Writing Guest Blogs: Know Your Goals

I often get asked to write guest blogs, and I’m sure you do, too. Or maybe writing a guest blog is something that you are thinking about but don’t know the best way to go about it. From my experience, understanding your goals is the best result for you when writing a guest blog. Why do you want to do it? What will you get out of it? Writing guest blogs takes time. Understanding why you want to write a guest blog is crucial for shaping your content strategy, measuring success, and maximizing the importance of your efforts.

To make the most out of writing a guest blog, you must define your efforts to ensure your content matches your broader career strategy, promotion, and brand-building. There are several possible reasons for writing a guest blog: traffic generation, authority building, networking opportunities, audience expansion, and SEO ranking. For traffic generation, write engaging content encouraging readers to visit your website. Position yourself as an expert for authority building by highlighting your in-depth knowledge and unique perspectives. For networking opportunities, use guest blogging to connect with other website owners, influencers, and other professionals in your field by writing a guest blog on their site. You gain audience expansion by writing guest blogs because you and your expertise are made available to their readers, which allows you to grow your brand awareness using their platform and follower base. You always want to include your website at the end or somewhere in your guest blog so that you can improve your SEO by gaining high-quality backlinks to improve your website's search engine rankings. Most often, you will be gaining several benefits by having multiple goals. When I write a guest blog, I want to provide usable information. I want to engage readers so that they will visit my website. I want them to sign up for my newsletter so I can share further beneficial information with them, and I want them to recognize me as an authority on the things I’ve spent my life learning. I want to create a relationship with the website owner where I am posting my guest blog. I want to expand my own audience expansion, and even though I am already in the number one position of search engine searches, I want to hold that position by constantly reinforcing new links that will keep me on top.

To achieve this, I write my guest blogs in a certain way. I use compelling hooks and search engine phrases (in this case, “writing guest blogs”) within the blog's content to drive traffic. I provide a clear call-to-action (in this case, by encouraging you to write your guest blogs and, if you’ve found this through a search engine search, getting you to click through and visit my site where I offer another call-to-action to get you to sign up for my newsletter so that you don’t miss any of my inside advice on the publishing and entertainment industries.

Writing guest blogs takes time. You can write too many of them to the point that you don’t have time for the essential things you should be doing, such as writing your novel, nonfiction book, poetry, short stories, or whatever your specialty is. I made that mistake myself. I started writing a blog a week, went up to five, felt pressured, and then went to three, which seems to be my sweet spot. You’ll have to find what works best in your schedule. Since they take time, you don’t want to put your guest blog on any blog. Being on a blog is not enough. It must benefit you and give exposure to you to make it worth your while about time because you are taking time away from other long-term benefits, such as your other writing. If you’re focusing on sending people to your site, look for high-traffic sites where you can guest blog that fit firmly within your niche. If you’re building authority, look for high-profile and respected websites that will help you establish credibility and create an engaged peer audience. If you’re doing guest blogs to develop a networking relationship with the blog owner, look for those influencers or blog owners you can approach with whom you can form lasting partnerships.

Having a clear goal gives you the reader interaction that you most need. If you want shares, write shareable content. It sounds simple, but it does take some thinking. I’m hoping people will share this blog because I know that writing guest blogs is something that many writers think about, and I think I can provide helpful advice and guidance to writers considering writing guest blogs. Shareable content includes giving actionable advice, which I hope I’m doing here by encouraging and giving you some things to think about. Listicles are popular (bullet points) but don’t match my writing style, so I rarely use them. However, they are effective for the fast reader. Shareable content also includes writing about trending topics, which in the publishing industry might be an authoritative blog on AI or new trends in publishing. I tend not to go into those areas because I write about broader subjects than “news items,” but these guest blogs are very popular. If you want to build a community, pose questions to your readers that encourage comments. Because of spam, I don’t include a comment section on my website, but others do. If you don’t include comments, ask readers to email you directly to your professional email address. I get dozens of responses for every blog post I write, all of which I personally answer. If you’re trying to build your newsletter list, make sure you have the link to your site, and then offer downloadable content when your guests sign up for your newsletter so they can access exclusive content. I offer an informative newsletter via https://claystafford.com/, a free subscription to Killer Nashville Magazine, and a white paper on building a successful writing career at https://www.killernashville.com/. 

Understanding your goals ensures that you can evaluate if your time is well-spent. Our team uses analytics tools to track referral visits from guest blogs, so we know if this is a blog site I might want to write for in the future. High referral visits to my site mean this is a good match, and I’ve found my audience. Regarding getting me out there as an authority on publishing, our team looks at engagement metrics such as shares, comments on the site where the guest blog was posted, and links back to my website. I would track connections or partnerships formed through my blogging efforts if focused on building a more extensive network. You need to keep an eye on the clock. Writing just to be writing regarding guest blogs isn’t enough. It must benefit you.

Writing about anything might give you personal joy, but it will not help you professionally. Know your strengths and what you offer, and use guest blogs to build your consistent long-term brand. If you’re an author, align your content with your themes, style, and branding to reinforce your reputation. I am an expert on writing, publishing, and the entertainment industry. Looking at my guest blogs over the years, you’ll see that almost everything I write pertains to these subjects. Know your brand and consistently write to that. Suppose you’re promoting a product or service, which I might do with the Killer Nashville International Writers’ Conference, a conference I founded for writers. In that case, you’ll find within the blog post that I strategically integrate subtle promotions or benefits of the conference into the blog, sharing things that I know will benefit the reader and make them more aware of the conference. Whatever your angle, make sure you stick to your brand and that it benefits you more than just the publishing credit or the pleasure of writing. Make the benefits of spending your time writing this guest blog tangible.

You must focus each time you sit down to write a guest blog or think about approaching a site and writing a guest blog so that you have clear goals in mind. It’s so easy to waste your time, and we all know that being busy is not the same as building results. You want to build results. Don’t allow yourself to waste your time, even on your most significant impulses. Your time is valuable. Every guest blog you do should yield tangible benefits, and if you cannot specifically name those benefits, don’t do it. Put your time into your other work. By doing this, you know that your time and resources are used effectively, and if you do write a guest blog, you know that what you are writing serves a nameable purpose and aligns with your broader goals. If you can’t make the case for writing this guest blog, don’t do it. You are too valuable to waste your time.

Writing guest blogs has excellent long-term benefits if you consider and utilize the suggestions I’ve outlined above. They help you understand your goals, stay committed, and focus on your long-term objectives. They build great SEO for your website through backlinks. They cultivate a loyal following if you consistently market to the right audience. As a result of my guest blogs, I have opened opportunities for speaking engagements, collaborations, and even partnerships in new projects.

When considering guest blogging, clearly define your goals before you start or approach a blog site you think you might wish to write for. Doing so guarantees that you’re not just writing to be writing, but you are strategically leveraging every opportunity and aspect that I’ve outlined above to create the most meaningful impact, not just for the reader, which is vitally important, but also for yourself. In the end, you must get something out of it for you. You decide what that is, and make sure you follow through in a way that does that.