As part of any business blogging strategy that we develop, we offer the service of guest blogging.
Bringing with it numerous benefits, we thought the best way to explain just how beneficial guest blogging can be to your business was to have a guest blogger create the piece for you to read.
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Guest posting can be a great tool for your business. The days are long past when blogging was the province of the nerdy, techie few. These days, everyone is blogging and you should be too. Not just business blogging, but guest blogging.
For many business owners, guest blogging feels counterintuitive. After all, why should you take the benefit of your business experience and share it with a bunch of people who aren’t even your customers? Actually, that’s the wrong question to ask. The right question is: how can you connect with people who don’t know about your business and show them that it’s worth finding out more? Guest blogging answers that question, whether you run a small business or a large company.
Getting Over The Mental Block
Of course, you have to do it right. The first mental hurdle you have to get over is the one that urges you to reserve your best content for your own site. But put yourself in the mind of a reader or potential customer for a minute. When you go to a site that has great information you are likely to find out more by clicking on links or researching the person on Google. On the other hand if the information is the same as you would get anywhere else you are likely to leave the page after 10 seconds and never come back. When you put your great post on someone else’s site you are creating a fantastic image for your business and your personal brand.
Benefits Of Guest Blogging For Business
One of the primary benefits of guest blogging is that it expands your reach and your network. Not only do you connect with the owners of the blogs where you post but you also get to connect directly with their readers. Generally guest posting puts you in touch with new people who will engage with you through comments. As a guest blogger it’s your responsibility to reply to comments. That’s also your chance to be conversational and to show some personality. There’s no rule that says that business has to be boring so take the chance to inject some humour and show your human side. People will respond to that and will be more tempted to check out your business.
If people find your content engaging, then they will share it. Social sharing is another benefit of guest blogging. When you write a post and someone shares it with their network it introduces you to an even wider network, some of whom will check out the post, comment on it, and follow your links. And you can help too by sharing your guest post liberally on all of your networks.
Links, ah yes! Guest posting also helps you with link building – and those links point right back to your business site. When you guest blog at the very least you get to include a bio with a link of your choice. Some blog hosts are extremely generous and will allow you to link to your social media profiles too. And there are even some who have no restrictions on links at all, as long as they are relevant. If your own blog or site has useful information about the subject you’re blogging about, this is a great opportunity to highlight the resources and expertise you offer.
Sharing Resources, Building Trust
In bricks and mortar business, the more people come through the door the more chance there is that some of them will take what you have to offer. It’s the same with an online business. Getting more people to visit your site increases the chance that they will do business with you. Guest posting as a business blogger can help with that. If you link in your bio to a useful resource on your site that adds value to the people who come to you, then they will probably stick around to browse when they reach your site, especially if you have more valuable content.
Thinking longer term, guest blogging establishes you as an expert in your business. You know what people are like. If other people think your stuff is good enough to publish and if you build a following on other sites, then by definition you have greater expertise and value to your potential customers. You might start by guest posting on lots of different blogs, but many business people end up by publishing a regular column on their expert topic on a high profile blog with a large audience. That could be you, and it can only help your business.
As you can see there are no down sides to guest blogging for business, so get started now!
Sharon Hurley Hall is a professional blogger and ghost blogger. She has almost 25 years of experience of writing professionally and is the the author of a Kindle ebook titled Getting Started in Blogging. Check out Sharon’s Google+ profile to find links to all her social media hangouts.
