4 Reasons to Utilize Guest Bloggers

Most bloggers are very interested in generating content that will interest their readers. While bloggers tend to discuss topics related to their expertise, passions and business industries, they also understand the need to change things up every now and then and provide their audience with new insight.

This is when they turn to guest bloggers.
Guest bloggers are exactly what they sound like. They’re a guest who writes a blog piece for someone else’s blog. Sometimes these bloggers are monetarily compensated. Other times these bloggers are rewarded by being able to promote their own blog, company or website in a small bio found at the end of their guest piece.

Aside from providing you with blog content, there are plenty of great benefits associated with having a guest blogger. The following are four of them.

1. It adds credibility to your blog.
You can try and make yourself appear as an expert in your field, but claiming to be an expert isn’t as beneficial as proving you are. If you can get a popular guest blogger on your site who truly is an expert, you’re going to improve the credibility of your own blog. Your audience will see the name on your blog and will assume that since you were able to snag such a notorious guest blogger, your blog must be important.

2. It shakes things up.
Every blogger has come across blogging fatigue at one time or another. You simply can’t think of anything to write and you desperately want to just give up. When you use guest bloggers, it relieves you from having to create all the great content on your own and gives your audience something new every now and then. If you post a blog once a week, and every four weeks you feature a post from a guest blogger, it continuously generates new and interesting content to your site, which not only keeps your readers entertained but can also improve your site’s SEO.

3. It generates more traffic.
When you have a guest blogger on your site, they are going to promote their blog post, which means that they will use their own promotional tactics, whether email, social network, etc., and send people to your website. Not only will this increase the traffic to your site, but hopefully these new visitors will take a moment to check out your past blog posts, and if they like what they see, will become a regular viewer of your page.

4. It allows you to build relationships.
When you search for a guest blogger, you try and find someone who is an expert in your industry as well as someone that you value, even if you don’t know them on a personal level. But when you reach out to an individual and ask them to guest blog, and through all the communication needed to generate the blog post, you will build a relationship with this person that could end up blossoming into something more than a blogger/guest blogger relationship.

If you have thought about using a guest blogger but haven’t yet done so, make sure you put it on your to-do list. Guest blogging comes with a wealth of benefits, and your blog could easily find value in the tactic.

Sarah Dunbar works for the online marketing team at SEOMap.  For more information about SEOMap, visit our website.

Creative commons photo by Jim G.

Infographic: Tips for Improving Your SEO

Infographic by Sparkplug Digital a Seattle SEO company providing SEO audits and linkbuilding for technology companies and startups.

This is a helpful infographic that provides actionable tips for things your company can do to improve their SEO. A good tip is to monitor social networks to see what keywords or phrases your customers are using to describe you because it suggests that people are also searching for these terms.

Listen to Past Ad-Tech Speakers

Ad-tech.com advertises itself as “The Event for Digital Marketing.” An initial glance around the web-site will immediately confirm that Ad-Tech, in fact, the event. When the initial Ad-Tech.com page loads in a browser‘s window, they will be immediately be presented with a list of international cities where Ad-Tech has a presence. Sydney, Paris, San Francisco, Singapore, Chicago, Tokyo, London, New York, Shanghai, and Beijing all have clickable links in the left hand frame of the browser bar. Clicking on any of these cities will bring up a page detailing events scheduled for the near future in that particular location. For example, upon clicking on Chicago a reader will see a list detailing upcoming conference and exhibit hall hours with a list of keynote speakers, conference sessions, and regular speakers. Each speaker’s name is listed along with a headshot photograph. Keynote speaker’s names are clickable to provide the user with additional biographical information.

An extensive “Missed a Session” section of the site contains a series of podcasts. Each podcast contains a clear label, a very clear description of the topics discussed, and an easily accessible download button. The file size of the podcast is also presented to the right (measured in MB). Any person who did not want to download the actual podcasts can also listen to them in a background browser window. This section will prove particularly useful to business representatives who were unable to attend a particular conference.

Any company looking to actually be a sponsor or speaker, or to host an exhibit at an Ad-Tech conference, can find all of the pertinent contact details on the homepage. Clicking on any of these three opportunities will bring up specific contact information for Ad-Tech representatives the world over, as well as detail the advantages doing business with Ad-Tech provides. Any company looking to increase their digital marketing presence would benefit from Ad-Tech’s services, and at Ad-Tech.com a browser has access to all the information they need to attend a conference or exhibit on digital marketing in several major international cities.

You Tube Star=Great Marketing for Stride

Matt is a guy who made a video of himself doing a goofy dance in several interesting locations all over the world. It became a viral hit on You Tube and Stride sponsored him to do a encore tour. The second edition of the video came out 2 months ago and already has over 9 million views! Stride is smart because they have acquired the attention of millions with their "ad", and probably spent less than it would have cost for a traditional ad. They have also created good will by sponsoring something that has entertained and inspired people everywhere.

MC Hammer on Digital Marketing

The latest episode of Stanford Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders has a panel of musical artists who discuss how the new digital landscape is affecting the music industry. I was pleasantly surprised, although I probably shouldn't be, about the marketing savvy of MC Hammer. He discusses how digital marketing is empowering artists to cut out the middle man and dramatically cut marketing costs for a new album launch. He also comments on how twitter can be a tremendous tool for artists because it can instantly reach thousands of loyal fans.