6 Important Things To Do Before Accepting Guest Post

With everyone turning to blogs for promoting their brand, its time you think ahead. In order to make your brand stand out from the crowd, you have to think of interesting and unique ways to promote your brand and posts. Guest posting is one such marketing tactic that’s starting to become popular. Guest post is about posting your content on different websites apart from inviting guests to post on your website.

When you invite guests to come over and post on your website, you get the unique opportunity to promote without actually spending any time or money on it. While inviting individuals to blog with your website, you ensure that they share their content among their friends and family and increase the visitors immediately.

This type of free marketing also ensures that you have more social media coverage without actually spending your resources on it. Reports suggest that guest posts guarantees a five time increase in the traffic, ensures that there is more links to your website on social media.

While guest posts are a great way to promote your brand, you need to put some effort on it, in the initial stage.

Work Out Your Goal

You know for a fact that your will increase the traffic on your website when you start accepting guest posts. When you are looking for more traffic, you would want the same for a distinctive reason. It is crucial to figure that out. There are a large number of reasons for wanting to increase the traffic to your website. You might want new visitors to your website to sign up for email, or do you want more social media coverage and viewers. It is never right to considering reaping all the benefits. Zero down on your selected goal and make provisions to ensure that the visitors can follow through. Make sure that you prepare your website to fulfill your goal before you start accepting guest posts.

Create Guidelines

Remember that you are opening up your website to strangers and this could compromise the content to a certain extent. This is where you should work out a set of guidelines for guests when you open your website for guest postings. You will see a host of queries when guests are invited for posting, so save yourself the trouble and already put up a page of guidelines for them to refer to you. You can include information on what kind of posts you are looking for and how long you want each piece to be, state if you prefer any particular style of writing apart from information on incentives if you are providing any.

Experts suggest that new websites should offer some incentives like gift cards, and free passes in order to attract guests for posting.

Thoroughly Check Before Posting

Remember that just like good content can increase web traffic, bad content can effective the flow of traffic. When you invite guests to post on your website, remember that the content posted by them reflect the ideas of your brand and you can greatly harm your brand image by posting a terribly written content. Before allowing a guest to post on your website, carry out a background check of the person, check out their blogs and writing style. Even after the individual is done submitting his post, make sure that you go through the content to ensure that it isn’t offensive to any section of society and primarily that the content is original and hasn’t been plagiarized. Make sure that the content adheres to the standard of your blog and brand and that it follows the same style as the other posts or else it will look like an eye soar amidst all the other posts.

Pay Attention to Backlinks and Anchor Texts

The guest will only provide you with the content to the blog post, you have to add the relevant anchor text and inbound links that are related to the post. Make sure that the links do not look forced in the article. Use links only from reputable sources. When you work on anchor texts be selective since they will be used multiple times and will go a long way in ensuring a good SEO for your website. While anchor texts can do wonder with your website, make sure that they aren’t spammy and you don’t end up using them everywhere on the website. It helps to remember that the guest post will be published on your behalf and you will have to take responsibility for it.

Create A Plan For Promotion

Your work doesn’t end with getting guests to post and ensuring the quality of the content. You have to also inform the guest posters your plan of promoting their content. You have to realize that the bloggers writing for you want to improve their presence as well and you have to keep their interests in mind. If you want promote primarily through social media, mention that to the guests and specify how many times you would share or tweet about the new posts. If you are going to promote the content through email or newsletter, make that clear as well. Place as much importance in promoting guest posts as you would on any new content on your website. Remember not to slack off in this avenue.

Work On Your Social Media Presence

If you are starting to accept guest posts, you can advertise the same on your Facebook and Twitter page. Make sure that the link to your website is clearly visible on the social media pages. Also include your contact details and ensure that they are the same everywhere.

Wrapping Up!

Guest posting is a great way to get new content for your website and blog, but you need to prepare your website to handle the same. Make sure that the guest isn’t left wanting. Pay attention to these accepts before you start accepting guest posts.

AboutAnita Sharma

Anita Sharma is a Digital Marketing Strategist based in Kolkata, India. Anita covers SEO, SMM, E-commerce and Content marketing. A Marketer by day and reader by night is a graduate of the University of Calcutta with a degree in chemistry; she previously worked as a Tutor for 5+ years. Anita has a passion for helping people in all aspects of Digital Marketing through the latest industry blogs she provides. She is always up for consultations. Want her to plan and execute your Online Marketing Campaign? Contact her via her LinkedIn.