that blogger. Tell them great job…and then ask them if they can give you any tips about writing for that blog.
- Read the comments – Especially on the popular posts. What are people saying? Are they offering ways that the blog post could’ve been improved? What is the host blogger saying? What do the readers like and dislike? This is great stuff to learn from.
- Create a spreadsheet for this blog – After you’ve collected all this information, put it in a spreadsheet…and create a column for popular post headlines, guest post headlines and for special comments.
This may seem like a lot of work to write a blog post, but don’t worry…it will truly pay off in the long run. I promise!
And if after all that research you still don’t have a good idea on what you should write then here are two more tips to help you research:
- Competitor blogs – Hunt down and visit a few blogs that are considered competition with the blogger you want to write a guest post for. Repeat the above process…read all of the popular posts, guest posts and as many comments as you can. And while you’re at it…why not see if you can write for that blog, too?
- Use trending topic tools – You can also find great ideas by searching for your keywords using tools like Google Trends, Tweetmeme and Google News.
Generate cool blog post ideas with this tool
Because there is so much competition out there when it comes to writing a guest post…I highly recommend that you use this Google Doc tool by Daniel Butler called the Content Strategy Generator Tool to give you a really incredible edge over the other writers.
The tool is pretty simple…just drop in a keyword into cell B3:
And let it load. When it finally loads, it will pop up with some pretty sweet data.
You’ll get ideas for posts from places like Bing News, Digg, Reddit, YouTube, Topsy, Tiwttorati, Yahoo! Answers and etc.
You can find even more ideas if your click over to the “Source and Place” worksheet…
Which will then drive you to something pretty cool…
You’ll get a bunch of ideas on where you can guest post! In fact, you’ll get a list 50 bloggers and 50 pub editors…
This tool is really easy to use and provides a ton of ideas…so give it a shot and let me know what you think of it.
Master the components of a high-quality guest post
Now that you have a ton of potential ideas, your next step is to actually write the article. Do you want to know the secret to creating rock-solid guest blog post? Here are some tips:
- Simple – Write to the audience as if it was a class of fifth graders. No, this doesn’t mean you talk down to them…it just means you avoid jargon and slang that they might not understand. You also want to use short sentences and short paragraphs. White space is your friend when it comes to creating content online. People shouldn’t feel like your content is complex…but they should feel like it’s easy to read…no matter the topic.
- Conversation – Don’t forget that blogging is social media…and what is social media all about? It’s about the community (who you are writing for) and it’s about the conversation (how you are writing). In order to make your article conversational you need to ask questions, use “you” way more than you use “we” or “us” or “them.” Fragments are also okay when it comes to conversation. A great way to learn how to do this is to record a conversation between you and a friend…and then listen to it.
- Instruct – One of the best ways to write a killer guest post is to write a step-by-step article on a topic that is of interest to the audience. How-to articles are easy to write…because all you have to do to write the article is to write down all of the steps. Then go back and add screen shots. Edit…and you’re done.
- Links – Before you go emailing this guest post to the blogger, make sure you’ve done your research, and backed that research up with plenty of links…especially internal links. If you want to really impress the blogger, create a post like Ali Luke did with her Copywriting Essentials from A – Z.
If you want more help on writing killer guest posts, then check out The Marketer’s Guide to Guest Blogging and the Neil Patel’s Guide to Blogging (or in other words, my guide to blogging).
Guest post because you have something to say…not just for links
One of the temptations behind writing guest posts is to get the links and traffic back to your site. If that’s you…then you need to start over and make sure you are doing this because you actually have something to contribute to the web.
Don’t get me wrong…you want links. But you should also have something very valuable to say.
This is why I had you do a bunch of research in the previous step…because it’s impossible to do all that research and not have something valuable to share with a blogging audience.
Keep in mind, that Google encourages you to write valuable content for the web…and this includes what you write for a guest blog.
Promote your guest post
Just because you’ve emailed the post and seen it go live doesn’t mean that you can now sit back and wait for the flood of traffic to arrive.
You need to promote your guest post.
Building a brand, and I’ll get into this more in a minute, means working the social media channels like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
Build a brand across your social media profiles
I love it when I come across a person or a company that understands what consistency in branding is all about. You’ll see the same image whether you are on Twitter, LinkedIn, their website, Facebook or Pinterest.
Here are three brands that are consistent across social media channels:
- Red Bull - They’ve got the same logo, colors and focus across these medium. And the lifestyle that they promote…extreme sports…is the message that you will find across each social media channel.
- Vans – What I really like about Vans is that they look like a Fortune 500 company…but act like a mom and pop shop. And their brand is consistent across their social media, whether it is their Tumblr or Twitter account…the language and images are suited to people who love to skate. When you shift from their website to their Twitter account or to their Tumblr…you get the same brand.
- Comcast – Comcast was one of the first companies to use their Twitter account to handle customer service issues with @ComcastCares. This was lead by a man named Bill Gerth…and the Twitter account was such a success they rolled out even more Twitter accounts and did the same across Facebook, too.
So, how do you know if your brand is consistent across your different social media channels? Perform this little test:
- Wake up in the morning and jump onto your Twitter account. Check out the profile and what you are sharing in the stream.
- Next, pop on over to your Facebook fan page. Do you get the same feeling? Is the picture even the same? What about the bio? These should all match.
- Now, check out your blog. What do you see?
Run though all of the social media channels you have a profile on. This little exercise should give you a quick picture of how consistent your branding is across your site.
Improve your social media engagement quality
Most people know that social media is not a one-way advertising tool. Unfortunately, not every brand behaves that way though.
Even the big brands are getting it wrong, and not engaging right.
For example, a recent study looked at thousands of Twitter mentions for big brands…
And found that these big brands were not very good at even responding to complaints that were shared on Twitter. In fact, only about 13% of these complaints got a big brand to respond.
13%. That’s tiny.
But that’s not all…for those who did respond they sometimes took over 50 hours to do it!
Moreover, some brands stopped responding to tweets during the weekend, which is a huge missed opportunity because only 9% of these tweets are complaints. The bulk of these tweets are from customers who are asking questions. They want the brand to be engaged…but they are dropping the ball.
Don’t do that. Waiting ten hours to respond to a tweet is a poor social media strategy…and that will cause you to miss some seriously good opportunities.
So how do you improve your social media engagement quality?
- Understand that social media is not a billboard – You don’t build your brand by plastering advertising messages on Facebook every hour…instead, look to meet the needs of your followers. Ask them what they want…and then give it to them.
- Understand customer wants – When it comes to social media, all your customer really wants from you is a response. That one little response can go a long way to building a positive brand…so reach out when someone shares your content, asks you a question or messages you.
- Reply to questions instantly – If someone asks you a question…it’s imperative that you don’t waste time and let the interest of that person grow cold. Answer their question as fast as possible and that will build your brand in a positive way!
- Monitor brand mentions – Depending how big or popular you are, you should run a search on your brand in Twitter at least twice a day. Or you can use a tool like HootSuite, build a column for brand mentions…and then respond to them right away! This might mean you’ll have to hire someone to do this for you. It’s worth it.
- Monitor keyword conversations – Follow hashtags to see what people in your industry are talking about…then jump in whenever you get a chance. This is a great way to meet new people and get your brand out there.
- Share great content – Finally, when you share relevant and useful content from lots of different sources you will easily begin to gain followers or subscribers, and your brand will grow.
Conclusion
Branding is a huge part of online marketing. In fact, it really should get more emphasis than SEO does when it comes to your strategy. You can have great SEO and a poor brand, but all you’ll do is squander those leads you get from search.
Instead, focus on building a solid brand that people love and care about…and then any effort you pour into SEO will get maximized since people finding you by search will be super impressed.
What other ways are there to building a brand online?
This amazing course will teach you, step by step, how to double if not triple your traffic over the next 30 days.
This is great and timely. I don’t have a blog for my business and I’m in the process and getting it setup. After I have 5-10 posts, my plan is to get guest blog posts since that’s the best thing to do in my opinion. In the mean time, I might still guest post and have my Twitter list build up, but ultimately it will go to the blog I set up and an e-mail list.
I think guest blog posts are great to brand with because it’s the blog owner giving a “stamp of approval”. I’m sure QuickSprout doesn’t accept any request and it’s more specific than other blogs when accepting posts, but if it gets approved, it MUST be good quality.
-Amir
Thanks Amir,
Sounds like you are on the right track.
Best of luck!
wow amir you are really doing great… .i will also start making a plan now ….i will now do guest posting as much as i can
Finally – a useful post about the how and why building a brand matters instead of another terrible top 10 post. I really like the way you lay it all out – simply but definitely NOT easy. No overnight hocus pocus here. Bravo and thank you VERY much!
Glad you enjoyed it Phil, thanks for the kind words.
Neil – I feel like you’ve just watered the roses with a firehose! …and somehow they all lived! Tons of awesome info – I’ve taken lots of notes, made lots of todo’s, and even jotted down some guest post ideas/goals/topics.
Lol, thanks Graham. Happy to hear you found the information here helpful.
Hey Neil, thanks for sharing another excellent post! Like the first commenter mentioned, its a timely piece as I’ve recently been preaching to my clients precisely about guest posting for building brand awareness! One particular client requested an explanation of what guest posting can do for their company, and if you don’t mind I’d love to share this article with them as I’m sure I couldn’t have explained it any better
As always, looking forward to more insightful posts from you!
Thank you Rita,
Don’t mind at all, thanks for sharing as well as for reading.
So right! Brand awareness is much more powerful than just trying to beat Google.
We’ve been blogging for some years and like you, do a broadcast email when there’s a new post. It’s a great way of pro-actively contacting interested parties rather than just trying to get onto page 1 (although that’s good too!). It’s also a great way to keep in touch by giving people some (hopefully) useful information.
Definitely, it has many benefits.
Keep at it!
This is an EXCELLENT article with tons of information, i have had my pen and paper out taking note the whole read! Being a avid blogger for many years and been featured in Wall Street Journal, AOL, InvestmentNews and many others, I have found the importance of both being a guest blogger and promoting others! We have worked hard on our blog, social media platforms and our brand, but articles like this ALWAYS bring out even more great ideas and resources!!!
Thanks!
Thanks Ted,
I am pleased that this article has been useful to you. Sounds like you have done well for yourself, I hope you keep it up.
Great piece of advice like always Neil..!!
I have seen many brand kicking off from no where via Just guest blogging…For example: Leo from bufferapp… They did the guest blogging right..
Another great approach which I learned from you is interlink your guest post…from one to another..!!
Here are my 2 cents:
Pick a detailed topic and write 5-6 posts like a series and publish them on different blog…Interlink where-ever possible and publish all of them on different blog at regular time-interval 48-72 hrs.. This will ensure the maximum visibility to all your guest post and you will get referral traffic for long time..!!
Thank you Harsh,
I appreciate you sharing your advice on the matter.
Neil,
Awesome article, with tons of great info! I’ve just started guest posting, I had my first one go live last Friday and I have another one scheduled in a few weeks!
I had never heard of the Content Strategy Generator Tool. It looks pretty awesome and I’ll definitely be trying it out.
Guest Posting really can make or break a brand, I’m hoping that it makes mine!
Thanks for all the great tips and tricks.
-Brock
That is great Brock! I hope you keep up the hard work.
Cool, let me know how it works out for you.
Neil,
Great article. Really learned a lot. I also checked out that tool you linked to and it’s fantastic. I will definitely be using it. Thank you for bringing it to my attention.
Thanks Richard, happy to hear it.
A fantastic article though. I must say that building a brand is not that easy. It requires a lot of hard work and it also takes time. I also feel that joining few forums related to your niche and keep on responding people’s queries also helps in establighing the brand as people get to know your more. The more knowledge you share the more people know about you.
I agree, anything worth doing takes time and hard work.
Definitely a good idea, thanks for sharing.
Neil,
Thanks for another awesome article.
I have just written my first guest post and received new traffic to my own website that I hadn’t received before.
My question to you is: What’s the deal on where you can post your own guest blog? Can I post it on my own website with a link to the other website? Do I post the article in full on my own website or just a link to the other website? Or is it not politically correct to post your guest blog on your own website?
What’s the correct / accepted approach?
Thanks,
Ian
Hey Ian, you don’t want to post it on your own website.
Thanks for sharing the great Content Strategy tool. Great article.
No problem, hope it helps.
http://myblogguest.com is a very useful URL. Thanks for the post
Great, thanks for sharing.
Great article, Neil. I am always impressed by how indepth you go into a topic. Thanks, Iris, also for the additional link you provided. I will check it out. I blog about PR and marketing basics for small businesses, and keeping up with all of the brand building/blogging techniques can be challenging!
Would also love to see more about how to become more well-versed in WordPress
Thank you Sue, I will take your recommendation into consideration for a future post.
Hi Neil!
Great post for how and why need proper strategy and SEO for building a great site and I agree with you developing professional relationship with the pioneer bloggers certainly boost up your blog as readers of your blog will eventually increased and that’s the crucial thing.
Thanks for sharing detail and worthy information.
Thanks Ayaz,
Happy to share, glad you agree.
Hi Neil…
Truly excellent and worth to appreciate effort. Finally i reached to my expected post. Actually i heard about guest blog posting before few months. But at that time i did not have proper planning for guest blogging because as far as i know guest post is more than what you think. It should be highly user centric and informative. Rightly in order to brand well and instantly, guest blog posting could be the best tool. You have really covered all the key points and i found a systematic approach of guest blog posting in this post. Thanks Neil and hope such thoughtful posts from you. Keep up the great job…
Thank you, I will definitely keep at it!
Hi Neil
I’m glad you wrote this post because in my opinion, the same old tired SEO tricks just don’t work anymore.
Whilst this is good information, I would like to see something on how you build an online brand in non-sexy niches such as insurance or banking, because most articles on guest blogging are about more interesting subjects. It is so hard to be innovative or write interesting blog posts in industries or sectors that are considered boring.
Thanks
Thanks for your suggestion Nathan, I will consider writing on it for a future post.
Thanks for the Content Strategy Generator Tool, Its look promising.
Also Neil i want to know your view on Content Spinning ?
Even I would like to know more about content spinning and if it is useful. Please let me know.
Hey Peter, I think it is spammy and it doesn’t really work.
Nice post.It takes more time to build an online brand through seo tricks rather than guest blogging.Guest Blogging is the best way.
Definitely, guest blogging is necessary if you want to build your online brand.
Good post – I agree with you on the SEO, a dying science indeed. SEOMOZ will drop the SEO from their name soon …
Thanks Jeff,
I don’t know about that one, we will just have to wait and see.
Very helpful tips. Just goes to show how important your brand image is, and that you need to understand your target market, not only flood them with random information.
Definitely, glad you get it.
Hey Neil,
Thanks for the great marketing information as usual. As I start to plan for new legal marketing strategies for the future. I look to your honest advice to help with my important decision making for my law firm. Trust and Branding are branded in my brain moving forward.
Great, I hope these tips have been useful too you. If you ever have any questions feel free to ask.
yes I agree with you Neil we can build relationship with other bloggers through guest blogging, having more number of contacts helps us to get more number of shares….
Yep, you have got it.
Hi Neil,
Very informative post. Thank You! I especially love the tool “Content Idea Generator”. I’ll check it out and see how it will work out for us. Again, thank you for sharing.
Awesome, let me know how it works out for you.
Doing the guest posting is always the best option for promoting the brand name but i won’t go for content spinning.
I agree, content spinning is a bad idea.
Neil, this is fantastic, was well worth the read. I feel like I have learned quite a bit after reading this post.
The content idea generator is fantastic, geniously built too. The person who created it really know what they are doing, so I give my upmost credit for it.
Thanks again Neil
Thank you Nick,
I am happy to hear it.
People wonder why I love to share your posts, so much QUALITY & USEFUL information thanks, I am currently trying to build a brand and I have started to do guest posting but like you said, I post quality articles when they are ready and I have something to say, it isn’t about the links. I want people to read what I write, enjoy it and come to my site for more.
Cheers
Andi
I appreciate your support Andi, thank you for sharing.
It is important to take the time to produce quality content. Even better, you have got a great attitude about.
Hi Neil,
Awesome article, with great info! I’ve just started reading all your post, great job.
Thanks, I hope you find the rest as useful!
Great In depth post Neil, Guest Blogging if done well can give a company great results, Ive heard of several companies who have made significant sales on one guest post. My concern is for the future and that guest blogging will be abused.
Definitely, guest post can be extremely beneficial when do right.
I can’t say what may or may not happen in the future, but if you focus on providing clean, quality content then you should be fine and need not worry about others.
This is my first look at your blog Neil. I am very impressed and I will be returning often. Thank You
Awesome, glad to hear it.
I’m firmly in the quality over quantity camp when it comes to guest posting, and I’d be interested to hear how the “shotgun” approach has worked for those that have tried it – I can’t imagine it’s nearly as effective.
Have you ever implemented the shotgun strategy with success, Neil?
I haven’t. Quality over quality worked better for me to.
Neil, thanks for sharing this and opening our eyes to what we must know about guest posting. Even the paid materials on guest posting does not detail it like this. Thanks for the script too. I also want to add this, do not be scared of pitching your guest posts to big blogs, you don’t know if they are waiting for your post…..
sheyi
I agree Sheyi,
Never be afraid to put yourself out there, even to big blogs. However be prepared, make sure you are offering them something unique and valuable. Not everyone will say yes but if you keep at it eventually you will find someone who says yes.
What an amazing post. You have presented a comprehensive gust posting strategy. I love this information and you deserve a salute for this info. Thanks for sharing mate.
No problem, glad you enjoyed it.
One problem with guest posting according to me is that few competitors wot let you do guest posting and provide backlinks.
That will happen, that is why you have to hussel. Don’t let those few competitors stop you, you will find others who will say yes. That is as long as you are providing them with quality content.
I am keen to be a guest blogger after reading this terrific post. Thanks for these wonderful tips.
Awesome, glad to hear it!
AMEN to that! As usual, Neil you are spot on. I think more SEOs need to study traditional marketing. I like to tell people that SEO can make people find you even when they aren’t looking for you (which is a wonderful thing) but branding will make YOU the destination, and it will make people actually look for you (which is even better.)
Thank you,
I couldn’t agree more, like the way you put it.
I really do think people should focus on building their brand MUCH MORE.
Once you’ve got the brand, you have pricing power, and many other things. It’s like anything else.
Sam
Author of “How To Engineer Your Layoff”
Definitely, glad you have got it.
This is just what I needed, neil. Thanks a lot. You definitely are one of the this industry’s rockstars. Keep it up!
Thank you, I appreciate the kind words.
A great post Neil ! With Penguin and panda having eliminated quite a number of SEO tricks that used to work, guest blogging is one of the very few that is left. Not only does it help you get links and coverage, it also helps you learn through comments people post
Exactly, glad you see the importance of it.
I think people are really starting to understand how important it is to treat your website like a brand and not just and SEO machine. You can still apply SEO technique but it is important to approach it with a branding & marketing mindset.
Yep, I hope so!
Neil, thanks a lot for featuring MyBlogGuest! And that’s an awesome guide as well
Thanks Ann, glad you enjoyed it.
An excellent article and very detailed on what you exactly need to do to get accepted as a guest blogger. Although after the last Google updates I am suspicious of any hot new way to get acceptable links. Google will probably penalize us for these links several years down the road.
It is possible but I can’t say for sure. Just be sure to guest post on clean sites and provided valuable content.
By far one of the best posts about branding and guest posts. Crongats!
Thanks!
Great – it was a well written article which gave me a clear cut idea. Here’s my website – http://www.keralathanima.com
Can u do seo for this ??? plssss
Hey Keralathanima,
I wish I could help but I don’t really do SEO anymore outside my own businesses.
Sorry.
Guest post is the best option – no doubt !
Yep!
Great post!
I do accept guest posts on my blog. Now I’m going to write articles and guest them on other blogs.
Sounds good, best of luck.
Hi Neil,
Thanks for the amazing post. Appreciate your insights and the content generator tool is a huge help. It’s so important that the social, blog and content strategy all align and you do an excellent job of explaining why.
Keep up the great content!
Great, glad this post has been useful to you Jared.
Very good point on branding. I read an excellent book called “The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding”. Excellent read to help build your brand.
Cool, thanks for sharing it with everyone.
Thanks Neil. This was an eye-opener. I can write on a variety of topics starting from Technology to Lifestyle. Would you recommend some blogs (not as big as TC) where I can submit my Guest articles (for tech related articles)?
I don’t really know of any off the top of my head..
I am a big proponent of guest blogging as well. It gives you the ability to show people you are an expert in your arena, and what better way than riding on the credibility of someone else’s readerership!
Exactly Jeremy, there are many benefits to guest blogging.
The only difficult thing for me is that it is really hard to find relevant blogs to write guest blog articles
Yep, it can be difficult. It takes time but isn’t impossible.
Great Article Neil..
I completely agree that always start with why..
I came across really inspiring TED talk from Simon Sinek.. on Why start with Why.! I though I should share this with other readers here.. http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action.html
Thanks again for really helpful post.
Thanks Samay, I appreciate you sharing this link.
Neil,
I know I am a little late in reading this but this is a fantastic post! Another great post from you. Thank you for sharing your information with us all. I found the bit about the Twitter handle to be quite interesting. I never thought to even do that when I am retweeting a post. Thank you for the great information!
Thanks Allison, I am glad you found the post helpful.
“Guest post because you have something to say…not just for links.” I definitely have to work on this aspect. I just see guest posting as a way to generate backlinks – which is clearly wrong. There’s so much to do to try and generate traffic, though.
Yep, it takes a lot of work to gain traffic. That is why it is important to make your content interesting and valuable and not just about getting links.
Wow, I never realized guest blogging to be broken down into such a science. I have always watched my favorite bloggers do it but didn’t realize it was such a process or that it had such amazing benefits.
Thanks for the insight!
Carly
There definitely is a process to guest blogging a well as many benefits. Now that you see all that I hope you will give it a try and see how it works out for you.
Thanks for the excellent information and break through of points. Was really help full and will keep in mind while guest blogging
No problem, hope they help.
Wow! I’m with Graham… a veritable firehose of super-useful information. Thank you Neil! This post is much appreciated.
Thanks Andrea, I appreciate the support.
Thanks for the great guide to guest blogging. Always helpful and always informative. Keep up the great posts!
Thanks Jr, I will definitely keep at it.
Great guide to guest posting, thank you Neil. Lot of new webmasters are trying just to get backlink and/or traffic from guest posting, and this article explains pretty good how to create a brand.
Thank you Selena, let me know how these tips work out for you.
Very true. Guest posts are tough to do (just getting a reply from a request can be a chore in itself) but when the music stops and google does another update – you’ll be happy you did it imo.
Yep, you have got it!
Awesome post and good to know about guest bloggers and blogging. I have been approached a few times to have their content on my blog, but with a little research as you mentioned it didn’t quite turn out the way it sounded.
Thanks, glad you enjoyed it.
To build my brand I’ve used all of your tips, especially guest post that allow ytou to show your value to a great audience
Nice tips neil and my plan is that next time whenever i will do a guest post i will not only create backlinks but also build relationship with that blog readers
Amazing post neil now i will focus more on doing guest post….your post really woke me up
I recently started accepting guest posts for one of my blogs…but haven’t actually published any yet, despite having received several emails with proposed articles, all of which were of horrible quality. So in theory, I am sold on the idea that publishing guests posts on my blog will be great for both exposure and traffic…but in practice, I am reading through low-quality stuff and writing rejection emails while waiting for at a good post to come through and getting ready to get active to go looking for guest posters.
I think contacting the right people in you niche and asking them whether they’d like to contribute is much more effective than passively waiting for a gem of an article to get emailed to you
I agree with these tips. Even you can get a guest post on a famous blog you will get huge leverage
hey neil,
no doubt target audience is most important part. i liked the way you explained the importance of targeted audience. over all great article.
Thanks.
Matt
I agree with you.Its really important to have good reputation to get great results for long time.But its not easy to build strong reputation, it takes lot of time and fresh content.
Guest blogging surely offers a powerful and effective way to build an online brand and generate new traffic.
When posting on guest blogs, people can receive traffic from the logs that they are posting on. This makes it much more likely that readers will visit the guest blogger’s website or social media network profile!
So I really like the article. Love the message of having something to say as opposed to to just trying to obtain links. Unfortunately I’m in an industry where there are very few people saying anything valuable online (the legal industry) so this poses a bit of a challenge. Either way, thanks for the great article…very practical.
Zinda, that industry is notorious for that. There are many resources you can look up online that may help though
Guest Post is a Natural way to attract traffic and that is why brands love to marketing through guest posting.