How To Grow Your List With Guest Blogging

Last week I shared how guest blogging can help you reach a bigger audience and how to get guest blog posts accepted. Guest blogging is a great way to get in front of new people and start building your reputation as an expert on a topic.

It takes time and energy to contact blog owners, pitch your ideas, and write articles for their sites, so you’ll definitely want to make sure all of those new readers start following you.

For most guest posts you may only be able to include one or two links in your bio, so you want to make it count!

When done well, guest blogging can be a powerful list building strategy.

Here’s how to convert more readers from your guest posts into subscribers on your own site.

Promote a Free Gift

The best way to get people to opt-in to your list is with a free gift that’s valuable and relevant to their interests.

If you don’t yet have a free opt-in gift, create something that addresses what your audience cares MOST about. (I share more about about how to create a compelling free gift in this post.) You can also download our customizable “done for you” opt-in gift right here.

When promoting a free gift in a guest blog post, you’ll want to make sure that the your free gift relates to the topic of the guest post.

For example, if you write a post about weight gain and food sensitivities, you could promote a free cheat sheet on how to identify if you have a food sensitivity. You can imagine that people interested enough to read the post will be very interested in your free gift.

On the other hand, if you were to promote something unrelated, such as a free green smoothie recipe book, you won’t get as many opt-ins.

You don’t necessarily have to create a new free gift for each guest blog post. If you have a free gift that you’re currently promoting on your website and it relates to the topic of your guest post, use it!

Create A Custom Landing Page

One of the mistakes I see people make when guest blogging, is linking to their homepage. This leaves signups on the table. There’s a lot going on on your homepage, and too many distractions.

Instead, create a clutter-free landing page that promotes your free gift and gives people a place to opt-in. Unlike your home page, landing pages don’t have navigation – so it keeps people focused on the action you want them to take — joining your list!

By creating a unique landing page, not only will you be able to track how many subscribers came from that form, you can customize it to fit the audience of the guest blog. You may want to include a unique message or heading like “Welcome Mind Body Green readers!” then create a short paragraph about what they can expect from your free gift and your newsletter.

Make this page relevant to your new reader by mentioning something from the article they just read. Afterall, that is why they’re on your site and they want to know they can expect more!

I know the thought of creating a single landing page – let alone a new one for each guest post – may feel overwhelming. LeadPages is an amazing tool you can use to quickly and easily create landing pages like this one.

 
Remember, use guest posts to build your list by promoting a free gift that relates to the topic of the post. If someone likes what they’re reading, they’re going to want a way to keep up with you and get more great content. By linking to a simple landing page, you’ll dramatically increase the percentage of people who opt-in.

 
Now I’d like to hear from you.
What is a topic you’d like to write about for a guest post? What opt-in gift can you promote in the post?