How do you know if you’re a scanner or sparkler? When you find a blog sharing what you want to know and you read more than just one post! You keep coming back and doing research and learning more and more.
That is what 
Donna Anderson has been doing (follow her on Twitter @SheWritesALot). As she picks up new wisdom, she blogs about it which brings her blog higher visibility and more incoming links for her services as a freelance writer.
Yesterday she published Guest Blogging VS Article Directories: Can I Make $5000 In One Month? She had come across a #FollowFriday recommendation for @youngprepro about a 17yo blogger who says he makes $3000+ a month writing and blogs about How To Make Money Writing.
As sometimes happens, my comment in her post turned into a post in itself, so here are some more insights into the value of guest blogging plus an invitation to her – and other bloggers – to volunteer to write guest posts for GrowMap or other blogs. (Sometimes I do ask but there is nothing keeping you from volunteering!)
Here are some additional reasons that guest-blogging is beneficial:
- Some blogs such as GrowMap have developed collaborations of bloggers who support each other’s new content. Search on the title of any of my recent posts on Twitter and you’ll see how many different bloggers automatically tweet new posts published on GrowMap – and that includes guest posts. (A new way of doing this which works in much the same is Triberr – and needs to be just as targeted, i.e., your Tribe needs to be related to a specific niche.)
- With more bloggers to tweet about your new post (or share it elsewhere), your odds of having a post go viral – as the Content is Not King guest post on GrowMap did recently – are greatly enhanced. That post was RTed 377 times and got 3,120 page views (as of today).
- Guest posts can be a vehicle for the blogger to recommend you to their readers. I often ask someone to write a specific post for me related to what they do and I write both an intro about why I asked and why I recommend them plus a call to action at the end recommending specific actions such as buying their book, using their solution, or hiring them for a specific task. (You can easily see which of my guest posters I recommend and which I had publish there but don’t know well enough to recommend.)
- Unlike article marketing which usually strongly limits links, some bloggers – like me – are link happy. We encourage our guest bloggers to put serious thought into what anchor text and landing pages will be used in their guest post. THAT is THE most important thing any blogger should be doing! I’ll even assist bloggers in selecting their keyword phrases because I find that most choose poorly at first – either far too specific (no one will ever be searching on that!) or far too general (too competitive to get onto page one of Big-G for AND just as important, not targeted enough to actually convert!).
- Guest Blogging Can Change Your Life
Figuring out where the balance is when blogging is the tough part. As Donna mentioned, how much do you want to write for free (which can greatly grow your business) versus how much paid work do you want to do (and while you’re doing that how much will your blog and traffic slide)?
How much time do you want to focus on writing versus how much time should you spend commenting and promoting? Lisa Drubec (you can find her on Twitter @friendlyblogger) wrote an Alexa Slap post which could be a Case Study on what happens if you stop commenting, tweeting and using other social media.
The result of only focusing on writing blog posts? “Oh wow! the horror…”
Her Alexa dropped ~4000 points and comments dropped by 60%
You will definitely want to check out her results instead of trying it yourself! So, do you have a great idea for a guest post for GrowMap? Or are you seeking writers to hire? I know many of the best and might even consider some paid writing myself for a blog or company whose ethical standards align with my own. That might be you! You know what to do: contact me!
Spending Time Sharing Your Best Content Gets BETTER Results
Than Focusing on Quantity, Article Marketing or Link Building.
