Guest Blogging to Build Relationships

One of the most common misconceptions about guest blogging is that it’s only for link building.  Guest blogging should be about more than just link building, it should be about relationship building.

Build an Audience, Not just Traffic

One of the most important things for the life of a blog is your audience.  An audience is more than just traffic that comes to your blog; it’s the readers that come and stay.  They sign up to see more from you and they want more from you.  They are the loyal fans of your writing because you give them a reason to keep coming back, something valuable.

Guest blogging is about helping to build that audience.  Most often, the reason you guest blog is to gain a reputation on the web.  You’ve started a blog and need to build an audience, you need to build traffic.  By guest blogging, you get to post your work on other’s sites who have already built an audience.  It’s about building relationships with the audience of the other blog and converting them to your fans as well.  It’s also about building a relationship with the host of the blog, so that you are invited to post regularly.

Relationships with Other Blog Owners

Following up with the blog owner or editor after a post is also a great way to build a reputation that shows you actually care more about the community than just being a link builder.  Blog owners always appreciate guest writers who care about how their blog is doing and how a posting did because it should be a goal to not only to help you but to help the other blog as well.  Otherwise, the blog owner has no reason to continue to invite you back to post more.

Some might think that building a relationship with other bloggers is counter-intuitive and will work against you, but the blogging community is a helpful, tight knit group that not only enjoys helping others, it understands that by helping others, you help yourself.  Google and other search engines also look for quality links to help move your site up in the search engines.  By working together, bloggers can build these quality links, so they need each other to do it.

Always Post Quality Work

Yes, you can just post to the mass guest blogs sites that will allow you to post anytime and anything.  But  to really gain an audience and help your search engine rankings, you need to post quality guest posts on quality sites and there is no better way to do it then by gaining a relationship with a blogger who has a high traffic, quality site that invites you to post to.

A big no-no for guest bloggers is posting anything less than high quality work.  Don’t just save your quality writing for your own blog.  Remember you are working to build an audience, to gain the reputation of being an expert in your chosen niche.  Always post quality blogs no matter where you post online, including the mass posting sites.  You never know who might be reading your work.

Don’t Forget Your Bio

Make sure you write a nice little bio up for yourself to go on your work.  Your guest postings are about traffic and audience building so you want the readers to know where to find you, in the event they want to see more from you.  Don’t make it too long and include all the necessary links back to your website or blog.  Make it easy to find you.

Remember the Social Media Connection

Since most bloggers also set up their blogs to post new postings to their social media outlets, guest blogging gets your posts seen by more than just the blog site you posted too.  It also gets the article out to all the social media sites that the blog owner uses.  Most often, that is the minimum of two sites or more.  So not only is your work being seen by followers of the blog but by social media followers who have the opportunity to repost your post and to seek you out.  So when guest posting you are not only gaining potential traffic from the one site but several sites.

Finally, remember that karma comes around.  Invite other bloggers to guest post on your site.  Share the love around and you will be rewarded with lasting relationships with other bloggers and a faithful audience.  Remember to post only quality work, no matter where you are posting and maintain your relationships.  Let everyone know that you are thankful for his or her support and with plenty of hard work and persistence, your blog or website will be successful.