Blogging is a powerful tool for communicating your business’ stories. And in essence, that’s what public relations is all about. Blogging is an efficient and cost effective way to publish content, allowing you to take control of the content. But you don’t have to have your own blog to get involved, you can also consider being a guest writer on someone else’s blog.
Guest blogging can be an effective PR strategy to build brand awareness and also increase credibility and authority online for you or your business. It can provide third-party endorsed credibility and also helps you to reach a highly engaged audience with your message.
The tips below highlight some key areas to consider when pitching as a guest blogger.
Quality counts
The key to a successful guest blog post is the quality, creativity and originality of the content. It is important to create content with the audience in mind – what are they going to get out of it?
Consider writing content that can be put into practice or provide value to your audience, whether it be a how to guide, top ten tips or an explanation on the latest news / technology in the industry.
To create a quality blog post you should consider the following:
- Provide helpful, insightful or interesting information
- Use subheadings to make it easier to read
- Use correct grammar and spelling
- Don’t use sales language, your aim here is to inform not to sell
- And most important, use images.
Research the bloggers that count
Conduct research to determine which blogs you would like to have your post appear on. Start by doing a search on Google using relevant keywords to find and review blogs to see if they are the right fit for you and your business.
Also search for blogger lists, like the Best Australian Blogs list, compiled annually by the Australian Writers’ Centre. These will give you a starting list for popular blogs. Also, bloggers tend to interact with each other so when you find a good one take note of the bloggers they follow on social media. This will also help you to build your list.
Pitching to bloggers
Once you have identified the blogs you wish to target for guest blogging opportunities, now you need connect with them. Many bloggers will have a contact email address or a contact form on their site to make it easy to get in touch. Alternatively you could also use social channels and search for them on Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook.
It is important to remember when pitching to a blogger that they are not journalists. They have a very personalised medium where they interact with their readers through comments on their blog. The pitch should be clear and to the point. Busy people do not read long emails, so in the first paragraph clearly outline your idea.
Take the time to outline your story idea and why their readers would be interested. It’s a very good idea to provide links to examples of previous articles (perhaps from your own blog).
If you have a large database or social media following you may want to highlight this as well as it could mean potential new readers for the blogger which might be an attractive proposition.
Get sharing
Once one of your guest posts has been published make the most of it and share it on all of your social channels and also with your database. This will promote your guest blog post as well as promote the third party website.
Guest blogging is a great way to enhance your online profile, increase your credibility and expand your audience reach. Have you been a guest blogger? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
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Sydney Public Relations Agency, CP Communications provides specialist media, traditional and online PR strategies that get amazing results. Contact us today. For more great tips visit our website www.cpcommunications.com.au.
