Consider the following statements – are they true for you?
- You want to put out valuable content on your blog, consistently.
- You want to connect with influencers in your niche.
- You’re busy
How many did we get? I’m guessing 3/3.
Which is why today we’re going to share a blogging technique that solves all of those problems, and I call it the Reverse Guest Post Strategy.
What Is The Reverse Guest Post Strategy?
I’m guessing you’ve heard of guest posting before – after all we’ve discussed it plenty of times before.
For a quick refresher, the idea is to:
- Identify valuable influencer websites in your niche.
- Reach out to them with a personalized pitch.
- For those who accept you, write an article.
- Get published on their site, and enjoy the benefits.
Now, did you ever consider inviting people to guest post on your site?
Probably not.
It’s a bit of a mentality shift but once you think about it, it makes perfect sense.
You have a blog, and hopefully, you’re working on making it incredible.
As it grows and develops more authority, it becomes attractive to people who are looking to guest post.
Trouble is, not all of them are thinking about pitching you because there are so many blogs out there and you can only write for a select handful.
But imagine if you were proactive and extended an invitation to them – would they say yes?
Well, perhaps not all of them, but many of them would, considering you’ve just saved them the trouble of having to message twenty other people to get one acceptance.
Therein lies the concept of the reverse guest post.
Why Should You Implement Reverse Guest Posting
Consider the original three statements that served as the premise of this article:
You want to put out valuable content on your blog, consistently.
Easy – by having influencers post on your blog, content is being supplied for you on an ongoing basis.
You want to connect with influencers in your niche.
Exactly – by inviting influencers to post on your blog, you’re actually adding value to them, both saving them time in their own guest posting efforts and naturally sharing your audience with them.
You’re busy
Perfect, it’s much quicker to reach out to people and invite them to guest post on your website, than to actually write content for all of the websites that you could guest post on.
But what about the links? Where do I get my precious links and shares from if I’m not the one guest posting?
Truth be told, the reverse guest post is NOT intended to be a link building strategy, but it still can produce backlinks, albeit indirectly.
Firstly, as people guest post for your website, they will often go on to guest post elsewhere, and some of them will likely link to other content they’ve put out.
Secondly, any article on your website has the potential to generate links, organically, or through your own content promotion efforts.
In short, it has no worse odds of generating a link than anything else you write on your blog, and I’d say above average odds at that.
OK, I’m In – Now How Do I Do It?
Luckily, the strategy is pretty straightforward, all you have to do is:
- Identify influencers in your niche
- Write a pitch to send to them
- Email them, and follow up until the content is written
That’s basically it.
Now, if you want to get a bit more advanced, you can improve your odds by focusing on influencers who have a history of guest posting.
For example, if I was in the marketing niche I might look at the authors who are contributing to Maximize Social Business, Boost Blog Traffic or Social Media Examiner.
These sites have dozens of authors who had posts every year and are clearly interested in guest posting on credible sites.
So start there.
Following that, a pitch might look something like:
Hey [First Name]
My name is Aris and I am in charge of marketing for NinjaOutreach.
I saw your comment at [article link], I really enjoyed that post so I thought I should reach out to you because we share the same interests.
I was wondering if you would be interested in writing a guest post on our blog?
We have over 8k subscribers and get 20k visitors a month, who could all see your post. What do you think?
Looking forward to hearing from you!
Aris
NinjaOutreach
Nothing too complicated there, right?
Now It’s Your Turn!
Alright, now you understand the power of the methodology, and have a game plan for identifying influencers and pitching them – so what’s next?
Well, to start inviting them of course.
Choose 10 influencers in your niche and invite them to guest post on your blog. At worst, they’ll be flattered for the invitation.
What other ways you can think of to find a contributor for your Blog?
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Only instances I can think of where AMP could be argued an essential. ESPN, ABC, and those media giants who post thousands of articles benefit from AMP because it gives their millions of subscribers “slight” increase in user experience with load times. But for many of us, it does not serve much of a purpose and as you highlighted, can be a pain to implement into our sites. This is a ‘is the effort worth the reward’ type of scenarios. Thanks for the insight, good stuff.
What issues the best example of guests post
Content is King still rules toady but its definition has been changed now. Just a few years ago it was sufficient to write a bit long post with some useful info. But nowadays, we have to write long posts with video and other forms of media to support our topic.
Thanks for sharing such important information to so many who might feel to intimidated to go for it. I talk to many people who fall into that trap. I have to remind them that the worst someone could say is no but we don’t know unless we ask. : ) Nice sample of the short, simple and to the point pitch letter to help others also.
I’ve found that it is really benefiting to connect, build a relationship with those in your niche and just ask. Most say yes once you have built a connected rapport with them.
Have a great week and thanks for an awesome and informative read.
Irish
Awesome insights, Dave. I prefer turning private pitches into public ones whenever possible. In this case, you may write a blog post titled “Would These 10 Awesome Writers Accept My Guest Blogging Invitation?”. The post will include 10 personalized pitches for your chosen bloggers, including their pictures, links to their websites, a link to one of their popular blog post, and (above all) the reason why you chose them and why you believe their content would be a valuable addition to your blog.
Once the post is published, send each of them public notifications via social media. For example, you may give them a “teaser” pitch on Twitter: “@GuestBloggerName Hey , You’re on my top 10 list of awesome guest bloggers… ”
The first immediate advantage is that all your potential guest bloggers will check the post and share it with their followers. Then, I bet most of them will accept your public, heartfelt invitation. What do you think? :)
Great idea Heba and one of several quick ways to connect with influencers.
Awesome post Dave :)