Three Benefits of Guest Blogging You May Not Have Known

Posted March 29th, 2010 / By Ann Smarty in Posts

Guest posting is one of the most effective ways to grow your business presence and brand awareness. Most people guest post for three main reasons:

1. To get traffic (and thus subscribers, potential customers and buyers, etc)
2. To get links (and thus grow the power of their own domains)
3. To become popular (to get your name heard by many people)

However there are other important benefits of guest posting which are no less important and by forgetting about those benefits you may sacrifice on the strategy quality (by only chasing for links and traffic).

So here are those extra, less known (and almost never discussed) benefits of guest posting:

Get Inspired

It happens to active bloggers: sometimes they are just stuck – no fresh ideas, no inspiration, nothing. In this case the best thing you can do is to blog more! Yes, you heard it right. But this time don’t blog at your own site, arrange a guest post “outside”. This way you will get inspired by:

• Researching someone other’s content and thinking about what his audience might appreciate, what seems to do well at this new platform and which topics seem to encourage more active discussion;
• Getting comments from new audience you will discover plenty of new topics you feel like covering and discussing further. Nothing works better for inspiration than hearing other people’s opinion about your work.

Position Yourself As An Expert

Here’s an awesome post on how guest blogging promotes you as an expert. By guest posting regularly, you will soon notice your opinion valued much higher and your work cited more and more often.

Being seen as a thought leader in your industry certainly has its advantages. As an expert, you’ll attract the top-shelf clients who are willing to pay more to get the services of an industry leader. You’ll also have an easier time earning the trust of new customers, a challenge for all online businesses.

Discover New (Neighboring) Niche

Guest blogging is the great way to look outside the box. Being popular beyond your niche is a great marketing opportunity that should not be overlooked. This way you can:

• Expand your business (sometimes you never know in which direction you can develop your business without looking around)
• Find partners and build mutually beneficial contacts (most successful businesses grow together by backing each other)
• Explore plenty of new marketing models and ideas (which can be implemented to your niche)

And why do you guest blog?

photo credit: Olivander

Ann Smarty is a strong believer in guest posting. If you love or plan on guest blogging, join Ann’s community of guest bloggers: My Blog Guest, which is basically a forum where people meet to exchange, post, and promote each other’s content.