The Single Greatest Way to Spread Content & Expertise

If you read blogs, then you already know about guest blogging. What you may not know is just how important guest blogging is to bloggers, and to internet marketing in general. It’s so important, that Leo Babauta, the founder of the Zen Habits web site (one of the top 100 blogs in the world), credits guest blogging as the single most important way he built his audience. Many websites about web marketing and copywriting devote a lot of words to the topic (my personal favourite being Men With Pens, browse through their archives to find some great posts on the topic, many by guest bloggers).

Guest blogging, though, isn’t just for bloggers. Small business owners have a vested interested in participating in the conversation as well.

I’ve written on this blog about the advantages of content marketing, demonstrating ones expertise and creating a human connection with your audience. Guest blogging works by extending your reach. When you write for someone else’s blog in a related field, you are in essence borrowing that person’s audience. If you make a strong enough connection, you can convince members of that audience to become members of your audience as well.

The key is to increase your profile in your industry, by connecting with those bloggers and websites where your customers will already be spending their time. Then, by contributing, you spread your expertise to them, introduce yourself, and you have just made an easy connection with a person who was already looking for the kind of content you were providing.

The more you write for sites in your industry, the more ubiquitous your name becomes. When guest blogging, being prolific is a good thing.

However, it’s important to remember though, that guest blogging is not just a numbers game. It’s not simply about how many readers you can attract back to your own blog, or how many visitors you can get back to your website. Guest blogging is also about the connections you make with the others in your industry/niche/area. If you run a site or a blog, and you let someone else write for you, there is a level of trust required there, and a certain bond between host and guest is created.

It’s important not to to underestimate the value of those connections. Bloggers and website curators are quickly becoming industry leaders in the 21st century, and cultivating relationships with these people is going to become more and more important as time goes by — just as it’s important to have good relationships with reviewers and trade publications in your industry.

It’s also important to note that while the guest may gain a lot of benefit from blogging, the host is also benefiting. After all, websites and blogs publish content. Without content, they have no purpose. Guest blogging affords bloggers fresh, free content that they can use to continue to build their own audience. Furthermore, as a guest blogger, chances are you will promote the fact that you have posted on someone else’s blog, and will be sharing your audience with your host.  The same way he is sharing his with you.

Guest blogging is networking in digital form. The same way local business owners will help each other, guest blogging allows individuals in the same industry to partner for the mutual benefit of all.

As an analogy, when I used to run a handful of bars and restaurants, it would occasionally happen that something would go wrong in the ordering process. Either someone forgot to place an order for a particular item, or the supplier ran out, and therefore we’d run out (this always seemed happen with beer kegs for some reason…). On these occasions it became almost standard practice that neighboring bars and restaurants, even if they were technically our competitors, would loan us a couple of kegs to get us through a weekend. When the same thing happened to them, we would return the favor. In the end, everyone ended up ahead. I see guest blogging as a very similar practice.

There are a number of tips for how to go about guest blogging, and a much longer piece could be devoted to just that topic, but I find that most advice on guest blogging complicates the matter too much. First, find a site that you’d like to guest blog on. Make sure you understand the site and its audience. If it has guest blogging guidelines, read them. Then reach out to the site owner, and start a dialogue. All too often, people forget that at the other end of an e-mail address is a person, and the same way you’ve interacted with people your entire life is the way you should interact with people online. Be polite, make it easy for them to say yes, and give them something of quality to post on their site. That’s all.

I have not done a lot of guest blogging — something I hope to change in the near future. In the meantime, however, you can find me as a regular contributor at Workshifting.com and TheNextGreatGeneration.com.

Have you had any success with guest blogging? If so, share some of your tips. If not, what’s held you back?