Tuesday, August 26, 2014

Does Guest Blogging Pay Off To Market Books?



When involved in marketing or promoting anyone or anything, the question you should ask is: What’s the ROI?

No one wants to waste time, money, or brainpower on fruitless efforts or on things that will yield worthless results. Is guest blogging useful to the writer?

To answer that you need to ask yourself:
Who would I guest blog for?
How long would it take for me to create the post?
Once it posts, how involved will I be able to share it?

But before you delve into the nuts and bolts of guest blogging, ask yourself:

Do I like to write guest posts?
Can I deal with the word count requirements or deadline demands of the blog?
What else can I do if I don't guest blog -- and what are the potential benefits of those things?
How would I prioritize guest blogging compared to how else I could spend my life?

If a site or blog is targeted to the people you want to reach, that’s a plus. If the blog post can net you potential readers, connections, sales, branding, or something of value you should strongly consider doing it. If you can reuse or repurpose existing content, it becomes an easier proposition.

Guest blogging, like all facets of marketing, is an experimental venture. To see if it works for you, try it five or six times. See if it moves the dial. Weigh your efforts vs. rewards. Stack it up against all options available to you and measure its utility.

Guest blogging is a good way to test ideas and see what resonates. Those who normally follow your blog will likely be supportive of what you write on your blog but when you guest blog you get introduced to people who are otherwise unfamiliar with you and your work. Here’s your digital laboratory at work. 

Guest blogging helps when people Google you and they see you come up in all kinds of places. If you want to be perceived as an expert, thought leader, or a go-to voice, guest blog away.

I invite you to guest post on my blog, but please strictly follow the following format so I can use what you send while ensuring I do not have to get sucked into wasting my time fixing things or answering questions.

Email me your blog post at brianfeinblum@gmail.com. Don’t email me question about topic ideas. Don’t send me something you’ve already posted elsewhere- only new content, please.

Limit your post to 1,000 words. If it’s too long, it gets deleted.

Do not include any links within the post, BUT, at the end of the post, please use a paragraph to describe yourself and include up to four links for a site, Twitter handle, blog, Facebook page, etc.

Please create a title for your post that is not very long and sounds catchy.

Your blog post has to be into any of the following themes:
·         Why you write books
·         What you have learned as a mentor
·         How you overcome obstacles as an author
·         What you think the future of publishing is
·         How you promote or market your book

Certainly personalize the post, but where possible, make it about others and give ideas and information people would find useful and resourceful. I want to help build a community for my readers.

Guest blogging may not be the best use of your time and efforts, nor might this blog be the best place for you to guest blog for. But if you have the time and desire -- and recognize the value (and follow my instructions), I welcome you to guest blog. There’s no deadline to this offer but I ask that you not submit a guest blog to me  more than once in a six-month period, so as to keep my site’s content diverse and fresh.

Lastly, you can submit a jpeg of your current or upcoming book cover (only one) and one photo of yourself. I can’t guarantee I’ll use either. Also, once the guest post is live, I’ll send you the link and I welcome you to share it with everyone.

Good luck in your efforts to guest blog.

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Brian Feinblum’s views, opinions, and ideas expressed in this blog are his alone and not that of his employer, Media Connect, the nation’s largest book promoter. You can follow him on Twitter @theprexpert and email him at brianfeinblum@gmail.com. He feels more important when discussed in the third-person. This is copyrighted by BookMarketingBuzzBlog © 2014.

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