Turn on the television or your car radio and wait for the next commercial (it won’t take long). Take note of phrases that signal sponsored content like, “Presented by…” or “Made possible by…”. 

Businesses develop media called sponsored content for a publisher or network to distribute to a wider audience than they can reach organically. While the content is relevant to the company, it’s molded to fit the specific platform’s style and audience.

Let’s dig further into what sponsored content is and why it works.

What Is Sponsored Content?

Sponsored content is just what it sounds like: organic content companies use to gain exposure, improve their brand imaging, boost product launches, and more. They pay someone to publish the content for them in a mutually beneficial partnership that gives the host extra content and some cold, hard cash.

What’s the difference between sponsored content and your typical advertisement? It is less invasive. It’s not a pop-up or a commercial depriving you of your favorite TV show. The content looks and sounds like it belongs on the platform — just with some brand mentions and talking points mixed in.

Examples of Sponsored Content

To help you understand how to implement sponsored content in your marketing strategy, let’s unwrap some examples.

• Online or Print Articles

Many businesses use blog posts to increase website traffic and open up their sales funnel. When they pay third-party digital publishers to post these, they’re providing sponsored content. 

One of the most popular types of this content is the listicle. Listicles marry lists with opinion content to rank ideas in an engaging, selective way. An example of a listicle you might find online is “Top 10 Places to Visit This Summer” or “The Best Social Media Platforms for Your Business.”

• Social Media Posts

Sponsored content is common on social media platforms. The rise of social media influencers has given brands new organic channels. These influencers have trusting, highly engaged audiences, which are as good as gold to brands. 

These posts may be text-based, but many are videos. Search YouTube for product reviews and challenges, and most of what you’ll find is sponsored content. Notice how these influencers mix their own ideas with branded messaging. 

• Live Events and Presentations

Sports lovers will be familiar with this type of sponsored content. Every professional sports league has multiple partnerships with companies looking to tap into their fan bases. 

Like the social media content mentioned above, this category of content can take multiple forms. Trivia sessions during timeouts may be sponsored by companies. So might intermission content, like half-time shows. 

Why Does Sponsored Content Work?

Now that you have a better idea of what sponsored content is, it’s time to understand how and why it’s effective. As you continue reading, think about how to align your company’s messaging with one of the formats described above:

Less Intrusive

Most consumers aren’t fans of in-your-face sales and marketing tactics. Consumers want brand messaging to be integrated with the other content they consume. Brands should, too: Organic delivery prevents audience members from clicking away or tuning out.

Remember, sponsored content works best when it covers something the listener, reader, or viewer is already interested in. That way, it comes across as informational and helpful rather than merely promotional. 

More Authentic

Consumers find it easier to trust branded content than other forms of advertising. Sponsored content comes across as more sincere not only because of the content itself, but also because of the connection audiences feel to the partnered media outlet. 

Choose your sponsored content partners carefully. If a partner isn’t relevant to your audience, your content may come across as just another ad — assuming your customers bother to pay attention in the first place.

How can you tell whether you’ve found the right fit? The partner’s perceived authenticity leads to higher engagement rates and sales. Consumers listen to media figures they relate to and trust. 

Greater Exposure

When you release sponsored content, it reaches two audiences: your brand’s existing audience, as well as that of the platform you publish it on. The result is that your messaging reaches more consumers than you would either on your blog or through a traditional ad. 

Say you strike a deal with an Instagram influencer with more than a million followers. Your brand’s fans will check it out, even if they’re not already familiar with the influencer. Her fans will also be interested, even if they’ve never heard of your brand. That’s a lot of people who will see your content.

The trick of sponsored content is developing messaging that appeals to both audiences. That isn’t easy, but it is effective. 

Is your marketing team up to the challenge? Sponsored content could be the game changer that puts you over the top.

The question isn’t “Why will you remember 2020?” You have plenty of reasons to do that. The question is, why will your business be remembered?

Staying relevant can be difficult in times like these. The good news is, remaining top of mind in disruptive times is about doubling down on marketing fundamentals. Here’s how to do it:

1. Cater to Your Most Stable Customers

Who are your people? Not your marketing team, not your brand managers; your people who put their trust in your brand for the long haul.

Knowing your audience is such a fundamental principle of brand management that it is easy to overlook. But during a time of disruption, people will look to something safe and stable. Put your focus not on what seems to be crumbling but on who needs you not to crumble. 

Now is the perfect time for personal outreach. Be reassuring. Something as simple as reminding your people of how long your business has lasted can work wonders.

Remember, relevance is about perception. Perception is alterable with something as simple as a video message reminding your people that you remain; that you’ll still be there once the storm passes.

Blend this with old-school truth with new tech, such as an online event. According to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, virtual events will remain in demand not just during but well after the pandemic. Post the recording on your site to get ongoing value out of it.

Regardless of whether you host a Q&A panel, a how-to webinar, or a short interview with a top official, make it feel like a fireside chat. Familiarity is everything in times of uncertainty.

2. Practice Benevolence

People are suffering right now. What can your business do to put a dent in their needs? Position yourself as a problem solver. 

Solving problems means thinking outside of the box. Take education, most of which is now happening virtually: Schools can provide devices like iPads and Chromebooks, but internet service has been the locked gate.

How can you answer that? With benevolent relevance. 

Your business has wireless internet, right? Why not offer drive-in Wi-Fi three nights a week from 7-9 p.m.?

This doesn’t have to be a heavy lift, either. Contact your local school district to let them know you have a parking lot and a strong Wi-Fi signal. Explain that you want to help those students whose families cannot afford internet access at home. 

Your primary goal should be to help struggling students, but don’t forget about the initiative’s marketing potential. Position your team to interview a few willing parents and students using your service. 

Your ability to stay relevant is all about perception. The perception of a business that is “giving away” Wi-Fi so that students can enhance their education is golden. 

3. Observe and Reflect 

It is easy, especially during the disruption caused by an unprecedented global pandemic, to worry about your company’s internal operations. But observing what’s going on around you is critical if your goal is to stay relevant. 

A good example is social media, which has become even more social during the crisis. It’s how people are getting together, keeping in touch, and catching up. 

Compare others’ social media habits to your brand’s: Are you using these tools to their full potential? Yes, you are pushing out relevant suggestions and invitations to purchase. But are you using it to keep tabs on what your competitors are doing and how it is working for them?

During unstable times, it is wise to survey competitors whose compass has found true north. What are they posting? How are audiences reacting? Are they reacting? 

There is only one way to find out: astute observation. Your intention shouldn’t be to sabotage but to learn. Learning is the heart of relevance, and relevance is the heart of success in disruptive times.

Yes, this is an unprecedented time. Beyond maintaining your day-to-day operations, your goal must be to change with the times. Can your business not only survive but thrive? It can, and it will by focusing on the essential challenge of any business: maintaining relevance through innovation, forward-thinking, and metered action. 

Influencer marketing has become an effective way to sell products to relevant demographics. Influencers flood social media with personalized content detailing their lives and interests. By connecting with like-minded individuals, social media influencers humanize the brands they represent.

The question is, how can you tell real influencers from imposters? The key is to look for relevance. Social media influencers who are relevant in their space are worth investing in. Here’s how to find the right influencer for your brand:

Look for Organic Reach

The first thing many businesses look for when choosing a social media influencer is how many followers they have. While this is a solid indicator of their value, it can be fool’s gold at times. Some influencers purchase followers to up their count, making their numbers look better than they actually are. 

What you want to look for is organic reach and engagement. An influencer with 100,000 followers with a 90% engagement rate will reach about as many people as an influencer with 1,000,000 and less than 10% engagement. Not only that, but smaller influencers tend to be more affordable and more effective.

Look out, in particular, for “follow for a follow” techniques. This is a cheap way to inflate a follower count without developing an actual audience. If an influencer is following tons of people, it likely means that their own follower base isn’t of the highest quality.

Match Up Audiences

The audience of your influencer of choice should closely match up to your target audience. If you’re looking for an influencer to market your new line of beauty products, choosing an influencer who shares knife-throwing videos might not be the best choice.

Look at influencers’ content to get a feel of who watches their videos and what they’re interested in. You can also dive into comment sections and followers to scope out their audience. If their follower base lines up with your own audience, you will have found a relevant representative for your brand.

Analyze Past Partnerships

Forming brand partnerships is a vital part of the financial life of an influencer. That’s why it’s likely that most of the influencers you’re considering have had prior brand partnerships. Analyzing these arrangements allows you to see just how successful past campaigns with this influencer have been.

Look at a few posts with brand sponsorships. How does the engagement and viewership of these posts compare to their others? If their brand-related content performed well, that’s a good sign for you. If it fell flat, try to determine why before ruling them out completely.

Also, take note of what percentage of an influencer’s content is sponsored. An influencer is more trustworthy if they share a lot of authentic and personal content with some sponsorships scattered throughout, as opposed to only sharing sponsored content.

Check Their Voice and Values

Social media sites are great for sharing content authentically. To develop a brand, either personal or for business, the influencer’s voice should be genuine and consistent. If it’s not, they may not be right for your brand.

An influencer that sounds like someone different in every post won’t be as reliable as one with an established voice. Their steadiness will support your brand as you develop your own voice, which should at least be in the same ballpark as your influencer partners.

Besides consistency, make sure potential partners’ values line up with your company mission. This way, you won’t have to worry about statements or comments that may put your brand in a bad light. Audiences can be unforgiving if they think your brand has “sold out.”

Focus on Quality

A relevant social media influencer puts time and effort into their content. This will be apparent in their copywriting and content editing, as well as the uniqueness of the content they share. These influencers will be more successful than others who rely on content that’s rehashed, copied, or unimaginative.

Are you impressed by an influencer’s content, or does it leave a lot to be desired? If you like how their posts look and can imagine your brand being featured in them, then you have found a relevant option.

Another important aspect of content creation is frequency. An influencer with a haphazard or infrequent posting schedule will not be as relevant as a more reliable one. Take note of the frequency of their posting to make sure they’re staying on top of relevant trends.

Prioritize Professionalism

Pay attention to how potential influencer partners communicate with you. Are they agreeable and willing to work with you? Are they clear about their expectations? These are signs of a social media influencer you’ll want to work with for the long haul.

Influencers who fail to respond promptly or take a “my way or the highway” approach aren’t just difficult to work with. They likely won’t help you reach your goals. Just as you would with any other business partnership, make sure they’re a good match.

How successful your influencer marketing efforts are will depend on how carefully you select your influencer partners. Gauge their relevance, test before you trust, and above all, get the agreement in writing. If they don’t perform, you’ll be glad you did. 

In 2015, Google rebranded their Webmaster Tools as “Search Console” to cater to a wider audience. 

But the purpose of the toolset remains the same — to help website owners, marketers, SEO companies and professionals, and designers monitor their page performance on Google’s search index.

Google Search Console has many marketer-friendly features and tools. 

Like what?

It provides information on crawl data, search index and appearance, and technical status updates. Plus, it can check your site’s mobile usability and integrate insights from Google Analytics as well. 

Considering that clickthrough rates (CTR) increase by nearly 30.8% on moving up one spot on the SERPs, it’s worthwhile to invest time and energy into researching Google Search Console. 

Let’s expand on it, shall we?

5 Reasons Why Marketers Need to Leverage Google Search Console

Google Search Console can provide a wealth of information that marketers can use to finetune their content marketing, SEO, and targeting.  Here are the top reasons why modern marketers need to master this toolset:

Reason #1: It Assesses Your Inbound and Internal Links

Link building is an essential part of online marketing, SEO, and brand building. When high-authority websites link to you, it’s like a vote of confidence for users as well as Google.

Not only that, internal linking helps keep visitors glued to your websites, which increases dwell time and engagement. 

Google Search Console provides a detailed Links Report after analyzing your backlinks and internal links. It includes information such as:

• Top linking domains (sites that link to you the most)
• Your top-linked pages (globally and site-wise)
• Your top-linked text
• Most linked pages internally

From these insights, you can spot internal linking opportunities to boost visitors’ time on site. You can also create more content pointing to your most-linked text and bask in the reflected attention. 

Anything else?

Yes. If you use tools to analyze backlinks, you’ll be able to identify and disavow spammy and low-authority links, thus keeping your backlink profile healthy.

Reason #2: It Provides Insights about Your Real-Time Performance

It may sound cliche to you, but customers are indeed the king, especially in the digital world. Everything about modern marketing hinges around user experience. Even if your marketing is on-target, you can’t hope to keep visitors on-page if your UX is less than perfect.

That’s where Google Search Console can come in handy. 

How so?

The Core Web Vitals Report they produce assesses how your pages perform in real time. Among other things, the report measures your site’s load time, which has an impact on your bounce rates. Think With Google research states that bounce rates increase by 32% when load time increases from 1 sec to 3 sec.

If you find your pages on the lower end of the speed spectrum, you can change your web-hosting provider or experiment with different file formats.

Apart from page speed, the report also talks about how your pages perform on mobile devices and desktops. It groups together pages by URL and digs out performance issues related to each URL group. It expands on each issue and provides suggestions for improvement as well.

As a marketer, you can work with your developers and designers to resolve these UX issues. By providing a more painless and seamless experience to your visitors, you can encourage them to revisit and recommend your site.

Reason #3: It Evaluates Your Site’s Mobile Usability

In 2015, Google rolled out an update that favored mobile-compatible websites. It was a huge incentive for marketers and webmasters to optimize their digital properties for small screens. 

Building on that premise, Google Search Console offers two ways to evaluate and optimize your site’s mobile-friendliness:

1. Mobile-Friendly Test Tool: Just type your site’s URL into the tool and check whether or not it renders well on mobiles. Check out the results for my website, shanebarker.com:

On the right is how my homepage appears on mobile screens. You can see that, on the whole, the site is “mobile friendly” but there are a few loading errors. I can click the “VIEW DETAILS” link to dig into these issues and loop in my developer to iron them out.

To give you some more insights into this report, I repeated the test with another website, and here’s what I found out: 

You can see the technical issues listed on the left and improvement suggestions on the right. Even if you use website builders with responsive templates, it’s essential to run your pages through this test to ensure they meet Google’s standards of mobile compatibility.

2. Mobile Usability Report

While the Mobile-Friendly Test analyzes the overall mobile-readiness of your site, it doesn’t drill down into page-by-page issues. For that, you can use Google Search Console’s Mobile Usability Report. It pinpoints issues on each page and also identifies areas for improvement. 

Whenever you make significant changes to your site’s look and feel, make it a point to run this check. This way, you don’t disrupt your site’s mobile experience and marketing funnels.

Reason #4: It Offers Insights about Your Search Performance

Since Google searches are a major source of traffic for most sites, it’s essential for marketers to understand how to fare well on them. 

If you sign up for Google Search Console, you can get your hands on their Performance Report for Search that answers questions like: 

• What is your average position and CTR in relevant searches?
• How often does your site figure in searches?
• Does Google draw any rich results (snippets) from your site?
• Which queries originate from mobile devices?
• Which of your pages are scoring maximum and minimum clicks?

Using the above data, you can improve your mobile targeting, keyword strategies, HTML, and site architecture. 

While all of this might sound too technical to your marketer ears, it’s a fact that SEO, design, and marketing need to be perfectly aligned in the digital world. When you align your page content and structure to Google’s expectations, your search performance is bound to excel.

Additionally, if you monitor the report periodically, you can spot peaks and troughs in rankings, traffic, clicks, and impressions. Correlating the data with other reports, you can figure out why your rankings dropped and how you can get them up again. 

By keeping pace with Google, you can diagnose rank drops caused by sudden algorithmic changes. 

Is that all?

No way.

Not only Search, but you can also edge your way into Google’s Discover as well. Unlike Search which throws up content based on queries, Discover shows content based on the latest news and user behavior trends. Traffic from Discover can supplement your organic search traffic. 

Regarding Discover, Google says this:

“Our automated systems surface content in Discover from sites that have many individual pages that demonstrate expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness (E-A-T).”

Google Search Console’s Performance Report tracks your Discover content’s performance and helps you build brand authority.

Reason #5: It Helps Crawlers Index Your Pages Better

Last, but perhaps the most important application of Google Search Console, is in site crawling. It dictates how Google crawlers find and index your pages, which has a direct bearing on your content’s visibility.

From a marketer’s perspective, there are many aspects of site crawling that are relevant.

For instance, the Coverage Report and URL Inspection reports show the errors crawlers encountered when they attempted indexing your pages.  Here is a sample report for you:

You can check out Crawl Stats to understand which of your pages were indexed by Googlebot in the past 90 days.

Ideally, the number of downloaded pages will be high and the download time will be as low as possible. If that’s not the case, you may need to overhaul your site’s architecture, content, and/or experience.

Marketers can also utilize the “Fetch as Google” feature to see how Googlebot views their pages vs. how a visitor sees it. At a glance, you can spot discrepancies between both views. 

From the sample report below, you can see that Googlebot couldn’t access the banner and panel images. If these images are opaque to crawlers, it means they won’t be indexed correctly.

Proactive marketers would plug the gaps so that their site’s ROI is not impacted.

Ready to Use Google Search Console?

Google Search Console is a goldmine of data that marketers can use to sharpen their strategies. It’s more user-friendly than Webmasters Tools and completely free of charge. By using it as I’ve explained above, you can ensure maximum visibility of your websites, ads, and content pages. You can also nail your technical SEO game.

Do you have any questions about this article? Please write them in the comments below. I’ll be back with the answers as soon as possible.

Social media is more than just a platform for connecting with loved ones and watching funny cat videos. Businesses can use social media to reach new customers, generate sales leads, and hone their brand image. But to achieve any of those outcomes, they have to be relevant.

Staying in the loop on social media is easier said than done. Trends come and go faster than ever, as do consumer expectations. Companies that fall behind rarely catch up. 

Don’t take the risk of irrelevance. Here’s how to keep your company relevant on social media:

Choose Keywords Wisely

Just as search engines do, social media sites use algorithms to provide their users with personalized content. Keywords have a big impact on this algorithm, and targeting the right terms can boost your visibility. More exposure means more relevance.

You can research keywords that fit your brand, products, and campaign to see how they’re performing on social media currently. Keywords with higher usage will have greater competition—but also provide a greater chance to get exposure and relevance.

Publish Content Consistently

Your social media pages will stagnate without content. If your page has nothing on it, or the last post was from last year, customers will not find the page to be credible or relevant. 

Too much content, on the other hand, can be overwhelming. Strike a balance. Posting two or three times per week, while commenting on others’ content every day, is about right.

Regardless, your content needs to be consistent in style. Find a voice that can be used for multiple audiences and sets your posts apart from the competition. Consistent imaging is also a critical part of a coherent social media presence. 

Target the Right Audiences

Social media allows you to target individuals whose interests fit your campaigns. Focusing on key demographics helps your content resonate with the people it’s meant for. 

For example, if you are an outdoor clothing brand, you’ll be more relevant to groups of people who like camping and hiking than those who are interested in home decor and pottery. Outdoor enthusiasts will find your brand more relevant if it speaks to people with related interests.

Embrace Different Platforms

Focusing all of your social media efforts on a single platform might net you a large audience there, but what about people who prefer other social media? To expand your reach, don’t be afraid to dabble in multiple platforms.

Some consumers prefer Instagram for its focus on high-quality images. Others flock to Facebook for its groups and media agnosticism. These are only two of many popular platforms, each with its own format and demographic mix. Familiarize yourself with each one, and make an effort to reach your customers wherever they are. 

Look to Influencers

Influencer marketing is an inexpensive shortcut to relevance on social media. Many consumers trust social media influencers who reflect them more so than the marketing team of a global corporation. To really hit home with new customers, look at partnering with influencers.

Many partnerships are simple: Influencers will share your product with their followers in exchange for compensation, often determined by the number of followers or viewership each influencer brings to the table. 

Use exclusive offers to judge influencers’ relevance to your strategy. Provide a unique coupon code to each influencer to help you see how many purchases they’re able to push your way. 

Do your research before committing to an influencer. You’re looking for relevant people whose comments or conduct won’t tarnish your brand image. Choose wisely, and you’ll find it that much easier to build a mutually beneficial relationship.

Social media can empower your business to find relevance in an increasingly crowded market. Engage the right communities online, and watch them strengthen and grow your brand in ways you alone never could. 

SEO is getting even more important these days, but how should you manage it effectively? In this post, we'll teach you how to learn SEO in order to create an in-house team. We'll also teach you what SEO courses, certifications, and tools you should be using. 

When it comes to search engine optimization, for just about any company there’s always one question: To outsource SEO services or move in-house?

Neither of those two choices is easy. Hiring and training an in-house team takes time, while finding a reputable SEO company is quite challenging as well.

I hear this question again and again: To hire or outsource? My answer is always both.

You cannot keep everything in-house (things like link building and technical SEO would need too many resources), but at the same time, having a smart SEO team who can manage projects and tell good providers from spammy ones is always helpful.

But how can you create a good in-house SEO team? Well, start from your current in-house talent and encourage self-education.

SEO is mostly a talent rather than a skill. You need people who want to become good, SEO-focused employees who also want to educate themselves independently. 

This is where self-learning SEO resources, courses, and tools come into play.

Sadly for the SEO industry, we don’t have unified and recognized certifications. In most cases, clients and employers don’t care about SEO certificates since they know that no certificate can prove your experience in the ever-changing SEO landscape.

However, there are several solid options out there to check out:

Free SEO Courses

Google’s Own Certifications 

Google offers free Adwords and analytics courses and certification that can help you look more credible and build your digital marketing career.

• Google Ads certification
• About Google Analytics Individual Qualification (IQ)

Those certificates are recognized by most marketing companies and are required for some SEO roles. If you are a company, being a Google Partner will give you credibility as well!

The certifications are also great for internal team training as they provide scores, so your team members can independently assess their knowledge.

Basic HTML courses

Basic HTML and CSS courses will help your team stay up-to-date with the more technical implementations of SEO.

Codecademy gives a good choice of those.

In frameworks like WordPress, it is pretty easy to navigate and implement basic needs. However, as website standards become more and more feature-rich over time, digital marketers who know some basics will have a faster time with implementation. 

Knowing basic HTML can be hugely beneficial when it's the distance between a 10 minute fix versus sending it off to a freelancer or dev team.

This allows SEO teams to stay agile in the current markets and avoid roadblocks that can draw out implementation time and ultimately delay timelines on projects.

Hubspot Academy: How to learn SEO like a pro

Hubspot's Academy offers Inbound Certification that includes a powerful SEO component.

Hubspot and Google are very reputable companies. As such, I highly recommend that digital marketers get these certifications in order to increase their knowledge, especially if they are just starting out.

Many resources like DistilledU or Moz’s Beginner’s Guide to SEO are great for learning SEO. Another option is to sign up for a marketing program at a recognized local university or college with the diploma or certificate upon completion.

When picking public resources for self-education, focus on those that provide actionable advice. You want your new teams to be able to implement some or all of those tips right away. For example:

• This article provides a clear instruction on how to perform an SEO audit (and lists tools for every step).
• Here’s a solid checklist on improving on-page engagement, which is a strong SEO signal.

If you are serious about creating a well-educated SEO team, you may also create an internal resource containing everything they need to read, as well as SEO testing they need to take. Creating an internal resource is easy with any of these WordPress-based solutions.

Educational SEO Tools

I am a big advocate of using tools for SEO education. You can read all you want, but you will not become an SEO until you start implementing what you've read. And using tools is the first step to understanding how SEO works and how to go about SEO implementation.

Ahrefs: Research what moves the needle

For SEO education, tools like Ahrefs are perfect for SEO education because it offers a very clear interface that is incredibly easy to use. If you want your team to complete an easy assignment, give them access to SEO tools. This will help them figure out how to learn SEO. With Ahrefs, you can see:

• Which search queries are driving search traffic to any website (let them identify why those exact words are working for those site).
• How much traffic each search query is bringing (let them figure out why those queries are sending that amount of clicks).
• Which sites link to any page (let them theorize how those pages got those links).

Text Optimizer: Understand how semantics works

Another great tool to use for education is Text Optimizer because it provides a score for each copy to grade how semantically relevant it is to target search results. Grading helps teams to always try and do a better job. Plus, it helps your SEO team to understand how semantic search works.

Since Google heavily relies on semantic analysis these days, it is important for your in-house SEO team to know what it is.

Install newbie-friendly analytics

For new employees and SEO teams, it is also a good idea to create dedicated Google Analytics dashboards that would be newbie-friendly. It is also a good idea to use a newbie-friendly Google Analytics clients like Analytify. It integrates into your site and gives a good overview of important numbers without being overwhelming.

Another newbie-friendly platform is Finteza. It’s very easy to use and doesn’t require any technical skills for set-up or event tracking. You can slice and dice data, compare different data sets and research your traffic quality by just clicking through reports and sections:

Conclusion

Having a well-educated in-house SEO team can save you a huge amount of time that would otherwise cause delays in project execution. 

Being a jack of all trades can sometimes be a good thing (when it’s balanced), but you should spend more time on where your proficiencies lie. All the while this strategy serves to help marketers stay ahead of 'the curve' and adopt a more agile marketing approach.

Just about every brand knows it needs relevant content. But with millions of blogs and even more social media pages out there, standing out is no easy task.

Make relevance your watchword. As content marketing evolves, how well you relate to your customers will dictate whether you stick around or become irrelevant.

Keeping it Relevant for 2021

Put simply, your content needs to keep up. Maintaining your relevance now and into the future means:

1. Personalizing Content

There’s nothing new under the sun. Any blog post you make will have been replicated dozens of times before. To really hit home, you have to get personal.

Instead of writing a blog post about the best ways to get new customers, give it some personal flair. A title like “How I Doubled My Client Base In Only a Month” attracts a lot more attention because the title leads you to believe there are stories to be told and experiences to be shared. Your personal experiences are more relevant to your readers than any tired, generalized advice.

2. Crowning Video King

Writing is well and good, but the true king of content is video. Years after killing the radio star, video remains captivating and versatile. There’s a reason you see more of it online than any other content format.

Videos have higher engagement rates, and when produced correctly can reel in customers more effectively than text or images. Platforms like TikTok and Snapchat have stayed relevant in part because they’ve made social media all about short, engaging videos.

3. Targeting Niche Groups

Social media has made targeting niche groups not just possible but easy. Everyone gravitates toward like-minded individuals. Travelers, bikers, and remote workers are all considered niche groups, and their branches keep getting smaller and more specific.

The future of content is all about being relevant to the right branches. While a backpack company can market to students, hikers, and commuters, it can get even more attention by forming a fan community. Speaking to the most engaged users pays off through positive word of mouth. 

4. Playing the Algorithm

Today’s content lives and dies by its performance in search. Poorly optimized content gets pushed down in search results, meaning it doesn’t get viewed by as many people. 

For your brand to remain relevant, it needs to play the algorithm. Learn what makes social media sites and search engines tick. Consider hiring an SEO specialist to give you a leg up. By following linking and keyword best practices, you can maximize your reach and increase your relevance.

Realize, too, that keywords and links aren’t the only piece of the SEO puzzle. Responding to comments, getting mentioned by influencers, and keeping your own site up to date are key. 

5. Starting Your Own Trends

Most companies jump on trends after they’ve already grown popular, flooding the space with copycat content. The trouble is, copycats tend to be tuned out. 

You’ve likely become familiar with this during Covid-19. It’s gotten to the point that before an advertisement even begins playing, you know it’ll mention the pandemic. For even the most concerned audiences, the trend has gotten old.

In 2021, businesses need to start their own trends. Be daring with your content. Look for ways to be unique, genuine, and consistent. By starting your own trends, your marketing will gain traction and stay relevant longer.

6. Becoming Purpose-Driven

Consumers care just as much about what causes companies support as their products. Brands that care about nothing beyond their bottom line will see customers switch sides or even boycott them. 

Produce content with a purpose. Share your company’s vision and values with your customers. Think carefully about what you want to say, and deliver that message authentically. Genuine and helpful brands are relevant brands. 

The future of content will continue to evolve. What matters today is that you make an effort to stay relevant. The next best thing to a crystal ball is a strategic plan.

Image credit: Pexels

Customer engagement is a sign of a healthy business. Engagements signify strong marketing campaigns and efficient brand management. Keeping your customers engaged results in returning customers and a steady stream of revenue.

One of the keys to customer engagement is relevance. How important are you to a customer’s daily routine? If your relevance is high, so will be your engagement. Like you, your customers spend time on what matters to them.

Let’s explore why, exactly, relevance is so important for customer engagement:

Relevance Is the Easy Way to Market

Convincing your customers why your brand is relevant to them is much easier than trying to win on price or “cool.” Offering flashy gadgets or cheap products won’t net you nearly as many customers as showing how you fit into their lives.

When your marketing campaigns demonstrate your relevance, they become less expensive and more effective. Your brand is filling a need instead of appealing to window shoppers who spare you a mere glance. 

Relevance Helps You Meet Changing Needs

Think about the customers who engage with your brand. What drives them? For example, if your business provides baby safety gear, you’ll get a lot of engagement from concerned parents.

Once children grow out of the age range for your products, your company is no longer relevant to these parents. Thus, their engagement will drop or fade away entirely. 

So how can you keep them engaged? By offering products that have value even as kids age, like cabinet locks. The same things that lock away household poisons can keep curious teens out of the liquor cabinet. 

Relevance Keeps You From Chasing Trends

Sure, capitalizing on a trend will get you plenty of short-term engagements. But once the trend ends, those engagements are likely to dissipate as quickly as they arrived.

To establish a strong presence in your market, you need to transcend passing trends. Your products and services need to be more than fads. Otherwise, your customers will walk away as soon as you’re no longer relevant to them.

Don’t let yourself become so wrapped up in the past or present that you fail to plan for the future. The reason many brands of old are now defunct is that they didn’t change with the times. Instead of becoming nostalgic, they became obsolete.

Relevance Results in Loyal Customers

When you’re relevant to your customers lives, they’ll stick with you. Your superfans will urge their friends and family to consider your brand for whatever needs of theirs you can fill.

These loyal brand ambassadors will also engage with your brand online. They’ll capitalize on promotions offered through social media and sign up for email updates. These customers are extremely valuable, representing 23% more revenue than more casual customers.

Relevance Beats Convenience

Some customers will engage with you purely out of convenience. Perhaps they scrolled by a targeted ad that happened to reach them at the right time, or they heard a commercial on the radio during their lunch break. 

While these engagements are welcome, they aren’t nearly as sustainable as those driven by relevance. Instead of buying the first product they see on the shelf because it’s on sale, customers will actively seek out one offered by a relevant brand. This bond is much stronger than one grounded in convenience.

Athletic apparel brands are a great example. If a Nike wearer’s local shoe store doesn’t carry kicks with a swoosh, chances are they’ll go the extra mile to find one that does. A casual shoe shopper likely won’t. 

Relevance Suggests a Premium Product

If your product isn’t relevant to them, your customers won’t see you as anything special. Until then, you won’t be able to command a premium. 

However your products or services are currently priced, demonstrating your relevance will allow you to charge more for them. Speak to your customers’ needs more effectively than your competitors, and they’ll spend more for sake of a better solution. 

You can spend a lot of money trying to reach customers and spark engagement. Even the most clever marketing campaigns can fail if they’re not hitting the right spot. If you can increase your relevance, customers will flock to you on their own. Even better, they’ll bring their friends.

Image credit: Andrea Piacquadio; Pexels

Staying relevant in 2021 will be harder than ever for small businesses. The consumer landscape is changing rapidly, largely in part to the development of technology and the internet. In order to stay ahead, you need a good online presence.

Remaining relevant online boils down to a single word: activity. The more you do to be active, the more prevalent your brand will become. Making the right actions is what will make you stand out successfully.

Here are a few ways to increase your online relevance in the best way possible:

Double Down on Social Media

Over half of America’s businesses have a social media page. Almost nine in ten large companies are taking advantage of the presence social media provides. Social media is free to use and, with the right approach, your content can reach millions of potential customers.

Businesses that aren’t using social media are already behind the curve. Today’s consumers make a lot of decisions based on what they see, or don’t see, on social media sites. If you haven’t already, put together a social media team in order to appeal to the rising generation so you stay relevant to them.

Rank for Key Terms

How often do you research online before buying a product? You’re not alone: Google estimates that 63% of shopping occasions start online. With so many customers scouring the internet when they shop, you want to be seen in as many searches as possible.

Ranking for keywords relevant to your business in search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo requires a fair amount of work. Search engine optimization is the process used to rank web pages and sites high enough for people to see them. You can improve your own SEO by posting to an online blog or social media page, focusing on keywords and local reach.

Follow Trends

In order to stay relevant online, you need to follow along with trends. This is easier said than done, with slang terms, memes, and interests catching wind every single day. Catch the right wave, however, and you’ll be more relevant than ever.

You can typically spot trends on social media sites. Keep up to date on trending hashtags and popular search terms. These will point toward growing trends your business can try to capitalize on.

Update Your Website

When customers do find you, either through social media or online searches, you need to provide them with a quality landing page. 

Remember, your website is the first interaction consumers will have with your company online. You want your website to reel customers in and funnel them toward a sale, not drive them away at first glance.

A high-quality website will include the following:

• Clear and concise language that’s easy to read
• Visibly appealing structure and format
• Images and videos that attract attention
• Calls to action related to your product or service
• Content pages are helpful and easy to locate

Perform an audit of your website and see how well it matches these parameters. If you spot a problem, such as confusing headlines or lack of images, clean them up.

Fill a Need

No matter how clever your social media posts are or how high you rank in online searches, you won’t remain relevant if you fail to serve your customers. What need are you filling? How are you actually improving their lives?

A solid product isn’t enough. The truth is, many customers will leave a company solely due to poor customer service. When treated badly, customers will determine that the company in question is no longer relevant to them and will move elsewhere. To stay top of mind, offer the best service and products you can.

The best time to start working on your online relevance is now. Start developing content, getting active, and providing the best customer experience on the internet. Doing so will get you more customers, increase your revenue, and provide your business with stability.

Guest posts let website owners show their expertise, improve their search engine results, and boost their marketing. We’re building a growing list of places that accept guest posts below, so check them out. When you're done, scroll down to read why and how you should be spreading your guest posts around the Web.

Top Guest Posting Sites

A List Apart

A List Apart is aimed at people who make websites. It’s also aimed at people who want to write for the website, with an open submission policy. Check out the details here.

Accounting Web

Accounting Web is mostly about taxes and reporting and auditing. But it also runs posts about business life and company management. It even has blogging guidelines.

Addictive Tips

Addictive Tips is all about how-tos. You can learn how to transcribe audio with Office, enable low power mode on a Mac, and so on. It’s a place for specialist tips.

Adweek

Adweek is an important source of information about advertising and brand marketing. It’s pre-digital and reaches more than 6 million professionals across platforms.

All Business

All Business provides information for small businesses, covering finance, staffing, ops, and more. It provides plenty of information for would-be contributors.

Basic Blog Tips

Basic Blog Tips is about blogging and article writing. It has an unusual pitch approach. You’ll need to call and leave a voice message.

Benzinga

Benzinga covers topics ranging from investing and stock markets to ideas and cannabis. It has guidelines for guest posts.

BizSugar

BizSugar covers sales, marketing, operations, finance and staffing, and they claim to make it fun. It’s also a sharing site, so anyone can contribute.

Blog Dash

Blog Dash covers content creation and content marketing. It’s written by bloggers and accepts guests post… but unusually, Blog Dash demands payment for accepting posts.

Blog Engage

Blog Engage is like a cross between a forum and what Huffington Post used to be. Open an account, and you can create your own post and benefit from the site’s audience.

Blogher

Blogher describes itself as a community whose members support and celebrate each other. It’s aimed at women, and provides a place for women to share their expertise. You can join their content network here.

Born Digital

Born Digital covers a range of e-commerce topics with a focus on digital enhancements to online service.

Bplans

Bplans helps entrepreneurs gets their businesses up and running. They’re looking for guest posts on topics from inspiration to pitching to funding. See their guidelines here.

Business Insider

Business Insider has always been about more than business. It has a range of verticals but don’t expect an easy ride to a guest post.

Business.com

Business.com accepts guest posts about business and entrepreneurialism which it shares with its 190,000-plus members. Read the guidelines here.

Business2Community

Business2Community is mostly about marketing, both B2B and B2C. Here’s how to contribute.

Business-Opportunities.biz

Business opportunities come in a range of forms, from franchises to freelancing. This site covers them all, and accepts guest posts.

BuzzFeed

BuzzFeed is a strange mixture of clickbait headlines for young audiences and serious journalism for serious readers. The place to start is BuzzFeed Community.

Career Metis

Career Metis provides information for job-seekers and freelancers. It has more than 1,400 contributors who reach 30,000 visitors each month. There’s room for more contributors.

Clickfire

Clickfire covers entrepreneurial topics and online marketing. It also carries listicles and clickbait, and it accepts contributions.

ClickZ

Clickz provides content about digital marketing and advertising, with information about branding, video, data, and more. You can become a contributor or submit an article.

Content Marketing Institute

The Content Marketing Institute teaches content marketing. It also runs a blog that lets contributors pitch guest posts. Check out their guidelines.

Contently

Contently helps brands connect with people through great stories, while helping freelance creatives grow their careers. It talks about content and matches content writers with brands. It also has a couple of blogs: one for content strategists, and one for freelancers.

Convince & Convert

Convince & Convert’s blog is written by social media, content marketing, influencer marketing, and customer experience professionals.

CopyBlogger

Copyblogger provides expertise on content marketing and content production. It even has courses and certifications for content writers. It’s one way to spread your words.

Crazy Egg

The blog on Neil Patel’s Crazy Egg provides a range of business-oriented content from marketing and conversion to branding and copywriting.

Customer Think

Customer Think calls itself “the world's largest online community dedicated to customer-centric business strategy.” That it’s a community means that it takes contributions.

Dazzling Point

Dazzling Point is a blog about fashion. Posts cover outfit ideas, advice to dress children, and ways to stay warm and look good in winter. It has an Indian outlook, with plenty of information about kurti and sarees, and it takes guest posts.

DragDropr

DragDropr is a tool that lets designers drag and drop elements to build their websites. It also provides tips and guides for website builders and is looking for 1,000-word guest posts.

Duct Tape Marketing

John Jantsch’s Duct Tape Marketing is a marketing consultancy and speaker service. But it also has a blog covering marketing topics from tools to strategy and SEO.

Dumb Little Man

Dumb Little Man provides tips for life. They include money advice, lifehacks, and relationship help. They’re looking for contributors.

Entrepreneur

Entrepreneur magazine is all about business-building, and it has a “leadership network” that takes guest posts.

Famous Bloggers

Famous Bloggers is all about guest posting. Right from its home page, it invites contributors to write for them to get noticed by others.

Fashion Insiders

Fashion Insiders aims to help start ups and small brands to build fashion businesses. It explains the entire fashion process, from design to delivery. It’s looking for guest posts of at least 700 words.

Fast Company

Fast Company focuses on tech and is best known for its print magazine. Bring some expertise.

Feedster

Feedster is a business-oriented site with topics that range from Accounting to YouTube. Guest posts have covered marketing, fitness, insurance, and more.

Forbes

Forbes might be best known for its print magazine, but its website also has space for contributors and guest posts. You’ll need to meet their requirements and maintain their standards.

Geek Estate Blog

The Geek Estate Blog focuses on real estate technology and online marketing. Its audience consists of real estate agents and brokers, but also founders, vendors, and consultants. It has pitch guidelines.

Gigaom

Gigaom isn’t just about technology, it’s also pretty technical. Think cloud infrastructure, devops, and AI. If that’s your thing, it has a blog.

Grow Map

Grow Map’s blog offers proven ways to generate traffic. It also warns readers about methods that don’t work. Check the blog’s style then offer to contribute.

GSM Arena

GSM Arena covers just about every kind of mobile phone. It’s packed with reviews but it’s also willing to take suggestions.

Harvard Business Review

The Harvard Business Review usually publishes articles from business school teachers and researchers. Expect to pitch something academic or a case study.

HellBound Bloggers

Hellbound Bloggers provides information about blogging and online business-building. They have more than 600 guest authors and are looking for guest posts on blogging, social media, technology, and WordPress.

HR Zone

HR Zone runs posts about human resources, recruitment, and employment. It’s run by the same media company as Accounting Web and Training Zone. You can see the guest post submission guidelines here.

Huffington Post

The Granddaddy of guest posting, Huffington Post isn’t as open as it used to be but you can still submit ideas on topics ranging from news to innovation and lifestyle.

Income Diary

Income Diary has published hundreds of articles in the decade-plus that it has been telling people how to make money online. It sometimes even pays for posts.

Intense Blog

Intense Blog offers to give its readers “tools and resources to run a kickass blog.” It’s all about how to create content, publish posts, and improve online marketing. It wants contributors.

I Love Free Software

I Love Free Software doesn’t actually give away software. But it does tell you where you can find it and how you can make the most of it.

iAmWire

iamwire stands for Internet and Mobile Wire. It’s aimed at entrepreneurs, innovators, and researchers at early-stage technology businesses. It takes contributions with expertise and views.

iBlog Zone

iBlogZone discusses marketing, social media, SEO, marketing, money, and more. It has detailed guidelines that explain exactly what it’s looking for in a guest post.

Inc.

Like Entrepreneur, Inc. is all about entrepreneurialism and business. It covers a broad range of topics, from start-ups to leadership.

Inc42

Inc42 is aimed at the Indian start-up ecosystem, covering the stories of entrepreneurs, and writing about innovation and businesses. It’s looking for guest posts.

Inspirationfeed

Inspirationfeed is a design magazine for creative entrepreneurs, designers, and freelancers who can enjoy its case studies, guidelines and tips. Some topics are a little clickbait-y and it occasionally closes its guest posts so check before you pitch.

Intense Blog

Intense Blog provides information about blogging and content creation. It’s looking for tips about blogging, online moneymaking, and web design and tutorials.

Investing.com

Investing.com is a big site. It generates about 3 billion monthly pageviews from more than 46 million uniques interested in investment news and advice. It takes contributions.

Kikolani

Kikolani is all about online business, community-building, and writing. Categories include marketing, strategy, and reviews. Ask if you can help.

Killer Startups

Killer Startups tells the stories of small businesses trying to become big businesses. They’re looking for your story.

Lifehack

Lifehacker offers quick cheats for a better life. Lifehack is about productivity and coaching. It’s a place for experts. It also welcomes guest posts.

Lifehacker

Lifehacker is all about better, smarter living. They also have open submissions.

Live Write Thrive

Live Write Thrive is all about the art of writing. So your posts are going to need to be well-written and about writing itself. It’s not for everyone but you can see the site’s requirements here.

Makezine

Another site that’s all about showing your skills, this time in hacking and crafting. The way in is through the community hub.

Marketing Land

Marketing Land discusses digital marketing, providing daily news coverage, trends, feature announcements and product changes. It also takes guests posts from experts.

Marketing Profs

Marketing Profs is filled with insights from marketing professionals. It provides information about B2B marketing, digital marketing, and so much more. You can ask to write a guest post but expect a 3-4 month wait!

Media Contribute

Media Contribute covers the world of marketing and media. Some of its content is technical but it also accepts insider pieces and op-ed commentaries of 500-700 words.

Mirasee

Mirasee is all about online teaching and courses: turning your expertise into cash. It does run guest posts but only by invitation.

Money Saving Mom

A site that targets the nexus between family, finance, and saving. It takes guest posts and has guidelines here.

My Customer

My Customer covers marketing, sales, and customer experience. Be sure to check the submission guidelines before making your pitch.

New Atlas

New Atlas covers science, technology, transport and lifestyle. It’s been around for nearly twenty years and reaches four million unique visitors a month.

Noobpreneur

Noobpreneur caters to small business owners and business professionals, helping them to become better entrepreneurs. You can read their contributor guidelines here.

One Extra Pixel

One Extra Pixel is an online magazine and for designers and web developers. It’s based in Singapore and shares tips, news, and tutorials. It takes contributions.

Opensource

Opensource.com publishes daily stories about open source software and Linux. It comes from Red Hat. You can send in an article proposal.

Outbrain Blog

Outbrain pushes content to publishers but it also has its own content: a blog filled with advice on topics from affiliate marketing to video marketing.

Pick The Brain

Pick the Brain focuses on self-improvement, which makes it a great place for coaches and experts. It also welcomes guest posts.

Psfk

Psfk provides reports on strategy, retail and innovation. It supplies intelligence to brands, retailers, and agencies. Don’t expect pitching here to be easy!

Readwrite

Readwrite is all about the Internet of Things and the Connected world, and that’s all it’s looking for from contributors.

Search Engine Land

Search Engine Land is all about search engines and digital marketing. It takes guest post but pitches have to be made in person!

Search Engine People

Search Engine People is aimed at an audience of search engine optimizers and search engine marketers. It also has a blog.

Search Engine Roundtable

The Search Engine Roundtable is a forum for search engine optimization experts. Submitting posts here starts with creating a thread, generating a discussion, then alerting the site to bring it to the story board.

Search Engine Watch

Search Engine Watch is a community for search marketers. It attracts more than 1.3 million readers, and invites guest posts.

Seeking Alpha

Seeking Alpha covers investments and accepts guest posts from professional and individual investors.

Self Growth

Self Growth is all about self-improvement. Topics cover relationships, finances, spirituality, and much more. Each topic has a section for contributions.

SEMRush

SEMRush provides marketing tools for digital marketing professionals. It also has a blog covering various aspects of search engine marketing and optimization.

SiteProNews

SiteProNews targets webmasters, and accepts guest posts on topics ranging from SEO and social media to site promotion and site ranking. They have a call for writers.

Small Biz Trends

Small Business Trends is aimed at small business owners and  entrepreneurs. It does more than offer trends though, and covers all advice for business-builders.

Small Business Bonfire

The Small Business Bonfire is a collaborative community for entrepreneurs who share small business content about startups, marketing, productivity, and more.

Smart Insights

Smart Insights is a publisher and online learning platform teaching members how to make the most of their marketing. The company has its own team but it also has an Expert Commentator database made up of experts and specialists.

SMBCEO

Small Business CEO includes how-tos, articles and resources for small businesses. It’s looking for original articles.

Sociable Blog

Sociable Blog covers social networking and social media. It reviews new social networks, community sites, and web tools. It’s also looking for guest posts of at least 750 words.

Social Media Examiner

Social Media Examiner covers the latest trends and developments in social media marketing. It’s the main publication in the field, and it takes guest posts.

Social Media Explorer

Social Media Explorer is filled with content about social media marketing, its trends and challenges. It’s looking for guest posts from bloggers and vloggers.

Specky Geek

Specky Geek is about blogging, search engine optimization, social media, and online marketing. It takes articles from fellow bloggers.

StartupNation

StartupNation covers business growth and entrepreneurialism, and accepts guest posts who want to share their insights and advice.

StyleUp 365

StyleUp 365 provides advice and information about on fashion, styling and beauty. It takes contributions about fashion but wants them positive and upbeat.

Suave Women

Suave Women presents women’s stories from around the world. Its covers female empowerment stories, beauty, fashion trends and also relationship and career advice. It has contribution guidelines.

Tech Republic

Tech Republic is aimed at technology professionals. Its content talks about DaaS providers, Python, and cybersecurity. It also has plenty of contributing writers.

Tech.co

Tech.co tries to help people make tech purchase decisions, whether hardware, software, or tech services.

Techniblogic

Techniblogic offers a broad mixture of tech-related content. Articles have discussed drones, horoscope apps, and Hindi dubbing on Netflix. It takes guest posts and provides a list of recommended subjects.

Technically Easy

Paul Salmon’s Technically Easy blog shares solutions for technical problems. He takes guest posts but they have to be at least 1,000 words.

TechnoBuffalo

TechnoBuffalo is consumer-oriented. There’s some tech content but also plenty of lifestyle and household goods advice.

Template Monster

Template Monster’s audience is made up of designers and developers. The company has been around for nearly twenty years, and while it’s focused on templates, it also has a blog about Web design.

The Blog Herald

The Blog Herald is a serious publication with guides, interviews, and features about content creation. It also has an open invitation for guest posts.

The Next Web

The Next Web is probably best known for its tech events but its website does also have a blog—and an invitation to share your story.

The Penny Hoarder

The Penny Hoarder is about more than saving pennies. It covers retail, savings, financial advice, and much more. It takes submissions.

The Secrets of Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship doesn’t have too many secrets but this site promises to spill some beans. Anyone can help but it’s looking for long posts and has requirements.

The Verge

The Verge covers the world of technology, science, creativity, and entertainment. It takes pitches.

Tidy Repo

Tidy Repo is a curated repository of WordPress plugins. It also provides short, reviews that are easy to understand and has a blog that’s all about WordPress.

Torque

Torque is all about marketing and Web development, and all in relation to WordPress. Categories include plugins, themes, and community. Torque is looking for articles of 500 to 1,300 words relevant to WordPress professionals.

Training Zone

Training Zone is all about education, learning, and training. It comes from the same media company as Accounting Web, and you can make your pitch here.

Tricky Enough

Tricky Enough  produces articles on topics such as WordPress, technology, SEO, SMO, and making money online. It accepts guests posts and also shares revenue for posts that generate lots of views.

Tweak Your Biz

Tweak Your Biz offers advice on topics ranging from business and sales to finance and marketing, as well as growth and tech. You can pitch them a story.

Venture Beat

VentureBeat publishes guest posts from experts who can talk about trends, emerging technologies, and tech innovation. Start with the guidelines.

We Blog Better

We Blog Better is a site-building service with a blog that explains how to improve traffic flows and create better content. It publishes guest posts.

WikiHow

WikiHow uses a specific format but it’s still a great place to show off your expertise. Start here.

Wise Bread

Wise Bread is all about the money: personal finance, credit cards, and budgeting. You can apply to become a blogger or be listed in the site’s personal finance blog directory.

Women on Business

Women on Business tells women when they need to be successful in the business world. It takes weekly contributions and individual content submissions.

Women Partner

Women Partner covers a broad range of topics of interest to women, and in particular, women in business. That includes fashion, electronics, and product reviews. It takes contributions.

Wonder How To

Wonder How To opens with a page of technology but it actually has verticals that range from arts and crafts to travel and video games. There’s enough for everyone.

Write To Done

Write to Done is all about writing: fiction and non-fiction, as well as motivation and marketing. You can see their guest post contributor guidelines here.

YoungUpstarts

YoungUpstarts publishes stories and thought leadership pieces for entrepreneurs, especially young people making a difference.

Your Escape from 9 to 5

Your Escape from 9 to 5 is all about blogging, with an emphasis on infographics. It takes both, on topics ranging from content creation through SEO to entrepreneurship. It has clear word counts and also accepts infographics.

What Are Guest Posts?

Building an online business has never been easier. It’s now possible to build a functioning, sophisticated website, with the latest designs and optimized for screens of different sizes, without ever touching a line of code. The days when Internet entrepreneurs need to fiddle with tags and tables is long over.

You can pick a template, paste in your copy, add your shopping cart, and have your online business up and running in minutes.

It’s the next stage that’s tricky. Building a website isn’t like building a baseball field: people won’t come just because you’ve built it. You have to tell people it’s there, generate curiosity, and hustle them inside. You have to go out and find the people you want to visit your website, and invite them in.

There are a few ways to do that.

You Could Pay for an Audience...

One option is to pay. Run a campaign on social media and you’ll be able to target ads based on the demographics of your ideal audience. You can build a persona of your typical customer and fire messages at them until you find one that clicks. Through testing and experimentation, you’ll start to drive traffic to your site.

You could also use Google’s advertising network. Instead of aiming your ads at women aged between 20 and 30 who live in the northeast and own a cat, you can target by interest. Every time someone searches for “cat food” or “veterinary services,” there’s a chance that your ad will appear.

Both those methods can work, which is why Facebook and Google are still in business. They can also cost a great deal of money, which is why Facebook and Google are multi-billion dollar businesses. Although advertisers eventually figure out the messages and markets that produce the best returns, it takes time and a budget. Most of the ads you show won’t generate clicks. Few of those that generate clicks will generate conversions. You won’t know which ads work and which don’t until after you’ve paid for both of them.

...Or You Could Borrow Someone Else's

There is an alternative strategy: to put your expertise in front of audiences that other sites have already built. Instead of fishing for users with banner ads, short posts, or videos, lay out your knowledge in an article and give it to someone who has the audience you want to attract.

Those sites get free, valuable content to reward people who visit their pages. You get to put your name in front of their audience. And the links that you place in the article will bring those users to your website, primed and ready to buy. But the rewards don’t end there. Guest posting delivers a number of valuable benefits that give your website the traffic it needs.

Why You Should Write Guest Posts

Writing guest posts mean creating something of value then giving it to someone else for free. You’re not going to get paid in cash for the article. So you need to make sure that you receive something else of value. Guest posting delivers a wide range of benefits:

1. Guest Posts Show Your Expertise

First, guest posts prove that you’re an expert in your field. You might not be the world’s leading expert. You might not have a doctorate in what you do and you might even be new to what you do. But you know more than most people about your topic, and that makes you an expert. It makes you someone that other people can trust when they need information related to your field.

The more expertise you can demonstrate in your guest post, the more valuable it will be to the host and the reader, and the more trust you will win in return.

2. Guests Posts Brand Your Business

It’s not just what you say in your guest post that matters. How you say it is also important. Guest posts give you a chance to demonstrate your style and your approachability. The guest posts that a law firm produces, for example, need to be detailed and precise; posts written to promote a hardware store can be more laid back and friendly. As the reader reads the post, they’ll feel that they’re already engaged with your business and are experiencing an interaction with it. That experience is similar to the one that people enjoy when they walk into an Apple store or browse the showrooms in Ikea.

Guest posts give people a chance to interact with your business before they’ve even visited your business. They show them what working with you will be like.

3. Guest Posts Build Your Connections

One often overlooked benefit of writing guest posts is that it puts you in touch with the owners of other websites in your field. Those sites might provide information or sell complementary services but if they appeal to your market too, you should know their owners. They’re vectors to your potential customers, and they’re also potential partners.

Writing a guest post is a great introduction. Instead of asking what someone is going to do for you, a guest post lets you start a relationship by offering something of value to their customers for free.

And the content has to be valuable. If you want to obtain something from your new relationship one day, then you need to begin with a gift. The better the gift, the more indebted your contact will feel. Writing guest posts gives you new connections and lays strong foundations for a valuable, ongoing relationship.

4. Guest Posts Deliver Targeted Traffic to Your Website

Expertise, branding, and relationship-building are all investments that you hope will pay off in the future. But a guest post should always contain a link back to your own website. That means that it can deliver targeted traffic to your site. It’s a direct benefit, a channel from a market to your business.

The closer the host site matches your market, the better your targeting will be.

Of course, it’s important to remember that that channel won’t always be prominent. You can expect a burst of visits after the site publishes your guest post but as more content buries that post, the flow of traffic will start to thin. Unless your guest post contains information that’s always important and up-to-date, you’ll need to keep offering more posts to keep the traffic flowing.

5. Guest Posts Improve Search Engine Optimization

The marketing, branding, networking, and direct traffic generation are all hugely important benefits of guest posting. But they’re not the reason that many people turn to guest posting.

They’re also looking for search engine benefits. They’re hoping that the backlinks and website mentions on sites with high authority will persuade Google that their site is important. The site will then receive extra love from the search engines, and turn up higher in search results.

We don’t know exactly how search engines rate sites and rank results. Google keeps its cards pretty close to its chest, and changes its algorithm on a regular basis. Each change can affect how sites rank, pushing them up and down search engine results pages. But the principle that governs Google hasn’t changed.

For Google, a site is important if lots of other sites mention it and link to it. The more important those sites, the more important the site they mention.

So writing a guest post for a site that’s important in your field, including the keywords relevant to your site, and linking back to your site, should all help to increase the chances that your site will turn up high in search results.

How to Write a Good Guest Post

A guest post always has two audiences. One audience will be the search engine robots. They’ll be scanning the page for links and keywords but they won’t care about the rest of the page. The robots will notice if you’ve just spammed the page to load up on Google juice but if you’re handing out poor advice or a weak analysis, the search engines will only know by looking at the visitor behavior. They won’t be able to read and understand the content itself.

Human readers will be able to do that—which is why they’re your most important audience. They’ll know whether your guest post is worth reading, worth sharing, and worth discussing. That reaction will affect your branding and it will also tell the search engines that the page—and the pages it links to—is worth promoting.

1. Write Good Content

That’s why the first rule of writing a good guest post is to write good content.

You can’t think of a guest post as a freebie, worth what the host is paying you for it. You’re asking readers to give you a few moments of their time. You have to pay for that time by giving them something of value in return. They have to leave that page feeling that they learned something and that their time was well spent.

That’s not as hard as it sounds.

You have expertise in your field that you take for granted. Share even a little of that knowledge, however basic, and you’ll be giving people something of value.

There are two approaches you can take here.

Introduce Your Topic

The easiest, and most common, is to give simple information that’s valuable to beginners. A guest post on a marketing website, for example, might talk about creating funnels or define an upsell. That sort of information is easy to create and it always has an audience. There are always far more beginners than there are experts who need niche information.

But basic information has a lot of competition. There are also more people who know the basics of funnels and up-selling than there are experts who can provide a detailed analysis of a particular kind of funnel.

Demonstrate Your Expertise

Create a guest post that provides expert analysis and you’ll reach a smaller audience. But you’ll demonstrate the depth of your knowledge and position yourself as a leading expert in your field.

There’s no right or wrong answer here. You choice of whether to offer basic knowledge or expert advice should depend on the nature of the audience you want to attract. If you’re selling to people moving into your niche for the first time, write basic guest posts. If you’re selling specialist services, pitch your knowledge at a higher level.

Whichever type of content you produce though, it should always be clear and well-written. Write it, then let it sit for at least a few hours before reading it through and submitting it. Give yourself time to forget it and when you read it through, you’ll be able to spot the sentences that are hard to read and the places you repeat yourself.

2. Make the Biography Count

You’ll have at least 500 words in the guest post to show off what you know but at the end of the post, you’ll also have a chance to show who you are. The bio is just a few lines, perhaps no more than two or three sentences. But it’s vital.

The biography of a guest post is your payoff. It’s your chance to tell readers what makes you an expert, why they should listen to you, and where they should go to benefit from your expertise.

So your bio should have three elements: why you’re worth reading; where readers can follow you; and a call to action:

John Smith is a real estate entrepreneur who has bought and sold more than twenty seven-figure properties. He provides real estate advice on Facebook and Twitter. Register for his email updates.

Include links in that bio, and you’ll have even more opportunities to land backlinks, drive traffic, and make Google love you.

3. Send Readers to a Solution Not a Site

It’s tempting when you place a link in a guest post to send readers to your website and let them find their own way around. After all, you’ve put a lot of effort into your site and you know it contains all the information that a lead needs to become a buyer.

But don’t rely on users looking through your site to find that information. Put it right in front of them by linking to a related service on your website. So a photographer who contributed a guest post to a wedding site that explained how to choose a wedding photography package could link to their own packages as examples. A landscaping company that wrote a blog post for a gardening website could link to a page on their own site listing plants suitable for places with little water. Readers won’t just get information on the blog post and they won’t just get information from a website. They’ll also get to see a solution to a problem that the blog post discusses.

You should also make sure that you have a way to hold onto users if they click away from your site. So the guest post’s landing page should have an invitation to people to subscribe to your newsletter. The biography could also link to a free ebook for which people have to leave their email address.

For a reader, a guest post should provide valuable information that can help to solve their problems. In return for that solution, you should make sure that the guest post gives you something of value: a lead or a conversion, or at the very least, an email address that will keep you in touch with that lead.

4. Drop Plenty of Names

One of the aims of a guest post is to show off your expertise. But experts only obtain their specialist knowledge by learning the lessons that other experts have taught. That’s why every academic article always includes a literature review that shows the current state of knowledge and explains how this article will move that knowledge forward.

That literature review does something else, though. It also tells readers that the writer is qualified to talk about this subject. They’ve done their homework. They’ve finished the reading. They’re up to date with the latest knowledge.

A guest post should make a similar statement. By referencing other leaders in the field, the writer doesn’t advertise a competitor. They put themselves in the same class as those other experts. An Agile consultant who refers to leading Agile thinkers tells a reader that they know these people and are in the same field as them. They benefit from the association.

But that mention can also cause that expert to interact with the post. If a guest post discusses an expert’s idea, that expert may want to respond. Whether they choose to take issue with your position, expand on it, or even just thank you for explaining it, that guest post will have sparked a conversation. You can even shoot them a message by email or tweet to make sure that they know.

Not only will your guest post win the attention of that expert’s audience, but you’ll also have given yourself a valuable new connection and put your own brand on the same level as theirs.

Anyone can write and publish a guest post but including names in those posts can make you a member of a very special club.

5. Engage with the Comments

Of course you want your guest post to deliver traffic to your website. You want it to improve your search engine rankings, and you’re hoping that it will also boost your brand.

But mostly, you want a guest post to have an impact. You want people to read it, think about it, and talk about it. Some of those discussions will take place on other blog posts. If you’ve written something really powerful, other bloggers will pick it up and respond to it. You can then write another guest post—or a post of your own—responding to their reaction. You’ll have started a discussion that everyone else in your field will follow.

Read the Social Media Posts and the Comments

Some of the comments will also take place on social media. Other experts will react to points you’ve made in your guest post and either share them or take issue with them. Whether their reaction is positive or negative, you should be joining that conversation too. Look for comments about your guest post on Twitter and Facebook. Add your own responses. Thank people when they share your post. Explain your thinking if someone argues against you. If people are taking the time to talk about what you’ve written, you can be sure that you’ve written something important.

And some comments will also take place underneath the post itself. This is where readers will react immediately to what you’ve written. Some of those comments will be simple notes of praise, which are always welcome. But other comments will move the discussion forward by linking to more information, asking questions, or adding more data.

When you react to those additions, you don’t just keep the conversation moving forward. You create a connection with your market. It’s like a speaker who takes questions at the end of a talk or hangs around the conference hall afterwards to chat with audience members. Readers get to feel that an expert is listening to them and accessible to them. That’s hugely valuable.

A guest post shouldn’t simply drop onto the Web and remain there unattended. It should provoke a reaction and a discussion. As the author of the guest post, you should be in there taking part in that discussion.

How to Choose a Site to Send a Guest Post

Where your guest post appears is going to be crucial. You want that post to give respect and standing to your name. You don’t want your brand associated with a small outlet that no one’s heard of, no one reads, and which is filled with low quality content. The more prestigious the publication that takes your guest post, the better you’ll look.

There are some publications that are always prestigious such as Inc. and Forbes. They do take guest posts but you’ll need to apply, and each post must meet their editorial standards. Those sites are also general so while they’ll give you prestige and an audience, they won’t give you a targeted audience. Being able to say that you contribute to one of those sites will help your branding. A post also has a better chance of going viral on a large site, but only a small portion of the post’s readers will be potential customers. At the same time, the large number of posts going up on those large sites means that older posts are quickly buried.

While you shouldn’t ignore the large sites that take large numbers of guest posts, you should also be looking for smaller sites. There are three ways you can find places to submit guest posts.

1. Browse the Lists

We’ve included here a long lost of places that take guest posts, and you can find plenty more around the Web. A list like this is a good place to start because you know all of these sites will take guest posts. You’ll just have to discover what exactly the sites are looking for and how to submit your contributions.

It’s also worth taking the time to see what kinds of posts do well on the site, and whether it’s looking for a particular style. Some publications prefer clickbait headlines and short posts, while others are looking for longer posts and a more sober, analytical style. You’ll need to match your post to the publication.

2. Approach Niche Blogs

Like large sites such as Forbes and Inc., the problem with picking guest post destinations from a list is that you might not know the site or its audience. You won’t know whether it will bring you to your market or whether a post on that site will improve your search result placements.

An alternative approach is to talk to sites that you already know. These will be sites that are in your field and that talk about your business. You know that the audience will be made up of people who are interested in your product or service, and you’ll also know what will interest them. When you make your approach to the site, you’ll be able to browse the content they’re already supplying and look for information they’re missing.

You’ll also be building a connection with the blog’s publisher, who may be someone you know—or have heard of.

A niche blog will give you a targeted audience. It should also be a relatively easy win, and there’s a good chance that you can already think of a few places you can try. But what a niche blog is unlikely to do is give you a big audience. You’re swapping size of audience for the quality of the audience.

3. Look for Places Other People Submit

You won’t be the only person submitting guest posts in your field. There are plenty of people who are already writing guest posts and looking for places to put them. Those people aren’t competition—at least not for a place to host your guest posts. They’re people who have done your research for you.

Any site that accepts guest posts from people in the same field as you should be willing to accept a guest post from you too.

So make a list of experts in your field. Include anyone whose articles you read or who you follow on social media. Look at the names of authors who have written books about your topic. When you’ve built yourself a good, long list, search for “guest posts by” those people.

That should give a good, long list of places that are looking for guests posts about your topic—and they can never have too many of them. If you’re giving away good content for free, those outlets will want as much of it as possible. They won’t mind too much if someone else is already covering the topic, as long as you can bring something new to the field.

You just have to make your approach.

Pitching Your Guest Post

That’s easier than it sounds. It’s true that you’re giving away something for free but that doesn’t mean that for the editor of the site, there isn’t a cost. If they publish something sub-standard, the post will weaken the strength of their brand. Users will wonder about the quality of the site. They might not come back. A guest post carries risks.

It’s your job when making that pitch to allay those risks. You want to reassure the editor that you can submit good ideas in a way that’s interesting to read.

Check the Guest Post Guidelines

The place to begin is with the contributor guidelines. Sites that accept guest posts will often explain exactly what they want to see, how to send it in, and how long it needs to be. Those guidelines are there for a reason. Editors know what they want to see on their sites. They know what their audiences expect and they know the style of the publication. They’ll expect anything they publish to meet those requirements.

If you don’t meet the guidelines, it’s unlikely that they’ll accept your post—and there are very few exceptions. You might believe that your topic is special or that your post needs more words or a different style but it’s unlikely to fly. It will be up to you to match the guest post to the host, not the other way round.

An editor of a major site will typically receive about ten guest post pitches every day. That means you will have competition for the site’s real estate. The better the site, the more pitches the editors will have to field.

The good news though is that most of those pitches are very poor. You can stand out just by being professional. That means including four key ingredients in your pitch. The aim of the pitch is: to persuade the editor that you have an interesting topic; explain what the post will contain; show that you’re the right person to write it; and make the editor understand that their outlet is the right place to publish it. Some sites even have a sponsored post section where you can pay to get it live.

1. Make Your Topic Interesting

First, you need to tell the editor what the guest post is about. Take the time to browse the site, and read what other people have posted. You should be able to gain an idea of the site’s market and match the post to their interests. If the site is aimed at people new to the topic, you might be able to settle for a simple guest post that introduces one aspect of the field and talks people through it. If the site aims at people with experience, you’ll need something more detailed and professional.

Clearly, what makes a guest post interesting will depend on the site and on the topic. Some sites and some editors will be looking for clickbait headlines and listicles. Others will want complex graphs and real data. You’ll need to check the site and come up with an idea that complements what’s already been published. You can offer a new perspective, add more detail, or replicate the approach of a successful post in a different part of your field.

But don’t copy what’s already on the site, or repeat an idea that’s already been published. There’s no reason to publish—or write—the same guest post twice.

2. Describe What You’re Going to Say in Detail

Website editors are in a difficult position. They’re responsible for everything that goes on their websites. But they don’t get to write everything that goes on their websites. They have to trust that the people they allow to contribute are going to produce something worth reading. That means that every time they agree to accept a submission from someone, they don’t know what they’re going to receive. They won’t know whether it’s going to do the job or leave out all of the important information the guest post needs.

The more information you can give the editor, the more you’ll be able to reassure them that you’re going to do the job. They’ll be more confident about inviting you to submit your post.

Don’t just tell the editor what the post will be about. Give them a summary. Lay out your arguments. Describe any examples or case studies you’re going to use, and explain the source of your data. That might sound like work but it’s no more than a paragraph, and it’s also true that the more work you do now, the less work you’ll have to do when the time comes to write the post itself.

3. Describe Yourself

A pitch for a guest post should have three elements. The first is what the post contains. You’ll have covered that when you explain in detail what the post is about. The next element is why you’re the write person to write it.

This is easy. You’ll just need to write a short bio: two or three sentences that lay out your expertise, with a link to your website. Focus on your experience rather than on your qualifications. If someone’s reading a guest blog post, there’s a good chance that they’ll have read other material on the same topic. You can assume that they’ll have some knowledge. The biggest value that you bring to the site is what you learned doing the things that the reader wants to do in the future. That’s why when photographers offer shooting advice, they don’t say where they studied photography or how long they studied it. They say they work for National Geographic, or they’ve shot more than a thousand weddings. Experience is much rarer—and more valuable—than knowledge alone.

4. Make Yourself at Home

The second element in a pitch explains why you’re special. The last element tells the editor that they’re special. This is where you explain to the editor why they’re the best place to publish your guest post.

Be specific here. Don’t just say that you think the topic of your post will match the interest of their readers. Point to a specific article on the website and explain how your guest post follows it. Or point out issues in your post that match specific topics discussed in other posts.

The editor of a website is looking for consistency. They know that readers reach the site because they’re interested in a particular subject delivered in a particular way. If you can show them that your guest post fits right in, they’ll find it hard to say no.

3 Mistakes That Can Kill Your Guest Post Pitch

So your guest post pitch should explain what the pitch is about. It should state why you’re the right person to write it, and it should explain why the host is the right site to publish it. If you get all that right, you’ll be in with a great chance of winning acceptance.

But there are some mistakes that you can make that can kill even a good pitch.

1. Spelling and Grammar Mistakes

This is simple—and unforgivable. Your pitch is a piece of professional writing explaining that you can deliver another piece of professional writing. It needs to show that you’re a professional. Sure, everyone makes typos and fast typers sometimes skip words. But when your pitch is inarticulate and filled with errors, when it’s hard to read, editors will assume that the guest post won’t be any better.

Write your pitch. Run spellcheck. Put it aside for a few hours, then read it through again before sending.

2. Sending a Mass Mail

Editors can tell when a pitch isn’t personalized. They know when you’ve sent the same email to every editor you can find. That’s a fast rejection. You might be able to cut and paste the bio part of the pitch but if you’re just changing the name of the recipient, you’re going to have to send a lot of pitches to get lucky with a single small site.

Make list of hosts and write each pitch individually.

3. Sending Editors to a Poor Website

Once an editor has read your pitch, they’ll want to know more about you. They’ll then look at your website and they’ll make judgments. They’ll decide whether you’re professional and reliable. Above all, they’ll make a judgment about whether you’re someone they want to introduce their audience to. If your website looks old, out of date, and unprofessional, you’re not going to make the impression want.

If your website is old, give it a revamp before you start sending your pitches.

Conclusion

Sending guest posts to websites is a valuable marketing and branding technique. It improves your search engine results. It lets you tap into someone else’s audience. And it shows off your expertise.

Creating and publishing those guest posts is also not difficult, although it does take a bit of effort. Start making lists of sites in your field that accept guest posts and write each one a pitch that will land you your post.