Doing guest posts on other blogs is a great opportunity to build your author platform and gain exposure to potential book buyers that you may not reach in any other way. Getting backlinks from relevant websites is an added benefit of guest posting that will enhance the search engine optimization of your own site.
Guest posts are win-win for everyone. Readers get useful or entertaining content, bloggers get additional content for their sites, and guest posters build their reputation, get links to their websites, and have the opportunity to sell books.
Your guest posts can take the form of how-to articles, essays, interviews, or case studies, and you can even create audio or video clips. Fiction authors can discuss the writing process or topics related to their novel.
Look for blogs that are a good match for your book’s target audience, then make comments on some of their posts before proposing a guest post. Check with each blogger to see what their requirements are for the length of the post, the topic, and whether they accept previously published content. Some bloggers post their guidelines on their site.
Be sure to write a good "resource box" containing a one or two sentence bio, a call to action, and a link back to your website. The call to action should include an incentive for people to visit your site, such as a free report or sample chapters. It’s a good idea to include a link to your book’s page on Amazon as well.
One terrific way to do guest posts on other blogs is to organize a virtual book tour where you will visit a series of blogs, radio shows and other venues during a certain time frame. Learn how to organize your own successful virtual book tour in my new book, Virtual Book Tour Magic.
This is a reprint from Dana Lynn Smith‘s The Savvy Book Marketer.