Someone once totally slammed me publicly for asking her to write a guest blog post for free. I’ll never forget that or her. She had something like 70,000 subscribers and (without my permission) she shared part of our email correspondence with all of them to show what a ignorant jerk I was for asking her to write anything, let alone a blog post, for free. Writers simply aren’t supposed to write for free–ever–she said. Not for any reason, ever, no way, no how.
I had asked her to contribute to my Write Nonfiction in November blog and challenge. It has had such great authors and writers contribute to it as Michael Larsen, John Kremer, Annie Jennings, Deborah Levine Herman and Jeff Herman, Joel Friedlander, Mark Coker, Susan Harrow, Dana Lynn Smith, Joanna Penn, Stephanie Chandler, Carolyn Howard-Johnson, and Roger C. Parker. They know the value of writing a free guest blog post.
Guest blog posting for free is one of the most effective ways to promote yourself, your book or your business. If you want to accomplish that goal, consider going on a blog tour or a virtual media tour. From the comfort of your home or office, you can create huge visibility for yourself, your book (or product) and your business that will last long after the tour has ended—and that will increase your expert status and discoverability on line.
Guest blogging helps me promote myself, my business and my books. I conducted a “tour” with 24+ “stops” when, How to Blog a Book: Write, Publish, and Promote Your Work One Post at a Time, was released in June 2012 and I’m doing another in October 2012 for the holiday season. It’s a great way to increase awareness about a book and to drive traffic to your blog or to your website. It increases your readership and authority. In June I included podcasts as well, making it a virtual media tour; in October, I’m just doing a blog tour.
When you guest blog on another site—preferably one that has a higher ranking, more readers, and is more popular than yours—that blogger introduces you to his or her readers and basically gives you, your blog, your book, and whatever else you do or have a nod of approval. Not only do you get some added visibility on that blog, but some of that blogger’s readers inevitably go check out your blog or site. In this way, you gain readers, book buyers and new customers and clients.
Each guest blog post you write includes your bio. That bio has a link to your book, to your website and to your blog. This creates links, and those links increase your blog’s or website’s discoverability on line as well. That means, your site rises in the search engines’ results pages making it easier to find you, your blog, your books, etc.
And your authority, or expert status, rises with each link and each blog appearance as well. The more times you can be found on a search engine results page, the more like an expert you look–and actually become. Add in some links on those pages to Internet radio shows, or podcasts appearances you made for free, and you will soon find yourself taking over your niche, increasing book sales considerably and growing your business.
When my book’s price went up on Amazon by a few dollars, sales plummeted briefly. Why just briefly? Because my virtual book tour started just a few days later. Sales immediately rose as blog post after blog post appeared on blogs–and as people began talking about those posts and sharing them–and mentioning my book. Every time I do a guest post, they rise again.
I highly recommend virtual media tours to my clients. Yes, it is indeed, writing for free (and appearing on shows for free), but you will be happy you put out the time and energy. Eventually you won’t need to do this, and you may choose not to in most cases. But whenever you, your book or your business need a boost, you might reconsider. But when you are starting out, it’s a great strategy used by many now-successfully authors.
Photo courtesy of Stuart Miles
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