Five benefits to guest blogging
A company blog is an excellent venue to showcase a business and ideas. It’s a channel where one can share news about products, give updates on pending launches, and talk up new services. And most importantly a business can do all of this in a voice of their own.
An organization can take all the benefits of blogging a step further when they contribute a guest post for another blog.
1. Increase credibility
Readers read blogs because they entertain, inform or both – and they won’t read one if they don’t have some respect or interest in their opinion. When a favorite blogger recommends a product or service, readers give it a chance because someone they trust said it was worthwhile.
The same thinking goes for guest blogging. You writing a guest post, relevant to your business, on their site means that the blog owner trusts your opinion and thoughts enough to publish your content on their site. And if they trust you, their readers are likely to do the same.
2. Socially network, literally
Having exchanges with followers on Twitter is great, so is “liking” a business on Facebook. But the ultimate social media compliment is being asked to contribute a guest post on a partner’s, vendor’s, or related business’ site.
Guest blogging doesn’t only increases your credibility with their audience – it exposes your business to potential new customers, and maybe even other blogs. This exposure can lead to more guest posts, potential business leads and speaking engagements.
3. Extend search engine reach
With a credibility increase, and a broader professional network, comes a larger online reach – all from one simple guest post! Linking into new sites, drawing new traffic makes your current business site more relevant to search engines.
4. Extending your business reach
We get pretty comfortable with what we’re good at, and that may lead to not opening ourselves up to opportunities such as new partners, customers, and vendors. Writing a guest post for a site that doesn’t run in parallel with yours, requires critical thinking, creativity, and maybe even a little courage.
5. Inexpensive marketing
Approach contributing a guest post with this mindset: Someone is giving you permission to hang a marketing poster for your business in their shop for their customers and clients to see. And they aren’t charging you a single penny – only asking that you provide a thoughtful and relevant sign for them to display. How great is that?
