By Teresa Leno
Consistently creating high-quality content can often become difficult when it seems like there aren’t enough hours in the day or dollars in the marketing budget to do so. Another way to produce relevant content regularly is to feature a few guest blogs or thought leadership articles written by others in your organization, integration partners, or well-known industry contacts you have.
Guest blogging is a content marketing tactic that involves writing blogs and then exchanging them for use on others’ websites and vice versa. With this tactic, you’re posting articles written by outside companies or authors on your website. Guest blogging has three key benefits:
- SEO: Posting guest blogs on your website and publishing your content on other sites is a great way to grow your link-building strategy. By creating high-quality backlinks to your website, you can improve your overall SEO performance. When search engines see your website mentioned on other websites, it signals that your content is high quality and worth reading so that the algorithm may show your articles to more people.
- More eyes on your content: Besides the SEO benefits of other sites posting your articles, guest blogging is a great way to spread the word about your product or service. Each website has its unique audience and you never know how your next customer may find you. Be a guest contributor of high-quality content if a guest blogging opportunity arises.
- Boosts credibility: When people see your company or firm’s name across different websites they think of you as a credible and active industry member. And, seeing your content may make them more likely to become a customer.
A great way to begin a guest blog series is by starting a partner blog program. Reach out to your organization’s contacts or your firm’s C-suite and others and see if they are willing to exchange a few blog articles for featuring on each other’s website. They may be interested in promoting their services or issues they solve for, and are eager to do the same for you.
Decide on the parameters for a guest blog, such as ideal word count, imagery, topics, and services unique to your company. Once you’ve received a few blogs from your partners you can use them as examples when reaching out to other potential contributors.
Remember that blogs can be used as thought leadership when written in a specific style such as a Q& A format, or featuring quotes from the writer within the copy of the blog. If you’re short on time and content, consider writing a blog or two, then share with multiple contacts, updating the title, format, or add a few sentences to make each one unique.
Teresa Leno worked as a financial advisor and experienced firsthand the importance of financial education to help clients make more informed decisions before a crisis. Through her experience, Fresh Finance was started as a financial content marketing solution to help advisors validate their expertise through sharing content.
