Guest posting, where you post on other people’s blogs to gain links, has been done to death over the past twelve months. Some marketers are even saying it’s on the wane, but great content never goes out of fashion.
How can marketers make more of guest posting opportunities in a horribly crowded and competitive landscape? Moz blogger Matthew Barby proposes a new approach.
How does guest blogging usually work?
This is how it normally works. You identify a load of relevant guest post-friendly blogs and hone the list by looking at stuff like domain authority, page authority, CitationFlow, TrustFlow and so on. You contact the best of the bunch and pitch your guest post ideas to them – the outreach bit. Then you get a content writer to create suitable posts for the blog owners who are up for it. You win a backlink from the article’s author bio and that’s it – rinse and repeat. It works just fine, but it’s a one-hit wonder as well as pretty cumbersome.
Finding a better way – Reaching out to authors instead of websites
Instead of searching for blogs that’ll publish guest posts, Barby suggests turning the tables and starting with influential authors instead. Digital writers tend to have connections with all sorts of exciting content distribution channels, and it makes sense to build long term relationships with them rather than throw-away relationships with blog owners themselves. Simple and logical – that’s what I call creative marketing thinking.
Barby has used the method to acquire links from big brands like Forbes.com, Business Insider and The Chicago Tribune, proving his approach works. A link from any one of them is digital marketing gold dust, and because brands this big don’t award links lightly, it means Barby’s writers must be generating top quality stuff.
That’s the way to do it.
