Most marketers know that writing guest posts is a great way to build personal brand equity by sharing practical, data-backed expertise that helps the whole industry move forward. However, in terms of return on investment, most guest articles do not bring huge amounts of referral traffic or grow your email list significantly.
So, how can you optimize your content to get the most traffic and collect the most emails?
In this article you will learn two techniques:
It’s a clever combination of advanced content marketing techniques that will help you get more out of each guest post opportunity.
A content upgrade is when you create a specific resource to give away at the end of an article instead of using a generic opt in for email subscription (e.g. your usual newsletter sign up box).
We know the importance of building an email list, but what many do not realize is that most people do not want to sign up for ‘updates’. rather, they want to know precisely what they'll be getting in return for giving you permission to market to them.
Eli Overbey recently published a guest post on Noah Kagan's OkDork.com. The article detailed his experience auditing Kissmetrics’ SEO strategy.
At the top of the article he let users know that a bonus resource could be found at the end of the post that would provide a downloadable 24-point list to perform their own SEO audit, just as he had done for Kissmetrics:
At the bottom of the post rests a visually appealing graphical call to action (CTA):
When you click on the image, this popup appears:
Note the article-specific email opt in for the bonus resource, not a generic one that won’t convert. The value proposition is reiterated on the pop-up, instead of asking to subscribe to email updates from his blog.
The reader has spent 15 minutes reading about the value of SEO audits. At the end of the article, the reader is given the choice to download an actionable resource that immediately lets them put their new knowledge into practice.
This is the value shift: People want the content upgrade, not your newsletter.
Most of the high authority media outlets you’d like to write guest posts for will not let you build a form or install a pop up as seen in the previous example. So, the best option is to link back to a gated landing page on your own website that requires an email submission to access the content.
The are three reasons why this is actually a better option than the popup.
Landing pages can be tricky to design and landing page optimization is even harder. There are a number of key things to remember when creating your landing page.
Here is a call to action template and landing page wireframe for your next guest post landing page.
CTA Template:
In this article we discussed (X) ways you can (subject of article). At (name of your agency or brand) we use 10 primary strategies to (value/outcome of the strategy).
If you’d like to learn step by step how to implement all 10 primary strategies, click the link below to access the bonus guide.
[graphic CTA]
Landing page wireframe
Landing page design example
Notice that we removed the navigation, added social proof (testimonials) showing how useful the content is and included a supporting image. We also carried the message from the call to action over to the landing page title, subtitle and button.
Writing guest posts takes time and money. Make sure you are maximizing the return on investment from your opportunities by employing the Content Upgrade and Expanded Guest Post techniques.
Here is the strategy in bullet points:
