Guest blogging as a link building tool for SEO has been a tactic for quite some time. But the benefits of guest blogging go far beyond strengthening one’s rank in Google. The practice of writing guest content isn’t new. Case in point, the New York Times published an Op-Ed piece by Vladimir Putin on Syria. His interjection was to promote Russia’s proposal of a peaceful handover of Syrian’s chemical weapons, instead of strategic military strikes, which is the Untied State’s plan.
From the New York Times publishing of this counter argument to Obama’s limited military strike position, Putin was able to open up the Syrian issue to discussion and offer the American people more context to debate, which put pressure on Obama and Congress to consider the alternative.
In this one example, Putin used a weakness in American culture, an open debate, which has fallen out of vogue as of recent to strengthen his country’s position. There’s nothing new Putin did that others, such as EXXON or The California HealthCare Foundation hasn’t done in the past.
We’ve Been There Done That
EXXON published a series of editorials in the 70′s to influence the oil embargo crisis with remarkable success. “The California HealthCare Foundation generated 55,566,970 media impressions with coverage in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, San Diego Union-Tribune, Reuters, and television and radio broadcast media through California for its Health-e-App.” And, in my overall media strategy for one client, I wrote guest columns as a tactical exercise to interject the company’s thoughts on financial planning into the retail cooperative hardware story industry. In each one of these cases, the approach was successful. EXXON moved policy in the oil industry. The Health-e-App became a hit in California, and my strategy grew my client’s business.
While these organizations used traditional media as a means to publish content, nothing today has changed, save new media. Even that, however, has only added to the media mix, giving companies more options for publishing and a strategic advantage of engaging bloggers with very close knit followers.
That beings me to research which supports earned media largely and I would submit guest blogging too.
What Does the Research Say
To document whether to speak into issues that affect one’s business, research from The Institute for Public Relations found the frequency of media coverage a company received increased sales closure rates. There’s real ROI you can take to the bank.
See (Exploring the Link between Share of Media Coverage and Business Outcomes)
According to the study, a company’s sales force closed deals faster when the organization’s media coverage increased and less likely to do so when coverage decreased. That research is apropos because my hunch is that earning guest blog posts will only enhance other forms of media outreach.
Bamidele Onibalusi did a little experiment with guest blogging and wrote 31 guest posts in one week.
Tangible Results of Guest Blogging
Onibalusi writes, “So you have a clear idea about how traffic is going. Before the guest posts, I was averaging 350 visitors per day (on the best days) from search engines.” After just 10 days of guest blogging, his daily traffic jumped 72 percent. While this blogger only looked at traffic results, which is a good measure, I would submit from this research we can infer guest blogging only adds to the direct benefits of media placement.
Unfortunately, many social marketing organizations and search optimization companies morphing into public relations agencies may approach blogs as a different beast than traditional media.
I would argue that blogs as media is equivalent to any outlet that produces “mainstream news.” Fact is, blogs are a niche of media, like magazines are a niche, or radio is a niche, and there are niches within these niches.With that in mind, it is important to include blogs in a larger media relations strategy.
Tips for Successful Planning
From the research, we can pull a few points that can help your plan incorporate guest blogging into an overall media relations strategy.
- Plan to attack your competition’s weakest link and write goals, objectives and tactics to support.
- Create positive messages that resonate with readers in the weakest link.
- Persevere because you must at least get your message heard seven to 15 times before people begin to recall it.
- Set goals against outcomes and focus on media where exposure is most likely to happen.
- Measuring your results in isolation won’t yield much useful information, rather measure your share against the competition.
- Be precise in your evaluation and measure against objectives.
- Measure over and over again.
Now you know why this stuff is important, a few words on lists.
Where Do We Go From Here
The secret to successfully using guest blogging as a strategic advantage in your overall media relations activities is knowing your audience, specifically, understanding which media your audience consumes — that includes blog.
Not every blogger is created equal. Some may be experts, some may be citizen journalists, others might be opinionated. So how do you categorize these different types of bloggers for engagement. Here are three tips:
- Make a “Prime-Time” List: This is a list of online outlets, such as the New York Times where you want to place Op-Eds that could appear online, or for niche publications, a full-lengthen article with a link back to your organization’s website might do.
- Make an “A” List: If the blogger is an expert, he/she will have great authority among their readers. These are your “A” list people to engage. I wouldn’t necessarily position yourself as a guest on their blog unless the issue is big enough to justify it. Instead, you may want to pitch these people as a credible source to be use in the content they create. I would submit these are outlets where earning a media mention might be more valuable than a guest post.
- Make a “B” List: Bloggers that act as “citizen journalist” and opinionated bloggers may have more sway with their audience. To spread your organization’s thought, you may want to approach these bloggers with “service journalism” pieces that help to spread your message, extend the conversation and include links back to credible sources from you “A” List.
This is where you want to focus guest blogging activity. By engaging where the topic is relevant, and connected to the larger issue, your efforts will extend the conversation, engage more readers and create more opportunity to position your organization as a thought leader, influencer — whatever the term d’jour we’re using these days. And it will also generate traffic, if that’s what you want. To get from here to there, play attention to the next section.
Guest Blogging Tips From the Masters
While I have made the case of guest blogging as part of a larger media relations strategy, that’s not much help unless you’re equipped to act on it. Right? In the list below, I have brought together the very best in current thought on guest blogging best practices, which includes a comprehensive article explaining the right way to pitch bloggers.
- Guest Blogging — What You’re Doing Wrong
- The Essentials of Guest-Blogging Strategy for SEO, Traffic, and Audience-Building
- Guest Blogging Strategies – Whiteboard Friday
- Guest Blogging vs. Guest Posting – Imagine A World Without Links
- Content Marketing Strategy: 3 Steps to Avoid a Guest Blogging Fail
- How to Write the Perfect Outreach Email: The 9-Step Script for Emailing Busy People
- Link Building Through Guest Blogging in 2013
This only scratches the surface of guest blogging. There’s much more to think about and do to make guest blogging successful, such as creating a message platform, understanding the art of pitching, how to create and use an editorial calendar, knowing when to send a press release, and how to write one.
You won’t be successful with guest blogging unless you understand some basic journalism, and that’s how you will become socially relevant.