5 Benefits of Guest Blogging for Small Businesses Owners
Contents
Create Brand Awareness & Enhance Online Exposure
Identify Potential Customers and Sales Opportunities
Create an Environment of Engagement and External Feedback
Broaden Your Online Publication Network
Use Guest Posting to Boost Your SEO
Spread on Social Media
Improve Online Authority
Generate Qualified Leads
In today’s tech-focused world, virtually all aspects of our lives are intimately connected with the internet. Businesses, both small and large, rely on the internet to reach out to a worldwide audience and market their products/services. In short, digital marketing has become the new norm.
Creating online blogs is a marketing technique that is popular among many small and large businesses—and this isn’t surprising. It’s an effective and efficient way to establish yourself as an authority in your industry and draw attention to your offerings. In fact, a survey conducted by HubSpot revealed that blogging is the top content marketing priority for 53% of marketers.
But, just like any other type of blog, it can be quite tricky to maintain a small business blog. It takes a lot of effort and a significant amount of research to draw and capture the attention of today’s highly impatient online consumers.
In order to create a successful blog, you need to have a firm understanding of your target audience, develop a robust blogging schedule, create fresh content that interests readers, and design a visually engaging, user-friendly, and interactive website.
The question on many business owner’s minds is: does Guest Blogging improve or have benefits for SEO?
While building authority by creating and maintaining a blog is all well and good, a small business (or any sized business really) also requires the support of its peers to succeed—and this is where guest blogging for SEO comes in.
You see, it’s not difficult to find websites with big audiences that are willing to help you grow your small business. Collaborating with them by publishing quality guest posts on their platform exposes your businesses to a large audience, and ultimately drives traffic to your website.
Here are five reasons why guest blogging is the key that opens the doors to brand development, customer acquisition, and small business growth.
Expand on Social Media
You can also grow your brand presence on social media as a result of guest blogging.
This is one of the biggest pros of Guest Blogging for small businesses and bloggers.
Social media shares definitely follow a domino effect once the sharing ball gets rolling on your content.
Therefore, if you are sending your guest post to a website that gets a fair amount of social media shares, it is likely that your post will get a lot of shares as well.
A hack to triple and even quadruple the number of shares you get through social media through a guest post and otherwise is to embed high-value sharable content within your blog.
This can look like a really helpful infographic.
The best kind of infographics are those that break down complex topics and content into easily digestible and understandable graphics or flow charts.
To get you started on your infographic, here is an awesome guide to help you create yours today.
The great thing about guest posts is that your page will be linked back to and tagged.
Guest blogging can, in this way, increase not only the social media shares of your content but also increase your follower count and your lead generating efforts.
By getting your work published on a blog that has authority, you are essentially upping your own authority as well because they are referring you as a credible source to their audience.
When you get to create your contributing profile, in order to maximize click-throughs to your social media, make sure to link to your accounts in your bio section.
This way, specific readers who take the time to check out your author bio will actually be able to connect with you or your business via social media, making your posts a regular part of their newsfeeds.
Since you now have them on your social feeds, you want to remind them why they followed you.
The way you do this is by regularly posting high caliber, helpful content for them to digest. Not only does this engage the followers you garnered from the guest blog you posted, but it also helps your organic reach on social media.
Content truly is king, so don’t forget to keep providing value to stay at the forefront of your audience’s minds.
Create Brand Awareness & Enhance Online Exposure
One of the most significant benefits of guest blogging for small business owners is increased online exposure and brand awareness.
Why do these matter?
Well, nobody will spend money on your business if they don’t know it exists, right?
Simply put, guest blogging gets your name out there and thus benefits your small business’s SEO.
Considering how intensely competitive the digital marketing environment is today, don’t you think it’s ideal to earn quality backlinks and climb SERPs?
Moreover, notable online marketing experts believe that it takes around 5 to 7 impressions before a consumer is able to remember your brand, which means that in order to make the greatest impact, it’s essential to write relevant guest blogs as frequently as possible.
But how exactly does guest blogging create brand awareness and increase exposure for your business? Well, let us explain through an example. Let’s assume that you have the opportunity to publish a guest blog on a site that has 100,000 followers, and 10,000 of them end up reading your blog. Even if the likelihood of getting redirected traffic from this post to your site is low, you still get the chance to introduce your businesses to thousands of potential consumers.
But how do you increase the chances of acquiring redirected traffic? Well, here’s what you need:
There’s a formula for transforming your guest content efforts into leads for your business.
Good, helpful content + high authority site within your niche = greater authority within your niche = greater trust among potential customers.
This greater trust comforts the followers of your work to convert from prospects to paying customers/clients.
Guest blogging in this way helps your target audience see you as a credible, reliable source of information to help them solve their pain-points.
Therefore, because of this initial trust, they are more open to the value propositions that you present to them.
A hot lead that trusts your authority will always convert faster than a cold one.
Increase your qualified leads
A qualified lead is essentially a lead that is further down the sales process.
They have already expressed interest in your value proposition and therefore need less convincing to convert as opposed to someone who is simply browsing.
To get these qualified leads, the key is to find websites to guest post on that already have a regular and reliable flow of traffic as well as relevancy in your niche.
It is unlikely that you will be able to guest post with a direct competitor but try to find a high authority, a well-respected site within your niche as a whole to post on.
When you post your links within your blog, there is a certain art and finesse to making sure people want to click that big call-to-action button, which leads to your website.
Otherwise, it can very well be perceived as a useless waste of space that took up the reader’s time without a pay-off rather than the highly converting benefit of Guest Blogging that it can be.
Unsurprisingly, this approach (or lack thereof) can result in very few click-throughs and leads from the guest post.
The key is to create unity between the CTA you post and the actual page that it leads to.
Make sure both of these are related to the overall content of the guest post you are writing.
This actionable step should read in the prospect’s mind as a reasonable next step from the guest blog they just read in order to solve their pain-point.
Use This Content Marketing Opportunity to Shorten Your Sales Cycle
The key here is that rather than waiting for potential customers to show up on your website, you get to help them discover your unique value proposition on a trusted third-party website.
In this way, you get to shorten your sales process for your services and products.
To capitalize on the match between your value proposition and the topic you write about, you need to be very strategic about what you blog about.
Think of yourself as a guest blogging ninja who is there to strike specific key pain-points that are relevant to the solutions you provide (i.e., your services and products).
Educational Content
Ensure that the content of your guest blog is engaging and educational.
Discuss trends and insights to become an authoritative voice in the industry and increase your chances of persuading readers to visit your website.
The reason that educational content performs so well is that bridging people’s gaps in their knowledge helps them to solve problems and understand their pain-points better so that they can tackle them more effectively.
Good educational content provides value.
Engaging and good educational content provides value and builds engagement.
Try to be the professor that enthralls and inspires his or her class to change the way that they think to solve their problems.
The root of most problems is, after all, a mindset difference.
This is a key advantage of Guest Blogging for startups who are still building their name and can exponentially speed up the process.
Empowered with the right knowledge presented to them in the right way, people act differently, and for that mindset shift, a prospect will be grateful.
Call to Action
What’s the point of investing your precious time and resources to create quality content and not get even a single email in return? Make sure you insert a call to action in the conclusion of each blog post.
Deciding the specifics of the call to action is up to you—you can either ask the readers to sign up for your newsletter, or simply urge them to leave feedback in the comments section.
Identify Potential Customers and Sales Opportunities
We’ve already mentioned that guest blogging exposes your brand to new audiences, but how exactly does it help generate more leads?
Well, when you offer solutions to readers’ problems through your guest blogs, they start considering you to be an expert in your particular industry or niche.
They will follow you, approach you, and visit your website to gain more information.
Of course, this will expose your products or services to new consumers, and the ones that are interested in your products will make inquiries.
In a nutshell, the higher the generated business leads, the higher the sales—and the higher the sales, the higher the profits.
Expand Your Email List
Emails have long established themselves as a reliable tool for business development and branding. The sheer power that enables you to reach the meticulously managed inbox can be life-altering. Utilize email marketing in an efficient manner and watch how fast your small business grows.
The biggest key to building your email list, which you can even discuss and link in your guest post, is to create an “opt-in incentive.”
This is some document, video, training, etc., that provides value to your prospective customer.
Some examples of this are a checklist, an ebook, an exclusive video or video series, etc. Whatever format you choose, the incentive you provide needs to be electrifying and value-adding enough that your prospect will want it to help them solve their problem.
In exchange for this amazing, value-adding piece of content you provide them with, your opt-in form will ask for their email address.
Once they’ve opted in, and your email marketing software has sent them their opt-in incentive, boom – you’ve got a new email subscriber, and your list is primed to grow in this way.
However, there’s one mistake that you should avoid at all costs: spamming.
Developing an email list can be quite a tricky undertaking, especially if you’re new on the block. Not every visitor of your website shares their email address or signs up for a newsletter. However, guest blogging can just be the growth catalyst you need to start building an email list.
However, it’s essential to make your readers believe that being on your mailing list will provide them with access to valuable information.
In order to achieve this, you need to work on the varied nuances of the blog post, and make sure that it’s the perfect blend of information, sales pitch, and call to action.
Another way of expanding your email list is to ask established bloggers to share their email lists. However, it’s not as simple as it sounds. You need to offer them something in return for this favor. This could be an engaging infographic or a well-written blog post.
Create an Environment of Engagement and External Feedback
An important aspect of devising great digital marketing strategies involves developing unique new ideas or modifying plans to fit current requirements. Another great benefit of guest blogging for small businesses is access to community insights, which can help fine tune those strategies.
Just pull up a well-written blog post on a popular website with high domain authority, and you’ll find the comment section filled with the readers’ opinions, experiences and ideas—and this is exactly what guest blogging gives you access to. It helps you to get constructive feedback from areas outside your own website.
Put it this way: you come across a person who has constructive, insightful suggestions to a blog post from a website belonging to someone else. This feedback may inspire you to do something that ends up accumulating quality traffic.
Broaden Your Online Publication Network
When it comes to developing a brand, networking is one of the most important components. Just as the adage goes, “It’s not all about what you know, but also who you know.” This statement is as relevant in today’s business landscape as it was 50 years ago.
The key to successful networking is collaborating with businesses that are capable of helping you build a recognizable brand across their own network. It’s like creating a web of awareness where all the involved parties can potentially help each other. As a matter of fact, this is the underlying idea behind the LinkedIn social media hub.
Publishing guest blogs on other websites allows the creation of networks between website owners and readers alike. Furthermore, these networks often lead to collaborations, which take business relationships to new heights.
Use Guest Posting to Boost Your SEO
Guest blogging is easily one of the most in-demand content marketing services right now. Unsurprisingly, companies are increasing hiring guest blog writers to work on their website. An increasing number of entrepreneurs, businesses, and companies are maximizing the unique benefits of hiring expert guest bloggers, which include generating quality backlinks, boosting authority, improving name recognition, increasing the chances of getting featured on high-traffic platforms, and gaining the trust of a large target audience.
If you’ve been struggling to use guest posting to boost your SEO, we can help you kick things off. As an award-winning digital marketing and small business SEO firm, we specialize in helping brands leverage guest blogging for SEO.
