With every man and his dog jumping on the blogging bandwagon in an attempt to boost their SEO, it can be hard to stand out from the crowd.

Why should people read your company blog as opposed to the next business?

Let’s take a look at 5 different ways you can distinguish yourself from the competition and create a blog worth reading!

Use Interviews

Interviews are a great way to show your readers what you and your industry are really about. It also makes it more real and relatable, giving people insights that they wouldn’t get otherwise.

You should make an effort to reach out to industry experts in your field. It will give your content more credibility, you will get additional traffic through the expert, and help you build important relationships.

Storytelling

Stories sell. But not only that, stories get your readers engaged and coming back for more.

If you can master the art of storytelling and craft it in a way that is in sync with your company’s message, you will reap the rewards for time to come.

Make It Useful

This one is obvious. But it never fails to amaze me how often company blogs offer absolutely no benefit to their audience.

People don’t really care that one of your employees just had a birthday. They don’t care if your having an office party. Heck, they rarely care if you are even launching a new product. (Unless you have a raving fan audience)

People care about themselves, and what you can do for them. So make it useful for them.

Make It Easy To Digest

Make sure your posts are both easy to read and skimmable. Make use of bullet points, and use many paragraphs to make it easy for your audience to digest or skip certain parts of your post.

Last week I introduced you to the lucrative reverse guest blogging strategy, a way of exploding your blog by encouraging others to blog for you.

The concept is nothing new, but I felt that many of you would benefit from understanding how and why you should get people to blog for you, rather than you blog for them.

My main reason for introducing you to this strategy is because the biggest guest blogging network was recently penalised.

It’s clear that guest blogging as a link building tactic has finally come to an end as Matt Cutts blogged recently about the fall of guest blogging…

…And if you still had any doubts in your mind about Google’s stance on guest blogging, they have taken action against yet another network- PostJoint.

So with two of the biggest guest blog networks down, SEOs that hadn’t changed tactics in preparation for this will be in trouble.

If you are guest blogging right now for the only purpose of acquiring links, you really need to stop.

Instead, use guest blogging as a means for getting new visitors to your site from the links itself, rather than targeting sites in order to place your keyword rich anchor text.

Right now, the CEOs at many SEO agencies are running around like headless chickens because the foundation for their entire business has just crumbled beneath them.

We wish they would just throw in the towel and file bankruptcy. But sadly, many of their innocent clients will be clueless to the entire thing and will continue to pay them, so their doors will remain open and client sites will continue to suffer.

So what’s going on?

Well, Guest blogging is dead.

That’s what the SEOs are saying anyway…

…Nothing has changed for the smart guys that were using guest blogging for traffic and exposure rather than links…

…Or the people utilising the blogging strategy that we will be discussing today.

Oh, did I also mention that the biggest guest blogging platform has been penalised?

Here’s the thing. Guest blogging became ridiculously spammy and overused just like any other scalable link building strategy, and it was only a matter of time until something like this happened.

So it’s time to start thinking outside of the box. We aren’t talking about building links or manipulating page-rank today….

We’re talking about reversing the entire strategy on its head.

People value sites that organise all of the very best content on a certain subject. In fact, sites that do this successfully go on to become the Huffington post’s, the search engine watch’s, and the Forbe’s…

And they don’t write any of their own content themselves; they source it from quality writers.

Think about that for a second.

Blogs like Forbe’s make an absolute killing from selling advertising because of their amazing content and none of that content is even written by them!

Can you see where I’m going with this?

Instead of writing guest posts for authority sites, why don’t you become an authority site by accepting guest posts from top writers?

So, I guess you want to find out how the game of sourcing writers is played, right?

Let’s get into that.

Finding Writers For The Reverse Guest Blogging Strategy

The first key thing we need to understand about this is that we want writers that are respected within your niche and have a large reach across social media.

These writers already have people following them on Twitter or Facebook who are interested in your topic or nice. So, when they tweet or share the post they write for you, those people will end up on your site.

The second key is to recognise that you have two things to exchange for the writer’s content. Either money or exposure…

…If you already have an authority site in a certain niche; writers will be willing to write for it for free, simply because they will benefit from the exposure and it will further their careers.

…If you are just starting out you may need to pay the writer in order for them to want to write for you.

So now that we get that, here are some places to find writers:

1)      Search for your niche name + blogger or blog.

2)      Create a write for us page on your website.

3)      Target the writers that have written for your competition.

4)      Use twitter.

Make sure you do some thorough research into the writers and the going price for a blog, and it is essential that you encourage the writers to share the post across social media.

Utilising the reverse guest blogging strategy effectively and you will become the next big authority in your niche.

3 Powerful Ways to Promote Your Blog

It doesn’t matter how good the content is on your blog. If you don’t promote it, nobody is going to find it. It is really important to actively seek exposure for your blog, especially during the early days.

We are going to be looking at 3 different tactics that you can use to acquire the links and brand exposure needed to take your blog to the next level. These strategies don’t even need to necessarily be done by you, as they can easily be outsourced.

Guest Blogging

Guest blogging has exploded in recent times, mostly due to the tactic’s ability to acquire powerful links, and greatly increase search rankings. I recently delved deeply into the strategy, analysing the effect of Google’s upcoming penguin update.

Whilst low-level guest blogging is likely going to be less effective in the future, focusing your efforts on high authority blogs relevant to your niche will remain a great way to gain exposure, traffic and links.

This tactic can be used to quickly gain recognition from your target audience, although it is entirely dependent on the quality of the post, and the quality of the blog you guest post for.

Aim to land a guest blog on the most widely recognised blogs within your niche, and your time and effort will be rewarded with an onslaught of targeted traffic.

Social Promotion

Social media fits nicely into an ongoing blogging strategy. Your ability to drive traffic through various social sites will increase each day, the longer you keep up the momentum.

To get started, ensure that your blog, and each of your blog’s posts has share buttons that are easily recognisable. People are becoming more and more accustomed to using these buttons to quickly share content with their friends or followers.

Once your sharing buttons are clearly in view, start developing your presences across Google+, twitter and Facebook, possibly creating a Facebook fan page. You may find yourself feeling overwhelmed, so you can choose one of the three and stick to it if you wish.

Make sure you make use of sharing communities like Reddit and Stumble upon too. They can be a great way of finding new exposure opportunities, and it doesn’t take very long to post your content onto these sites.

Take Part in The Active Communities Within Your Niche

There are probably a ton of forums and ongoing discussions going on in your niche right now. Seeking them and joining in with the discussion can be a great way to establish yourself as a thought leader, gain recognition, and send traffic through to your blog.

Most of these communities will let you have a signature, which will allow you to link through to your blog. Offer tangible advice and solve people’s problems, and you will start to gain more exposure for your blog.

You could also try commenting on other blog’s within your niche, offering help and assistance where it is needed.

With this strategy, it is important to offer exceptional advice and engaging comments. That way, you establish yourself as the person in the know, and they will be more likely to visit your blog as a result.

The key to success with guest blogging, social promotion and community involvement is consistency. You will not start to see results immediately. But over time, everything will start coming together and your blog will grow in strength.

Can you think of different ways to engage your target audience, and promote your blog? I’d love to discuss them in the comments below.