How to Increase Your Agency’s Online Presence With a Guest Posting Program
Growing your agency’s audience is a never-ending task. One of the smartest things you can do is to put your expertise in front of an audience that has already been curated by someone else.
Thus, when trying to reach your target audience, have you considered leveraging the audience of other blogs to expand your agency’s reach?
Summer is basically over, and it’s time to think about how our agencies are going to get ahead in 2024. And in 2024, 82% of agencies plan to invest in content marketing. I doubt that statistic surprises you because so many marketing tactics are content-driven. However, not even half of agencies have a guest posting strategy.
Capitalize on traffic from other professional blogs by implementing a guest posting strategy. In this post, I will tell you everything you need to know about guest posting so let’s dive into the good stuff!
The Benefits of Guest Posts For Agencies
While guest posting is a single strategy, it has many benefits. Consider the following ways that a guest posting program can enhance your agency:
SEO: Guest posts give you linkbacks to your agency’s website. Google loves links from high-quality websites and believes that if a reputable source links to a website, that website must be quality so guest posting can increase SEO.
Traffic: Guest posting will bring traffic to your website. The key is writing quality, thought leadership posts that make the audience want to learn more about you and check out your website. In fact, if you publish 2-5 guest posts per month, you can expect a 20% traffic increase.
Lead gen: Guest posting a thought leadership post that links to a lead magnet is smart. Through your post, you’ll steer an audience to your lead magnet landing page, and from there, they’ll fill out the lead capture form, and you can nurture those leads.
Thought leadership: Companies are willing to pay more for agency services if they feel an agency is an expert in their industry. So, publishing guest posts demonstrating your expertise will do wonders for thought leadership, which is fantastic for your agency.
Brand awareness: Guest posts introduce your agency to the blog’s audience, gaining a ton of exposure. Demonstrate through actionable insights in your posts that your agency is worth at least following on social or subscribing to your blog.
5 Things to Keep in Mind When Considering a Guest Posting Strategy
In order to be successful with your guest posting strategy, there are a few nuances to understand.
Perform keyword research and be strategic with the anchor text when linking to your agency’s website in your posts.
Your posts should always be thought leadership and not a sales promotion for your agency. Link to a lead magnet and/or your website so that when you impress an audience with your guest posts, they’ll be compelled to check you out.
Some publications charge for guest posts, while others just want quality content. So, set a monthly budget for your guest posting efforts.
Audit the blog before you pitch it or submit a post. To be worth the effort, you want to look for things like MozRank, social following, traffic, and engagement.
Monitor and analyze the impact of your guest posts. For the posts that bring in the most traffic, keep publishing on those blogs. Not to mention, when an audience sees 3 or more posts by the same author, credibility goes way up.
Start By Organizing Your Portfolio Or Finding a Writer
Before you start identifying blogs and pitching them, you need to get your ducks in a row so that your guest posting strategy has a strong foundation.
If you or your team has the time and skills to write the guest posts, that’s great! If you don’t already have one, you need to build a portfolio of past posts that you have published. This demonstrates that you can contribute quality content. I use Contently for my portfolio, and it’s super easy to use. You can view my portfolio as an example here.
If you don’t have the time or writing skills, you can always find a copywriter on UpWork. Pricing will vary based on expertise and if you want them to identify and pitch blogs to guest post on. You can save a little money if you do the pitching and your copywriter just writes posts on the topics you tell them to.
If you need someone to identify, pitch, and write high-quality content, it’s a service that I offer to my agency clients, as I’ve been doing this for over a decade. If you want to discuss having me own your guest posting strategy, you can get in touch with me here.
Finding Publications to Guest Post For
It’s likely that you already know at least some of the publications that your target audience follows, so that is a great place to start. Compile a list of the publications you know will resonate.
Next, to add to your list, do a good old-fashioned Google search for publications that are relevant to your agency’s niche and add them to your list.
You can even leverage surveys to discover which blogs your customers and leads follow and which topics they’d be interested in.
There are also lists that identify blogs that take guest posts like this one.
Guest Post Outreach Best Practices
Once you have your list of blogs that you want to write for, it’s time to reach out to them.
Some blogs will have information about guest posting for them. This is usually in the footer of their website. Be sure to read their guidelines before pitching them. It’s pretty common that some publications don’t want to be pitched. Instead, they want you to submit a finished post.
If you submit a post to a blog, I will tell you it takes a while to hear back. So, in my opinion, it’s fine to submit the same post to a few publications. Just be sure to let them know when a publication accepts your post so that you don’t risk publishing duplicate content.
Personalize each pitch that you send to each publication to increase your chances of getting accepted as a guest author. Keep your pitch short and sweet, and introduce yourself and your agency. Tell them you’re interested in contributing a post and provide you or your writing portfolio. Next, tell them what you like about their blog and propose a few topics that align with their content.
One thing that I have had success with is offering a guest post swap. That just involves your agency contributing a post to their blog, and they contribute a post to your agency’s blog.
As I mentioned previously, some blogs will charge for a guest post, so be prepared for that. But the better you or your writer’s portfolio is, the higher the chances of landing guest post contributions at no cost.
If your agency has a solid social media presence and/or large email list that you can send your guest posts to, mention this when you reach out to the publication. If you can effectively promote the content you contribute to their blog, they’ll be more likely to accept a post from you.
I advise not hounding the blogs that you reach out to. One follow-up email is fine but I wouldn’t send any more emails than that.
Crafting Your Guest Posts
When you or your writer has been accepted to contribute a guest post, the next step is coming up with a topic that offers a unique perspective but also lines up with the content on the blog.
The publication will give you information like target word count, how many images to add, how many links you can include, and which social links you should include.
To optimize your guest posts, add your bio and headshot at the end of your posts.
Keep your blog posts composed of thought leadership, and at the end, include a CTA that entices readers to download a lead magnet, get in touch with your agency, or subscribe to your blog.
Lastly, just follow blogging best practices, and you can read the most thorough post I’ve found on how to write a blog post here.
Guest Posting Examples
I am an active guest poster for my agency and clients. I don’t know about you, but I learn best with examples, so I want to share examples of guest posts that I have done.
I write for Brainz Magazine for $95/month, and it’s well worth the investment, so here is one of the posts I wrote for them.
SpinSucks has an incredible blog for anyone in the marketing and agency space, and they’ve let me contribute a few posts at no charge like this one.
Site Pro News has worked well for me. They give the option of paying $125 for a post, and they publish it within two days. They also offer the option of contributing a guest post that isn’t “salesy” for free. I did the free option and it took two months for my post to be published, so just consider your timeline. You can check it out here.
All Business is another good option for agencies. They favor thought leaders who are willing to contribute content regularly. There is no fee to post unless you need a really quick turnaround. They are a little picky on what they choose so be sure to give them your best work. Here is the guest post that I wrote for them.
Final Thoughts: I Am Convinced My Agency Needs Guest Posts! Now What!?
Research shows that agencies should publish 2-5 guest posts per month. And when they do, their guest posts drive a significant amount of the agency’s traffic.
Get organized before doing your outreach and publishing posts. This strategy isn’t necessarily easy, so you want a solid foundation.
If time or your writing skills are an issue, remember you can always hire a freelancer or a service like mine.
Keep in mind the best practices that I outlined when it comes to pitching and writing, and after you publish your first few guest posts, you’ll notice immediate spikes in your traffic and leads.
Do you have a guest post that you’ve contributed in the past that you are proud of? I’d love for you to share the link in the comments below, as I would love to read it!
