Content marketing has been on the tip of most marketers? tongues the last two or so years, and with good reason. It?s number one way to maximize the number of keywords driving traffic, improve visibility across all inbound channels and build or grow a brand?s community. However, the explanation above doesn?t necessarily address marketers? questions concerning specific content marketing tactics like guest blogging.
Guest blogging is not the same as content syndication or curation. Guest blogging occurs when an author creates original content for another relevant web property. Brands can be the recipient of a guest post or the contributor to another brand?s blog.
Benefits to Being a Guest Blog Post Contributor
Every blog, in some form or fashion, represents a community. Communities are formed around a cause or topic. Its members consume, comment on, share and evangelize the content that resides on the blog. Not all communities are created equal and can vary in size, scope and fervor.
When contributing to another blog, it?s critical to respect the cause or topic of the community. Guest posts should be relevant and prudent while providing value, and a helpful call to action for conversion. Over time, this process will slowly draft new community members into the contributor?s online community. Below are seven benefits to being a blog contributor.
- Exposure to a new audiences and communities
- Natural and prudent link building
- Organic social sharing by new people
- Algorithmic brand signals
- Diversification of AuthorRank
- Incremental growth in traffic, leads or customers
- Referral traffic
Guest blogging that respects the cause or topic of a community and provides prudent calls to action can see high performing conversion rates. The above graphic shows average conversion rates for referral traffic at 15 percent. Other channels generally hover in the 1 percent to 3 percent range for conversions. Guest blogging is one of the most efficient lead capture or conversion tactics on the Internet today.
Benefits of Being the Recipient of Guest Posts
According to the Content Marketing Institute?s 2013 B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks Report, 64 percent of content marketers cite producing enough content as a challenge. This means most blogs will be receptive to publishing relevant guest posts.
Guest authors and the brands they represent have a vested interest in promoting their content. This promotion exposes the publishing web property to new social audiences. Each time a guest post is published, it?s likely to attract new community members that previously resided outside the recipient?s sphere of content influence.
If a guest contributor is savvy, they will take ownership of their written content via Google?s authorship attribution. Authors who do this are establishing their expertise around a certain subject matter directly with Google. This has many positive search engine benefits for the publisher of the contributor?s content. Other benefits include:
- Exposure to a new audiences and communities
- Organic social sharing by new people
- Brand alignment with attributed (by Google) authors
- Incremental growth in traffic, leads or customers
- Encourages other authors and brands to contribute
- Fosters community and collaboration
Publishing and contributing guest blog posts leads to many valuable content marketing outcomes and positively affects all inbound channels. It helps brands foster and grow their online communities and further aligns them with industry experts.
People go to the Internet to solve problems or be entertained. Businesses are in the business of solving peoples? problems. As a result, perceived industry expertise across the Internet should be valued and coveted. Guest blogging is one of the many content marketing tactics that grows and expands perceived industry expertise.
For more help with content marketing, download The 5 W?s of Content Creation.
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