Retargeter

4 Alternatives to Guest Blogging

When done properly, guest blogging is a great way to expose your business to new audiences, build valuable links and improve your SEO. But just because guest blogging is an effective online marketing strategy doesn’t mean it’s the only one you should pursue.

Since variety is crucial to getting the best results from digital marketing, you may be looking for additional promotional techniques to supplement your guest blogging efforts.

Let’s take a look at four great guest blogging alternatives that can help you generate natural, in-content links built at a gradual but steady pace:

Hold a Contest

One of the features that makes guest blogging so appealing is it gives you an opportunity to post on a blog that has a strong community with lots of participation. If you want to increase engagement on your own blog, running a contest can work very well.

While there aren’t any hard and fast rules about hosting a contest, the most important thing to keep in mind is that the more creative and appealing you it, the better results you’re going to get.

Contact bloggers who might be interested in entering the contest and/or telling their visitors about it. This will get your site natural editorial links, as well as a lot of new traffic.

Focus Your Social Media Efforts

If your business has a Twitter, Facebook or any other social media that you aren’t highly active on, allocate an hour or so per day to really build up one or more of your social presences. Focusing on one or two instead of trying to navigate all of them will allow you to build community more effectively.

It’s a good idea to plan out exactly how long you’re going to spend on this project, so that once the specified period time is up, you can evaluate your progress. Then, you’ll be armed with the right information to decide if you want to continue working on that specific social presence or want to experiment with a different social channel. Different social networks cater to different audiences, so if you’re not reaching the right people with one it’s important to know when to quit.

Publish an Ultimate Guide

The best guest posts on the most popular blogs get so much attention because they’re packed with truly useful data. Instead of breezing through topics without digging into them, many of the most popular guest posts contain information or insights that aren’t going to be found elsewhere. These “ultimate guide” posts can become resources that people go back to for years after they’re posted.

Why should this technique be reserved for a guest post that you give to someone else’s blog? Focus efforts on your own blog posts and compile something truly groundbreaking. If you fill a void with a useful and informative post, you’re sure to garner tons of inbound interest and eventually, build great links.

Compile and Curate Your Existing Content

This idea builds off the previous tactic. If you want to expand your email list but can’t come up with a good idea for a deeply researched post, consider compiling and curating some of your existing content into a downloadable PDF or ebook.

The great thing about this technique is that if your blog has a large backlog of content, you’ll be able to breathe new life into older pieces that you put a lot of work into creating. Additionally, this can serve as a comprehensive resource for anyone searching for more information about your space.

Adrienne Erin is a blogger and Internet marketer at DC Web Design & Marketing, a Washington, DC SEO company. She spends a lot of her time writing, but when she’s not you might find her attending a French language meetup, attempting to cook Thai food, or collecting cat memes.