So here we are at the fifth and final installment of our Guest Blogging series. You’ve identified and vetted potential sites, applied and been accepted, and written a great article that has been accepted by the moderator. Within your article, you’ve included one or two links back to your website. Those pages on your website that you’ve linked to should be receiving some traffic back from the readers of your guest blog post. There is a chance that these visitors will continue to visit your site after having clicked through, but it never hurts to increase your odds. To find out how to REALLY convert your traffic into an audience of your own, sign up for our newsletter below!
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This is a joke (although you should signup for our Newsletter!), but it does illustrate the point that we’ll be making in this final article. Below we’ll talk about some steps you can take that are designed to help you capture the lead and turn them into an audience of your own. One of the main drivers of this is to include a prominent call to action and gather the reader’s contact information.
Create a Landing Page
If you’re reading this series before taking action to create and submit your article to a guest blog site, then you should spend some time setting up an appropriate landing page that is related to your blog post. This should differ from a traditional landing page which is usually sales oriented in that it should include more substantial content and fill a need of its own, rather than acting solely to capture a reader’s information. It should be an article or blog post that can stand on its own merit without anything else to support it, but also include a lead capture mechanism. If you need to create this page and can’t think of any ideas, try Googling your original topic and looking at some of the search results. Or apply some of the practices described in article 3: Crafting a Pitch and Getting Approved post to help you go through the idea generation process again.
Create a Call to Action
It may seem stupid, but you need to tell people what you want them to do. If you want them to signup for your newsletter, create some grabbing text that tells them so. If you want them to follow you on Facebook, make sure the link to your page is prominent and you ask people to specifically Like and Follow your page. Studies have shown that a clear call to action can increase conversion rates drastically. Any kind of engagement is great and you may have a specific strategy in mind. If you don’t, then we would recommend trying to gather the reader’s email address. Once you have their email address, you can continue reaching out to them and ask for additional engagement such as on your social media pages.
Newsletter Signup or Contact Form
To gather an email address, you’ll need to set up a contact form. This could either be a newsletter signup form from an email marketing provider, or one that you set up directly on your website using a form builder. At the top of this form, you’ll state specifically what the reader will receive when signing up. Enticing them with a freebie or additional content is a great way to increase conversion rates. Below are some examples that include various approaches:
- Signup Below to Start Receiving our Newsletter
- Join Thousands of Other Readers by Signing up for our Newsletter Below
- Signup for our Newsletter below and Receive a FREE Gift
- Become a Part of the YourSiteWorks Community by Joining our Newsletter Today
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Keep trying new things
As with everything in internet marketing, the important thing to remember with Guest Blogging is to keep trying new things, and keep moving towards what works. You should constantly be gathering information about the amount of time a post takes, what the topic is, and what kind of return you’re getting (for more details on how to do this – reread article 4: Drive Traffic with Great Content). As you become more advanced in your testing, you’ll want to start setting up A/B tests to measure the types of landing pages and conversion tactics against one another. This is an art in and of itself that we’ll plan to cover in future blog posts.
In Conclusion
We’ve covered a lot of ground at this point. If you’ve been following along closely, you should be well along your way toward increasing your traffic through guest blog posts. We hope that you’ve found this guide helpful. If there is any information that you’d like more information on please let us know. You can email us or send us a message on Facebook and Twitter. Until then, signup for our newsletter and keep checking back to our blog for more info.
