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How to Unleash the REAL Power Behind Guest Posting


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This is a guest post by Mauro D’Andrea.

You are trying guest posting and results are good…

From your last guest post you got both traffic and a decent amount of email subscribers. The same is true for some of your other guest posts.

But, you feel that you are missing something. You can’t understand what.

Many successful bloggers describe guest posting like the Holy Grail of blogging. To you it’s not like that.

You have to send emails to many bloggers and wait for their replies. Some bloggers respond quickly, but others don’t respond or do it after a long time.

You have to put a good effort while you write your post just to see if a certain blogger likes it or not. You get some refusals. Many other times you need to edit your post before a blogger accepts it.

Guest posting give results, but from a certain point of view it’s a painful process. Why there are people who talk about it like the best way to succeed online?

You are Missing Something About Guest Posting

So many successful people can’t be wrong: there is something that you are missing.

Even if you do guest posting in a good manner, the chances are that you are skipping an essential part of guest posting.

There are many technical aspects that can bring your guest posting skills to the next level, but they are not the most important things.

You are missing the key concept of guest posting.

Guest Posting is NOT About Traffic

This may confuse you, but it’s the reality. The real power of guest posting is not about getting traffic.

If you consider guest posting just as a source of traffic you’ll get your traffic for your guest posts, but you have to make other ones to increase your traffic again.

Let’s talk frankly: you can succeed in this way. Many people do it.

Let me ask you one question: do you prefer to work to get short term results or long term results?

I guess you answered that you want long term results.

Well, to get long term results you should shift your focus from traffic to something else. Something that only a small amount of guest posters know well.

Guest Posting is About Relationships

Of course, your relationships with the readers are very important and you have to care a lot about them. You already know that. I don’t want to waste your time with obvious concepts, I want to share the secret sauce with you 😉

I’m talking about something that it’s a key concept to skyrocket your results. The relationship with the blogger who hosts your post.

When a blogger gives you the chance to guest post on his blog, he is trusting you.
He is leaving your audience to you.

“With big powers come big responsibility.” – Voltaire

You have to show that his trust is in good hands. Anyway, that alone is not enough to build the base of a great relationship. You have to exceed his expectation.

In this way you’ll start a win-win relationship with a successful person. Both you and the blogger will get great benefits.

How to Make Relationships Through Guest Posting

First and foremost: you should care. If you don’t have a genuine interest in building a relationship with a person you can’t do it, no matter what you do.

That is assumed so let me explain you the real deal.

You have to write the most epic content that you could do.

When you write a truly astonishing post, you are saying to the blogger: “I want to invest so much in our relationship that I’m giving you my best stuff: a lot of work and great content that I could insert on my blog in the Best Post section. I want to amaze your audience. I want them to say thank you for having this guest blogger.”

You want to exceed both the audience’s expectation and the blogger’s one. You want to make the kind of post that everyone want to share and everyone want to link. To accomplish those you have to give valuable information, explained in a straight and simple way.

You have to promote that post at your best (if you did a great work in the writing phase, it will need just a small ignition to be spread all over the web). The more exposure your post gets, the more both you and the blogger will get benefits from it.

When you make all this stuff, your post will provide backlinks, traffic, shares and email subscribers to your host. You will gain those things as well, but the most important part is that the blogger will say you: “Hey, great job! If you want to make another guest post, I’ll be happy about that”.

That is just the start of a great win-win relationship.

Your Turn

I’d like to hear your opinion about this topic. Also, let me ask you this: are you building your relationships or are you just getting traffic from your guest posts?

Comments

  1. Good stuff Mauro – with your suggestion on providing your best content. I get so many of the same types of requests it is ridiculous and so easy to just delete. I used to feel bad for having to deny people after they supplied me their content, but now it’s a 25% chance whether I accept something or not.

    One thing I do disagree with though is it not being about traffic. I do feel guest posting is a great source of traffic. I know some businesses that the ONLY thing they did was utilize guest posting and they drove hundreds of thousands of visitors through this process. I do agree that it shouldn’t be your sole focus, but knowing which one’s can drive traffic is important as you obviously know by guest posting for Kristi 🙂

  2. Hi Justin, and thanks for sharing your experience.

    I agree with you that guest posting can drive traffic, as you can read in the post. What I’m saying is that guest posting is something bigger than a source of traffic: it’s a source of connections.

    I’d add that guest posting has lost a lot of “traffic power” recently, but its power of building relationships is still the same.

  3. So-called guest bloggers who focus on traffic are usually confusing guest blogging with article marketing. It’s pathetic how many submissions I receive and that maybe 5% of them are truly guest posts — easily determined by the first person or second person.

    Your above contribution is predominantly second person. You want me to follow along so you write you you you. I can equally follow first person.

    But third person posts are what I call article marketing. There’s no emotional connection. Those people want traffic. They probably never read my blog and most certainly never commented on it. They’re the first submissions I delete, not even a reply.

    • Ari, yours is an interesting point of view.

      I guess that writing in third person is a bad idea even in article marketing. Writing in third person you can’t build a connection with the readers – not even get their attention.

      Definetely, it’s a bad strategy even if you just want traffic. What do you think?

  4. Thank you for sharing this Mauro. As a blogger who receives a ton of guest blogging pitches almost every week now, I understand how the situation must be for bloggers that are higher up in the ranks. This prompted me to always put in extra efforts if I have decided to write a guest post for another blog.

    Apart from building relationship with the host blogger by submitting quality guest posts, I try to add value to his or her online activities as much as I can. Sometimes, contribution of snippets to be used in a blog post, retweeting, commenting and helping the host blogger’s community out are some great ways to strengthen the relationship too.

  5. Been with the guest posting world and I definitely agree that traffic is not what matters most when you make your guest post but rather it is the relationship you build with the other blogger. Traffic maybe second as well with the bonus link you’ll receive from your author bio.

  6. In so much of what we do on social, we have to start valuing relationships over metrics. It’s a break from traditional thinking on this, but if you can be of value now, they’ll use your services later!

    • Exactly Matt, you’re right.
      Relationships are some of most valuble resources in the entire life. If you think about all the most successful people, they reached the success because of great relationships.

  7. Really helpful information… I’ve been blogging for quite some time, but never considered guest blogging, either inviting guest bloggers to contribute to my blogs or to write post as a guest blogger. Recently though I have, but really didn’t have much of an understanding as to how to approach it. Now I have enough insight to get going, thanks!

    • You’re welcome, Len.
      Guest posting is a really great way to grow your online presence, connect with influencers and get a big exposure for your stuff. Definetely, it’s a must.

  9. Investing your best stuff will show the other person in the relationship that you actually care and you’re genuine in ambition.

    Relationships are key to the blogging industry and getting your guest post to break the barrier with the other blogger is going to be a big step for you!

    Great way to look at it at a different angle!
    Samuel just posted 3 Twitter Tools For You To Succeed On Twitter!