Customer Success

Perfecting the Art of Guest Content

August 1, 2011

As I’ve written in the past, influencer marketing is all about marketing to, with, and through your target audience’s key influencers. Of course, that’s much easier said than done.

Developing a relationship with those key influencers doesn’t happen overnight. You have to first identify the right influencers, prove your worth to them, gain their trust, and produce content that’s compelling enough to encourage them to share it with their audience. Quite simply, that can take a lot of time.

The good news is that there’s a fairly simple way to speed up that process, allowing you to appear on those influencers’ radars in a matter of weeks or months.

How? With guest content.

In my experience, guest content is a great way to begin conversations with your business’s most important influencers.

As online marketing company Blue Glass points out on its blog, guest posting is a mutually beneficial venture. It provides influencers a chance to build their own brand and continue to establish thought leadership online. For you, guest articles create instant content from some of your industry’s most trusted sources, while also providing the opportunity to prove your worth on their site.

More importantly, by offering valuable, unique information that addresses your target audience’s pain points, you won’t come off as a self-serving corporate machine, showing a commitment to becoming a trustworthy, innovative force in the industry.

Trust me – going that route will be far better received than spewing some corporate gobbledygook about how great version 2.4 of your product is, hoping the influencer cares enough to write something about it. And by giving your influencers the opportunity to participate in your content creation, it will take your relationship with them one step further.

Ready to get started with guest content?

I often encourage OpenView’s portfolio companies to think about exchanging guest content to their target list of 10-15 influencers.

Here are some quick tips and ideas for soliciting and contributing guest content from those sources:

  1. Be sure that the opportunity for guest content exists. This is a no-brainer. I’m not trying to steer you away from sites that don’t accept guest content (because they often make an exception for exceptional ideas), but it’s often a better use of your time to focus on sites that openly accept and encourage guest content.
  2. Look for syndication options. One possibility is BusinessInsider Contributors. If your management team already blogs consistently, hitching up with that syndication service is a piece of cake.
  3. Pitch ideas, not long articles. You don’t want to spend an exorbitant amount of time writing a long article, only for it to be turned down by your influencers. Instead, pitch them on ideas and write the articles once they agree to publish them. Need help crafting a good pitch to the most influential bloggers in your market? Mark Ivey at Social Media Explorer provides a few great tips.
  4. Explain what’s in it for them. When asking influencers for content, be sure to convey the benefits of being published on your site. Share traffic information (such as the number of unique visitors or page views per month) and, if you have a newsletter, be sure to explain the level of exposure they might get through that channel.
  5. Stay positive. Often times, you’re not the only marketer reaching out to key influencers and asking them to submit guest content. After all, those people are labeled “influencers” for a reason!

There you have it – five easy steps to perfect the art of guest content. Do it right, and you’ll not only build stronger relationships with your influencers, but you’ll also enjoy the following benefits:

  • Offsetting the burden of having to constantly create relevant content internally.
  • Positioning your company and employees as thought leaders.
  • Extending the reach of your content by securing placements with larger readerships.

So, what are you waiting for?

Depending on your content program, guest content can come in the form of blog posts, articles, white papers, ebooks, videos, infographics, or podcasts. Start reaching out to your influencers today to discover how content creation or syndication opportunities can strengthen your content marketing and influencer programs.

Amanda Maksymiw is a mar­ket­ing asso­ciate at Open­View Labs. She is respon­si­ble for con­tent cre­ation and strat­egy for Open­View and its port­fo­lio com­pa­nies. You can fol­low her on Twit­ter @AmandaMaks.

Content Marketing Director

<strong>Amanda Maksymiw</strong> worked at OpenView from 2008 until 2012, where she focused on developing marketing and PR strategies for both OpenView and its portfolio companies. Today she is the Content Marketing Director at <a href="https://www.fuze.com/">Fuze</a>.