It’s a broad truth that you should be on your best behavior as a guest.
It’s no less true for guest posting on a blog. A guest post is an excellent way to reach new audiences and boost your authority, but there’s more to guest posting than you might think, and getting it wrong can lead to embarrassment.
Here are five effective tips for writing quality guest posts.
1. Find the Right Voice
You should always bring some of your own voice to a guest post, but it’s also important to keep the host’s brand voice in mind.
A brand’s voice creates an expectation. You don’t want to give readers whiplash when you swoop in with a voice at odds with the blog’s usual tone. Failing to match the host’s style will also obscure your message — your readers will be so busy adjusting to your tone that they’ll miss what you’re saying.
2. Speak to Their Audience
When writing a guest post, you’re speaking to a new audience, not your usual crowd. So take the time to learn about your host’s audience, including what kind of content they like to see.
This will make it easy to pitch your content to connect with that audience. Without this step, you could write content that would kill on your own blog but provoke yawns in this new context.
3. Provide Value
Yes, you’re here to “sell” something, but don’t let that get in the way of, well, actually contributing.
If your guest post blog is a vapid, poorly-disguised advertisement, your readers will switch off. For a happy audience (and host) you’ll need to create content with real value, targeted to the niche of the destination blog. In short, you should have something to say that’s more than just selling your own CTA.
4. Use Internal Links
Internal links are the breadcrumb trail that keeps readers exploring a blog’s landscape. They add value for several reasons. They can bolster the point you’re making using the authority of the host blog. They can also improve your host’s SEO, and their authority with it. And they can increase the dwell time on your host’s site.
So including these links is a goodwill gesture that also demonstrates knowledge of your host’s regular content.
5. Nail Your CTA
If you’re guesting on another site’s blog, you’ll want something out of it — no shame in that. But you need confidence in your execution, so keep a couple of things in mind.
First, make it specific. You want readers to subscribe, download your ebook, or create an account. Note the verbs. These are all prompts to have the reader do something. By contrast, a bad CTA simply links out to your site, which only invites readers to amble about your home page for a bit before leaving.
Writing Quality Guest Posts Made Simple
With these five effective tips for writing quality guest posts, you can do it all: nail your message, contribute to your host, and build your authority. The best part? These tips are simple enough that you can start using them today.
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