Guest blogging is certainly one of the most popular link building strategies for the past decade – and is still so. But it is also one of the most undervalued marketing practices, as many marketers only see it as a tool for mainly improving a website’s organic search rankings.
Many tend to miss out on the other aspects that made this approach an undeniable force behind some of the most powerful brands on the web, which allowed them to:
- Absorb readership/following and drive more consistent referral traffic from high authority blogs that also cater to their target audience.
- Demonstrate their expertise to a wider audience.
- Build awareness to their brand’s content, service, and product(s).
- Establish relationships and being associated with other well-liked entities in their industry (that often results in better conversions).
Over the years, this particular tactic for outreach/digital PR has been thoroughly exhausted (and given that content in many fields has been highly-saturated).
The level of difficulty to succeed using this method has grown sharply higher. Wherein some of the hurdles that the good marketers are already facing are:
- Many high-traffic publishers started charging for content placement (sponsored guest posts).
- Publishers receiving too many requests/pitches, leading to legit and highly personalized outreach emails not being read (or worse, getting marked as spam).
- Running out of content ideas to pitch (particularly topics that will genuinely match their audience’s taste and interests).
- It’s time-consuming. Seeing that you’ll have to work with your target publishers’ editorial calendar and a ton of back-and-forth emails with editors/publishers that have stricter guidelines.
Nothing comes easy these days, for sure. But is it really worth the time, effort and resources? Personally, my answer to that is still a resounding yes. Especially if you’re doing it for the right reasons – branding.
A guest blogging campaign, on a massive scale, is still quite doable. Success is achievable when you always consider the following factors (which I’ve also shared in my previous post on the email outreach templates we use):
- Familiarity – if your target publishers are already familiar with the quality of your work (and your brand).
- Personalization – because personalized emails get higher response rates.
- Pitching the right content – focusing on topics that editors will not hesitate to publish.
The last part is what we’ll mostly cover in this post. So below are some of the things I personally do when I need to come up with content ideas for distribution fast.
Quick note: It’s important to always check if the topic idea you’re proposing has already been covered by your target blogs/publications (do a site search or through Google). If they have published something similar, think of ways and emphasize how your content will differ from the ones they already have (it’s a strong indication that you’ve done your research and that you know what their audience will likely to consume).
1. Using Tools & Platforms
Let’s start with the most basic one. You can almost automate your content ideation process by using tools to generate hundreds of topic ideas almost instantly.
I won’t delve into too much detail for each tool and community-based platforms, but here are the ones that you might want to explore:
AnswerthePublic.com is a free browser-based keyword research and topic generator tool that allows its users to generate content ideas based on frequently searched questions/queries by web searchers.
The tool displays slick data visualizations of stemmed topics/questions from primary keywords and topic areas you’ve inputted on their site.
Quora is the web’s most popular community-based Q&A platform today (basically a 2nd generation Yahoo! Answers).
You can easily collate content ideas just by skimming through all the questions related to your site’s business/industry (do a quick search on Quora). Choose those that have high activity and engagement (as those topics/questions have higher potentials of getting searched).
Pro tip: Make sure to also check the answers given by Quora users on posted questions/threads, as you can also get a ton of valuable ideas from what other experts are openly sharing related to the topic.
Google has been so effective in suggesting search queries, given that this particular technology has been refined over the past couple of years (and it has been accurate a lot of times, seeing that the suggestions are often based on users’ historical search activity/habit).
So the next time you do a Google search for your target topic, don’t just hit the enter button yet.
Buzzsumo is a social listening tool that can help you find the most shared content in your space. This feature alone from this paid tool can provide a ton of insights on which sorts of headlines, topics, and content formats work in terms of shareability and virality (they also offer a limited free access to this feature).
Set up alerts for your campaign’s head terms using Google Alerts. This will help you generate more secondary topics to write about through monitoring what their publishers in your space are writing about, and understanding what types of content topics work for them.
Google Trends is very useful in validating your content ideas’ longevity and demand (in terms of growth in search volume).
Lastly, industry and niche-specific subreddits are certainly gold mines when it comes topics that are genuinely being talked about. Make it a part of your daily task to check in to see what’s new and hot in your industry’s webspace.
2. Siloed Content Topics from Bigger Content Assets
Generate more content ideas from your or your clients own assets – like branching out topics from extensive list-type posts.
For instance, this post from Oberlo that lists down 50 ecommerce tips, in which many of the listed items are insightful enough that each can be transposed into a more comprehensive post/topic on its own (which means 50 more topics you can write about).
This approach makes it easier to contextually link back to your site (or your client’s bigger content assets) from your guest posts, given that they’re the original source for the content idea in the first place.
You also don’t need to limit yourself on larger lists, as you can pretty much implement the same approach with smaller lists (ex: this list of 10 investment ideas I recently published on a test site I’m working on – wherein I can actually generate 10 more other content exclusively detailing each listed idea).
And it doesn’t stop there, as you can implement the same on other publishers’ list-type articles (even those from your competitors as well).
3. Competitors/Prospects’ Top Referring Content
I think I’ve mentioned this too many times before (in my presentations and even in some of my older posts) that the best type of links to acquire or earn are those that can drive actual traffic.
See the topics that are actually sending constant traffic to your prospects/competitors (basically their top links from other sites). In this case, we use Ahrefs (Top Referring Content feature):
This will allow you to see which content topics have a genuine demand from people in your space. And often are within topic areas that your target audience would most-likely engage in.
Create a better version of those high traffic referring content (check out our process here). User activity/engagement from your competitors’ site data would also make a good case to prove your topic’s value when editors hear out your pitch.
You can also find more opportunities (topic ideas) by digging deeper through the list of the top performing content pages from your prospects’ most known competitors (via Ahrefs > Pages > Top Content):
4. Content Gap Analysis
Another surefire way to pitch topic ideas that your prospects (and their audience) actually need is through content gap analysis.
We still use Ahrefs for this ideation process (Organic Search > Content Gap).
Identify content topics that your target publisher hasn’t covered yet, or topics they’re having difficulties in competing for better search visibility. You can easily do this by comparing their site’s pool of content (through keyword data) against their top competitors (the sample above was for career blogs).
Again, pitch to create a better a version of content than their competitors. What you should be offering is a chance for them to compete in those spaces (this should be the right time to put your SEO skills to good use).
5. Update their Outdated Content
There’s a plethora of content that provides outdated information and/or just simply lacks depth and substance all over the web.
Another effective way to enhance your content pitches’ success rate is to focus on topics that your prospects have already covered in the past.
Check their post archives or posts dated a few years back. Is there something new and valuable you can add to those content?
You can also use Google search (Tools > Custom Time) to scour the web for outdated content you can revive.
These are basically my go-to tactics for building a solid list of topic ideas to use for guest blogging (when I need them quickly). If you liked this post, you can follow me on Twitter and Facebook.