How To Set Up An Effective Guest Blogging Strategy In 5 Easy Steps

Olivia Angelescu — October 10, 2018

You took a leap of faith and finally started your own freedom business! This means you probably:

• did a lot of research to nail down your business idea,
  
• built a website,
  
• attended a lot of free online marketing webinars,
  
• joined a few Facebook groups full of people like you and
  
• maybe even invested in an online business training.

That’s great! So what’s the next thing on your to-do list?

Everyone you know in the online business world is talking about building an audience before starting to develop your first product.

It is highly important to start building and growing your email list right now. This will be your top priority for the next months.

But how? How can you:

• Build an email list of thousands of people who are eager to buy your products?
  
• Stand out in your crowded market?
  
• Be recognized as an expert in your field?
  
• Have some amazing and, why not, FREE PR that attracts clients to your website on an autopilot?

Is there a way to have all these things above without having to spend all your savings on paid advertising?

Of course, there is! IT IS CALLED GUEST BLOGGING!

Lots of top online marketers have been using guest blogging to build their multimillion empires and they are still using this strategy today. Ramit Sethi, for example, a best selling author and top online marketer who was featured in Forbes right next to Warren Buffet, wrote several articles sharing how he used (and still uses) guest blogging as the go-to tactic to build his list of +100,000 of raving fans.

So how can you do it too? How can you copy Ramit Sethi’s process? How do you get featured on all those cool websites and instantly gain visibility and trust while building your list fast? It is easier than you think. Because, you see, in today’s online world everything revolves around one thing: CONTENT. There are millions of websites out there and each of them must constantly publish fresh and interesting content for their audience if they want to survive and grow. This is applicable to any field you can think of, no matter how niched down it might be.

I will break down all the steps you must take to instantly eliminate any guest blogging frustration and skyrocket your chances of being finally featured on top websites in your niche.

Let’s begin!

STEP 1: Choose one guest blogging goal

You can add a second objective down the line, but as you start out, only focus on ONE objective. So take your pick. It can be one of the following:

– gaining quick visibility;

– building your expert status;

– building your email list;

– making great connections with a few (or more) influencers in your field.

All of them can be achieved with guest blogging, but you must choose only one thing now as this will help you gain clarity and stay focused on what types of websites you want to target. Getting and staying focused is very important today, with any marketing strategy, as you want to give your best and achieve results FAST.

For example, if you want to gain visibility all it takes is a few guest posts published on some big name websites. But if you want to build your list fast (with quality leads, not freebies hunters) you have to go after smaller but niched websites that are visited only by people really interested in that particular subject.

Once you understand the guest posting process and can easily manage it, you can add other objectives.

STEP 2: Make a list of 20 websites that are a great match for your brand AND for your guest blogging objective.

You should be able to do this easily and in less than 1 hour with my 1-2-3 technique below:

1. think about the most annoying thing that your ideal client wants solved once and for all (their most important burning need that you can solve with your products/services).
   
2. go to Google and type in the following search term: [insert their burning need] “guest post” This will result in Google listing many websites that published guest posts on that particular subject (the burning need).
   
3. check out the first 3 Google pages and insert all the websites you find into a spreadsheet. You should easily find at least 20 websites.

STEP 3: For every website on your list answer to the questions below.

• Who is their audience? – it does not have to perfectly match, but it must overlap to great extent with your own ideal audience.
  
• What is the engagement level on the website? – as a general guideline, you should look for websites that have at least 5-10 comments on the articles they published in the past 3 months.
  
• Do they accept guest posts? – look for the information on if/how they accept guest posts. Usually, you can find this on their Contact page, or they might even have a dedicated “Write for us” page.
  
• Do they have any guest blogging guidelines? – if they have any guest posts rules published on their website then you should read these rules very carefully! This is very important.
  
• What kind of self-promotion do they allow in the guest posts they publish? – check out their guest posting guidelines but also look at 2-3 different guest posts they published in the last 6 months and see what the authors used for promotion purposes (just a link to their website placed in the bio or also a freebie link within the body of the article?).

From your initial list of 20 websites, eliminate the ones that are not a good fit for your guest blogging goals. You should have now at least 5 good websites to use as guest blogging targets.

STEP 4: Make a list of great article subjects to pitch to every website on your guest blogging list.

You can use tools like buzzsumo.com to research what are the top performing articles on every website on your list. Then use them for inspiration to brainstorm two different ideas that you can write about (related to your topic, of course).

STEP 5: Write and send personalized pitches to every website on your list.

When you write the pitch email, start with briefly introducing yourself (who you are and what you do/want to do) and then quickly demonstrate that you did your homework and already researched topics and article formats that their audience loved in the past (this is what you did at step 4). This will immediately make your pitch stand out.

Then propose the two different articles that you thought about writing for them (the title and a few bullets with the main ideas for each article). Wait for them to give you the green light for one of those ideas and then write your article.

Of course, if in the guest posting guidelines they say that they want a full article submission, then send them the whole article, but make sure you still start your email by saying that you carefully researched their top articles and wrote your guest post accordingly.

That’s it. By following my tested 5-step guest blogging process above you can very easily send 3 guest blogging pitches in the next hour or so.

So what are you waiting for? Take action now. Before you know it you’ll be featured on many good quality websites and start seeing the benefits. If you have any questions on guest blogging feel free to post them in the comments below. And if you know somebody else who struggles with guest blogging, share this article with them.

And to make it even easier for you to get started with guest blogging, I have put together a list of 40 websites that are looking for guest contributors right now, from 4 different niches. Download your copy here: Guest Blogging List

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