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“Business blogging” and “content marketing” are two key phrases that have defined online marketing over the past three years. Businesses that invest in online content generate three times as many leads as their competitors at only 38 percent of the cost. Despite this, many startups aren’t harnessing the full benefits that content marketing has to offer.
Organizations often publish regular posts on their social pages or the company blog, but there are other ways to leverage the power of content. Through guest blogging, you can grow your business’s reach and achieve maximum marketing ROI. Some of the greatest advantages of guest blogging include:
Targeted Exposure
Having a strong online presence has become increasingly important as the population of the web continues to grow at astounding rates. In a medium where so many people become familiar with a company’s ads long before they are exposed to the company’s products or services, it is important to make a good first impression. With the ever-rising tide of internet content, companies and business owners need to ensure their name is recognizable.
Guest blogging provides critical exposure small businesses need to be noticed by potential customers. When you post articles to established websites as a guest, you are connecting with an entirely new customer base. If only 10 people from that site begin to follow your webpage, you increase readership by 10 people with every guest blog. As with all things on the internet, the more positive exposure you receive, the better your future will be.
Keep in mind, exposure gained from guest blogging will be as good as you make it; high quality guest posts will make a good first impression in the eyes of potential customers. When they do visit your company’s webpage, they will do so with high expectations. Low quality posts, on the other hand, will cause people to think poorly of your business and could prompt them to leave your website immediately.
Qualified Traffic
More important than high levels of web traffic is high quality traffic. The effectiveness of a guest blog depends largely on the effort you put into it. When a blog is high quality, causing large numbers of people to visit your website, those new visitors already have a vested interest in the company.
This interest is important as it reduces bounce rate, the rate at which visitors leave a site without exploring it or staying for more than a few seconds. Visitors directed to the site from an advertisement, a search engine, or an article directory might have a bounce rate of over 80%.
By contrast, visitors who navigate to the site purposefully due to a guest blog typically show a bounce rate as low as 30%. Guest blogs have the advantage of bringing loyal viewers of another established website to your site. These visitors are on the site because they are interested in what you have to say. Having high quality traffic is a benefit that should be taken advantage of and not squandered with poor quality content.
Lower Marketing Costs
Content marketing is 3 times more effective than traditional marketing at introducing leads into the marketing funnel. And when it costs 62% less, there is no reason not to use content marketing. When marketing and advertising is done online, it cuts down on printing and mailing costs while at the same time reaching a larger audience than print media.
A glance at the statistics regarding content marketing clearly shows its effectiveness in generating a high ROI. A positive ROI for inbound marketing has been noted by 41% of marketers using content marketing, and by 82% of marketers who use blogging as a marketing tool. Relying on inbound content marketing has saved companies $14 for every new customer.
Roughly 70% of marketers have noted content marketing is more effective than magazine advertising, direct mail advertising, and PR. Content marketing is proving itself repeatedly, and those who have not yet begun to use this practice will soon fall behind.
Established Credibility
Guest blogging allows you to post to multiple established and credible websites. This lends credence to the article written and by extension to your website. A large number of guest written blogs also increase your credibility by increasing your output and writing portfolio. The more pieces you have published, the greater your skill will be.
Social Media Growth
The large majority of established blogs post links or referrals to new articles on their social media pages.
This means every blog guest written for one website has the potential to be seen by loyal readers of the website, the social media friends and followers of the website or company, and the social media friends and followers of every person who read and enjoyed the blog.
Social media is such an effective marketing tool these days, it would be foolish to neglect or minimize its importance.
As of a year ago, Facebook was reporting 1.11 billion active users every month. Twitter had almost 650 million users at the beginning of this year. These numbers account for over 1/7th of the world’s population, and all those accounts represent potential readers of a blog. If only one percent of the people active on social media were to read your guest-written blog, that would still give you a readership of 11.1 million people. If only one percent of those people were to navigate to your site due to a guest blog, your website would still see traffic of 111,000 visitors. Not bad!
Now, the number of visitors to your website is probably not going to be quite that high, especially after only one guest blog post. But the illustration shows just how effective social media can be on your potential viewership.
New Relationships
Networking is perhaps one of the greatest benefits to guest blogging. In the world of online inbound marketing, just as in normal business, success is often due to who you know.
By writing for an established company and producing high quality content, you improve the chances of being offered a position as a guest writer for an even larger website. Treat every opportunity as a chance to show off your skills and add the very best piece possible to your portfolio.
Guest bloggers often find readers greatly appreciate their work and seek to form connections with them. These connections can prove to be job opportunities, sales opportunities, or simply opportunities to connect with people who can lead to further networking! The more your work is seen, the more potential customers you create, driving potential sales.
By increasing your audience and writing for new groups of people each time you post as a guest blogger, you increase the chances of people becoming interested in and loyal to your company’s website. Building new relationships is the first step to increasing productivity and sales.
Increased Authority
After only a few posts as a guest blogger, you have the opportunity to become an expert in your field. With every new article, your knowledge of the subject grows, and the need to do extensive research shrinks. With enough exposure, you will be considered an expert by many of the associated blogs.
Guest bloggers gain credibility when their writings are good enough to be considered for established blogs. When you have been published in multiple established online publications and websites, this only makes your company’s website more attractive and interesting to potential customers.
