Guest blogging is a well-established approach to getting more visibility for your content. Each guest post is a valuable backlink and more traffic to any of your blog posts, landing pages, or social networks that you get to promote within that guest post.
While the benefits of guest blogging continue to establish a grip-hold on many bloggers’ efforts, fewer bloggers think about accepting guest posts on their blogs.
For a very long time, I was skeptical to allowing guest bloggers to contribute on my blog. Many people asked me, and I simply said that my blog wasn’t open to guest blogging. Recently, my opinion changed and I now accept guest posts.
My opinion didn’t change overnight. In fact, it was influenced by these five benefits to accepting guest posts.
#1: You Save Time
Let’s say you want to update your blog every day. That means you need to write at least seven blog posts every week. While this is an admirable goal that will keep your blog updated consistently and frequently, this effort will take up the majority of your time.
Now let’s say that, on average, you get 3 guest post contributions every week. Now you only have to write at least four blog posts each week to still publish new content on your blog each day.
If each blog post takes 30 minutes of your time, then you save 1 hour and 30 minutes since the content is already provided for you. How can you devote that time? I now use my extra time to create more YouTube videos, training courses, and eBooks.
#2: You Learn From Your Own Blog
The biggest reason I made the change and started accepting guest posts was this one. I like to learn from other people’s blogs, and other people like to learn from my blog. As I saw more people expressing their gratitude for my content, I realized that I wasn’t learning anything from my content.
How can you learn something new from a blog post that you wrote?
Opening the door to guest contributions also opened the door to new knowledge. My blog has a high standard that only opens the doors to high value guest posts that empower my audience…but also me. I like to get empowered by the guest posts too.
The more knowledge you acquire about your niche, the more likely you are to become successful in that niche. Opening the door to guest contributions is a great way to learn and save time at the same time.
You’ll Get More Traffic From Your Contributors
At the beginning of this post, I talked about the benefits of being a guest blogger. More credibility and traffic are two of the key benefits.
With that said, when you open the door to guest contributions, you’ll get more traffic and credibility too. Guest bloggers will feel enticed to share their guest posts with their audiences. The more prominent guest bloggers you attract to your blog, the more traffic YOU will get.
The end result is that both you and the guest blogger get more traffic in a win-win relationship.
#4: Your Blog Gets Updated More Frequently
Let’s go back to the example of writing seven blog posts per week. If you get three guest contributions each week, but you decide that you still want to write and publish seven of your blog posts each week, your blog now gets updated with 10 new blog posts every week.
This increased frequency of content updates will present your audience with more options and give you more Google love. Not only will you get more traffic from your contributor’s social media efforts, but you’ll start getting more search engine traffic.
#5: You Make More Connections
Lewis Howes is crushing it right now. He’s hosting events, has massive product launches, and is a role model for many people. Ever wonder how people like him achieved their level of success.
While different approaches exist, Lewis took on a very interesting approach. He decided to meaningfully connect with one new person every day with LinkedIn. By meaningfully connecting with more people, Lewis was exposed to numerous opportunities that helped him achieve his current level of success.
When you open the door to guest contributions, you will come in contact with more people in your niche. These people will promote their guest posts and lead their audience to your blog. Some of these new visitors will become subscribers. Some of the guest bloggers will repeatedly promote their pieces which would result in recurring traffic from that guest blogger’s efforts.
In Conclusion
Writing guest posts is a great way to gain exposure, but accepting guest posts on your blog is also a great way to get more exposure. Not only will you get more traffic from the guest posts, but that additional traffic will give your existing blog posts an edge on search engines.
You also get to learn new things from your blog which I personally find to be very cool.
What are your thoughts on accepting guest posts on your blog? Do you know someone who does this? Sound off in the comments section below.