How to Use Guest Blogging to Attract New Clients (4 Simple Steps)

by Lis 5 Minutes

A woman with a laptop.

As a service business owner, you’re always looking for ways to attract and build trust with potential clients and customers. Unfortunately, the vast amount of competing resources online can make it difficult for you to stand out from the crowd. Without a solid strategy, it can be hard to get members of your target audience to hear and trust your message.

Fortunately, guest blogging can be a great way to improve your visibility and establish credibility. If your audience already trusts the blog or website you’re guest posting on, you can use it to build your base of potential clients quickly and effectively. However, to be successful you’ll need to properly research your topics, appropriately pitch your ideas, and more.

In this post, we will walk you through four steps that will help you create an effective guest blogging strategy. Let’s get started!

Step 1: Carry Out Thorough Topic Research

Your post idea will be one of the main factors determining whether a website decides to feature you as a guest blogger. In order to attract the website owner’s attention, you’ll need to come up with a solid idea that appeals to the site’s target audience. If your topic doesn’t ‘speak’ to the readers of the blog, your request for a guest slot will probably be ignored.

Ultimately, you need to consider what information readers will be looking for when they check out your post. While you may have a specific idea or topic that you’d like to write about, if readers don’t share the same interest, you’re not going to efficiently attract their attention. You need to begin your topic research by trying to understand the problems your audience is struggling with, the questions they can’t find answers to, or the information that isn’t already available online.

You can begin doing research about topics your audience may be interested in by looking on social media, browsing forums, or even going through your website’s comments to see what questions your clients (current and potential) are asking. Checking in on your competitors, and getting a feel for what topics they’re covering and what their audiences are asking them, can also give you some insight into the content gaps you can fill.

Step 2: Find Blogs That Cater to Your Target Audience

After you’ve developed topic ideas that are geared towards your target audience, you need to find the appropriate blogs to post them on. This means you need to locate blogs your target audience interacts with, and then consider which websites might be interested in the topics you’ve developed.

The audience of the blogs you pitch to is incredibly important. If you’re posting content on a website that your audience doesn’t already trust or interact with, you’re only wasting your time. However, if your ideal customers or clients frequently read the blog you’re trying to guest post on, you can use your post to attract their attention. Since they already trust the website in question, they’ll be more likely to trust you as well.

To find the blogs your target audience is already engaging with, you can begin by checking out the social media profiles of current clients and browsing relevant forums. See who they are already engaging with, and understand who they believe are the leaders of your industry. You can use this information to create a list of blogs where you can pitch your guest post ideas. It’s also a smart idea to check out popular sites that accept guest posts on a regular basis, to see if any of them are a good fit.

Step 3: Plan Out Your Initial Pitch

Everything you’ve done up to this point has been preparing you to send your pitch. Even with the perfect topic idea and the right target  blog, however, you probably won’t secure a guest posting slot if your pitch itself isn’t strong. In order to get approval from the blog owner, you’ll need to introduce your post effectively.

A pitch is simply an explanation of your post idea. Within your pitch, you’ll want to explain your topic, a few main points you’d like to touch on, and why you believe that topic is relevant the readers of the specific blog you’re targeting. Unless the website specifically asks for full posts, you don’t need to send a completed copy of the blog post in order to successfully make a pitch.

If the blog you’re pitching to has expectations for guest posts listed on their website, be sure to follow each one carefully. For websites that don’t outline how they would like submissions to be structured, start by introducing yourself and including your credentials. Let them know what you’d like to write about, why you think it’s an important topic for their audience, and what you’d like to cover in the post. Above all, craft your pitch carefully, and make it clear how publishing your guest post will benefit the site and its visitors.

4. Create a Promotional Plan

Your job as a guest poster isn’t done once you get approval from the owner of the website. Even after your post is written, approved, and uploaded, you still need to let your target audience know that it is available. To attract new clients, you want to create a promotion plan with the owner of the blog, to help bring new attention to your content.

Make sure to discuss your promotional expectations before the guest post is drafted and uploaded. Since your goal is to attract new clients by leveraging the website’s audience, you want to be sure your content is going to receive the attention it deserves. Ask the blog owner how they promote their guest blogs, but also find out if they expect any kind of promotion from you. The strategy you create should be beneficial to both parties.

The best way to promote your guest post is on your own social media platforms. You can attract more attention by using the website’s name or hashtag to help attract their audience as well. You should also engage with any comments about your post, answering questions and even responding to criticism. This can help foster engagement and make the most of your guest posting opportunity.

Conclusion

An effective guest posting strategy is a great way to improve trust with your target audience and attract potential new clients and customers. However, if you want your guest posting to be successful, it needs to be well planned, designed to address reader needs, and focused on the right topics.

Let’s recap the four steps you’ll need to follow in order to create a successful guest posting strategy:

  1. Carry out thorough topic research to find out what your target audience would be interested in, and create post ideas based on the results.
  2. Find blogs or websites owned by influencers in your industry and frequented by your target audience.
  3. Develop a strong pitch, including your proposed topic and your credentials.
  4. Create a promotional plan to maximize your guest post’s visibility.

Image credit: Pexels.

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by Lis
Lis is part of the WordCandy writing team. She has clocked some serious mileage as a freelancer over the years, and loves sharing her expertise here on the Bidsketch blog.