In Content Marketing, much like many other pursuits, you will generally reap what you sew. Put in the time and effort now, and you will be rewarded with better outcomes in the long-term. Content seeding is the perfect example of this. Seed your content and you will reap ROI!
Content Seeding
Content seeding is a Content strategy that involves ‘seeding’ the net with content that you have created. This will often mean having your content posted on websites, blogs and more across the net, along with other forms of content on other types of platform.
Largely, this will come down to guest posting. Guest posting means getting your content published on another blog or website in your niche. You offer the content for free so that the blog or website can provide more value to its users and in return you get brand visibility and probably a link back to your site. Guest posting is a large part of digital marketing today. It replaced link swapping as the primary way to build up a backlinks profile. However, it’s benefits go far beyond simply gaining links.
Think of it this way: content seeding means filling the web with your articles and blog posts. Each of these posts is an opportunity for someone to find you and an opportunity for you to impress them. An opportunity for your brand to be instilled in their mind and for them to come to your website. The more ‘seeds’ are out there, the more in-roads there are to your brand. And as those channels grow, so too will the power of many of those posts.
How to Land the Best Guest Posts
When it comes to link building for SEO purposes, quality always trumps quantity to a huge degree. Get thousands of links on article directories and other sites and you will risk actually being penalized by Google and will certainly see very little benefit even in the best case scenario. On the other hand though, if you can land even one guest post with a top blogger, then you’re in with a great shot of climbing the ranks. Here are some tips on how you can land the best guest posts…
Choose the Right Targets
Don’t go after the biggest blogs in the world but instead start a little smaller and work your way up. The best targets in fact are blogs that are just ahead of where you are in terms of daily visitors and general authority.
Write Great Content
This goes without saying but in order for this to be worth the blog’s while you have to ensure that the content you’re creating is very high quality. What’s more, you need to make certain that it is unique and different compared to everything else they get sent.
Great Content Integration: Why not think outside the box and send an infographic or even a questionnaire instead of a standard article? And if it is just an article, then make sure it’s a unique angle on a topic that is relevant to their audience.
The more your content stands out and offers something amazing to the site owner, the more likely they are to listen to you and accept your offer. Another tip? Choose evergreen content. This is content that will be relevant all-year-round and for many years to come. That will help you to keep getting read on those sites for a long time going forward!
Have a Great Site
As well as providing great quality content for the target blog or website, you also need to ensure that your site is generally high quality – that means it should have
- a good quality logo,
- a great design,
- good navigation etc.
Ask yourself: would a top blog want to associate itself with you? Only if you can answer this with YES it will have branding effects.
Build Relationships
Finally, do put some time in beforehand building a relationship with the owner. This way, your email will be much more likely to get opened! See below for more on how to reach out to influencers and develop relationships with them.
Influencer Marketing
Content seeding is not all about guest posting however, it is also about influencer marketing. Influencer marketing is one of the most effective growth hacks for marketers because it means working with the big names in your industry.
Yes, influencer marketing is pretty much the greatest growth hack out there. It’s probably the only strategy that allows you to communicate with hundreds and thousands of highly targeted individuals without spending months and years building your audience. Someone else has already done the leg work and you’re using the platform they built!
Guest posting is a form of influencer marketing, in that it involves contacting (among other things) owners of large blogs. But from here, getting a post published will only be one option that is available to you. From here, you’ll also be able to provide video content for their YouTube channels, to perform ad swaps and more – all creating more places for your content to be discovered.
One problem though: the biggest influencers don’t want to hear from you! They get hundreds of emails a day most likely and they stand to gain less from you than you can gain from them.
So, what’s the solution? Here are some ways to engage with the very biggest influencers in your niche…
- Meet them in person – This is by far the most powerful tip in this resource and it’s something you absolutely need to consider. If you can meet an influencer in person, then the impact you can make on them will be far larger than what you can do over an email. Then they’ll be far more likely to listen to future correspondence. Go to networking events… and network!
- Buy from them – Can’t get an audience with your chosen influencer? Buy from them and they’ll be obligated to respond to your emails!
- LinkedIn – Add people on LinkedIn and you’ll be able to build your network via degrees of separation. You’d be surprised who you can connect with then!
- Build your way up – Failing that, aim small and then build yourself up. Each time you do a shout-for-shout post, you should be able to increase your followers exponentially. And then you can climb up the heap!
Networking for Bloggers and Marketers
Getting by as a blogger can be tough when you’re starting out. As a blogger you will day by day be producing new posts and articles that you will no doubt have poured your heart and soul into and you will be constantly thinking of new angles for topics and interesting subjects that haven’t been covered yet on every other blog. But of course no one at first is going to find your posts because you won’t be coming p at the top in Google. You might post your link on your Facebook page, but no one is likely to click or share it right away (sorry) because people just don’t tend to do that.
Find Others Like You
First of all you should research the competition a little. This will mean simply looking for other sites that are doing what you are but more successfully. Now you’re going to narrow them down for the ones you want to work with, read their content and think about whether this is a site you are happy to recommend. At the same time ask yourself if they seem approachable and friendly and like the kind of people who would be willing to lend a newbie a hand. The best people to find are those that are on the way up, but haven’t quite exploded yet. They’ll be sympathetic to your needs, but they’ll have a little clout which is what you want. Another tip is to look for someone in your niche, but who isn’t necessarily competing with you directly. Someone who is in a different part of your niche for instance or a sub category can be a good place to target.
Bide Your Time
Now you aren’t going to contact them right away, that would be folly. These guys get something like a million e-mails a day and if you write to them now you’ll damage your reputation in their eyes. Instead you should just spend some time writing a site that you think they would like, and that is complementary to theirs. Provide some value that is different to what they’re doing but nevertheless might attract their readers.
Meanwhile try to associate with them. Mention them in your blog posts and tip your hat to them as your inspiration. People love flattery and this kind of acknowledgement will ensure you aren’t accused of thieving their ideas. Link to them so that they get some links from you turning up in their web stats and they’ll start to hear your name.
Closing Tips and Comments
Remember, the simple act of blogging is also a form of content seeding. And there’s no reason that you can’t create multiple blogs to start putting more feelers out there yourself right now!
