There’s nothing better than a 3rd party endorsement. Most people think of a 3rd party endorsement as someone telling someone else how good you are at what you do.
A very underutilized 3rd party endorsement strategy is when you guest blogger. In essence, this is where the blog owner is telling their readers, “This person is someone I believe has something valuable to say.”
The fact is, if the blog owner doesn’t think you’re someone they want to introduce to their market you likely won’t get opportunities to be their guest blogger.
There are ample opportunities available. You can blog for one blog owner once. You can blog more than once for the same blog owner or you can go all out and do a blog tour.
Here’s a recent post of mine that appeared on the Women Speaker Association blog in which I was the featured blogger. Click here to read full post.
Yet another one is at Internet Home Business Blog.  Click here to read full post. Several experts were invited to contribute to the topic of How To Create Awesome Blog Content – Writing Tips From The Pros.
Each has a different focus based on the blog and topic.
As you begin pursuing guest blogging opportunities you may have to be the one to approach blog owners. When you build visibility online blog owners will approach you. The more content you have published online the more opportunities seem to magically appear.
What is a blog tour?
Blog tours became popular by authors who were seeking a more cost-effective way to get the word out about a book. In days past, a book tour for an author consisted of going from location to location to do readings, signings and hopefully sell a few books.
This has always been a very expensive way to promote books. For many authors, it has also been extremely ineffective.
Enter blogs. Somewhere along the lines someone got the idea that rather than simply writing for his or her own blog, why not do guest appearances?
What was a very mysterious activity as recently as only a few short years ago is now a very common practice. And rather than simply promoting books, a tour is now used for promoting a number of different things, such as live events, teleseminars, membership programs, information products and services.
A simple definition of a blog tour is a virtual tour where you stop at a number of blogs and post relevant information.
Participating in a blog tour has replaced the need to make “personal” appearances for many experts.
In the purest sense a blog tour is done over a specific period of time where the expert “visits” several blogs.
A blog owner hosts one stop of the tour unless, of course, the owner had several blogs on which you are posting. The best part of all is you can do a tour from literally anywhere in the world, as long as you have Internet access.
Some people prefer to do sporadic guest blogging rather than a structured blog tour. In essence, guest blogging is exactly as it sounds. You post on a blog as a guest. But, you must get the blog owner’s permission to do this type of posting.
Being a guest blogger is different from simply posting comments about other people’s posts. In essence you are the “star” blogger.
Benefits to blog tours and guest blogging
There are a number of fabulous benefits to either. You definitely increase your visibility and credibility. Both allow you to create a buzz about a book, event, or telseminar, to name just a few things.
Without a doubt, your writings will be viewed by new eyeballs. This is exactly what you want.
When done right, you are able to reach more of your target market. The reason you want to be clear on who your market is and who is reading the blog you are going to post on is for increased reach with the best market.
There’s no point in writing for blogs that are not viewed by those who are interested in what you have to say and offer.
Guest blogging opens up opportunities for potential joint venture relationships with the blog owner. What better way to get your foot in the door than to do a stellar job with your guest blog appearance?
Search engines love blogs, and, when you use the right keywords, you are creating incredible opportunities for better SEO.
In addition, you can increase your own opt-in subscribers, if you do have a link in your bio at the end of your post.
If you have not yet added guest blogging to your online marketing arsenal you need to ask yourself, “What’s it going to take for me to do so?”
I guarantee you, it’s by far one of the best marketing strategies around.