Guest Posting - What's on your blog?

Guest posting is a great strategy for bringing new readers to your blog.

But are we missing a trick? When you write and plan a guest post for someone else’s site, do you also plan your own site for when it goes live?

Image: Simon Howden / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Think about it. You’re hoping that hundreds, maybe thousands of people will click the link on your bio in the guest post. What do they do when they get to your site?

Almost without exception, they will click your first post, to get a feel for your writing.

Is it written with the new audience in mind?

Does it give them other places to go on your blog?

Is there a strong call to action of some kind?

Let me give you an example of how effective a bit of planning can be. I was lucky enough to have a guest post on Problogger the other day. I knew it was going to run sometime, but I didn’t know when. And to be honest Darren caught me out by posting sooner than I thought.

But I did have a something prepared, which I hoped his audience would enjoy. It was called Setting up a DIY affiliate scheme. I wrote it with two objectives:

• To complement Darren’s posting style by being helpful and clear, so his readers would feel at home when they arrived
• To ask them to read my Case Study and become a subscriber here on Mike’s Life

The result was really pleasing. Over the last two days I’ve had more than 20 times the normal level of subscribers, so as well as the very welcome extra traffic, I was able to draw a direct benefit to the site’s overall growth.

Don’t forget to plan your own blog for when guest posts go live!

You do already have the case study, don’t you?

If so, you might enjoy these:

1/ How to get Google Voice in Europe

2/ The blogging ladder

3/ Debunking the lie that content is King