At the end of the day, guest blogging is meant to promote your site / business and the services you have to offer. In other words, the possibility to promote our projects is why we guest post, right?

So why on earth would you want to promote guest posts themselves on top of this?!

This is a valid question. Promoting your guest posts surely makes the whole endeavor a bit more time consuming. But there are a couple of advantages that you should take into account.

Why to promote your guest posts

Let’s take it from the top:

1. It builds a relationship with the blog owner. People love to get free promotion, so if you manage to generate some additional traffic to your guest post, the blogger will always be grateful and more likely to invite you back.
2. It makes the guest post rank better in Google, and therefore makes your site rank better in Google as well (provided that you’ve gotten a do-follow link).
3. You grow your status in the niche by showcasing that you’re contributing to more sites than just yours.
4. Combined promotion is always more effective. If the blog owner is already promoting your guest post (which they probably are, since it’s published on their blog) and you are promoting the post too then both of your combined efforts are sure to reach way more people in total.

Promoting your guest posts – the starter package

Okay, so let’s get right down to business and start by going over the basic package of things you can do to promote your guest posts.

Some of them will sound very familiar or even obvious, but there’s a really good reason why people are constantly urging us to do those things. They just work, and create a great foundation for your content to be found.

1. Twitter.

Here are the specific things you can do when tweeting about your post:

• Use relevant #tags wherever applicable. Also, to save space, you can add #tags to words that are already in the headline. For example, “How to Install #WordPress.”
• Schedule updates to go out 4-6 times on launch day, and then 2-3 times on the following days. You can use Buffer for that.
• Split test 3-5 headlines when tweeting (it’s also a great research tactic – you can learn what works and use it for future updates).
• Use @mentions to point out other people that you’ve mentioned in the article.

2. Facebook.

Start by liking and sharing your guest post. Then, include it on your own fan page:

• Try different messages when sharing your guest post. For example, use part of the excerpt, the headline, the intro paragraph. See what works best.
• Schedule the updates to go out a couple of times on launch day, and also on the following days.
• Try sharing an image from the guest post, use Photoshop or Paint.NET to put some text on the image (preferably the headline).

3. StumbleUpon.

Believe it or not, but StumbleUpon is still doing quite well on the web. Just submit your guest post right after it goes live. Write a custom description trying to appeal to people who would stumble upon your post randomly.

4. Google Plus.

The way to promote your content on Google Plus is to write a truly exceptional update. Here’s what you can do.

First of all, +1 the post on the blog itself.

Next, share it to your Google Plus stream. But don’t just submit the link with no description or headline. Make it stand out:

• Start your update with the post’s headline.
• Include an intro (you can either write a custom one on re-use the intro from the post).
• Include an outline.
• Add the link by hand. For example: “Read it here: link.com/your-content”
• Include shout-outs to people / businesses that you’ve mentioned in the post (on G+, mentions are done with the “+” sign, as opposed to Twitter’s “@”).
• Include a picture.

5. LinkedIn.

First, click the LinkedIn share button on the blog itself if there is one. Then, share your guest post through your own LinkedIn profile.

This not only gives you traffic, but also makes your LinkedIn profile stronger, especially if you mention that this is your article that you’re sharing.

6. Delicious.

Delicious is still a great platform to keep your bookmarks someplace handy, and what’s even more important in this case, it’s also one of the best search engines out there.

I think this is a byproduct, but as it turns out, there’s very little spam on Delicious. For instance, when you try using the native search feature (image below) with pretty much any keyword, you almost always get quality, spam-free results.

Capitalize on this, bookmark your guest post so people can find it easily.

7. Pinterest.

Pinterest is great, but not for everyone. Some niches are just not that compatible with Pinterest, so use it only if it makes sense in your situation.

For example, if your post is about interior design, food, clothing, or a handful of other Pinterest-friendly topics then by all means pin it, and also try getting it onto other people’s boards. But if your post is about, say, SEO for local businesses then you’re better off using some other platform.

Promoting your guest posts – the reach multiplier package

The methods described above rely mostly on the size of your following and your ability to get your social media updates in front of as many people as possible.

This second package of practices is about reaching out to people directly and multiplying your results by convincing them to do some promoting for you.

1. Contact people you’ve mentioned.

This is a very simple and quick thing to do. Just go through your guest post, list all the people and brands that you’ve mentioned, get their emails or Twitter handles, and finally reach out to them with a quick heads up.

You don’t even have to tell them to share your content. Most of the time they will do it anyway.

2. Email your list.

This builds your authority with the people on your list because you get to brag about landing a guest post on a reputable blog.

Also, your subscribers might end up tweeting your article to their followers and bringing even more traffic, which is always a nice bonus.

3. Look for roundup posts.

This is a very good technique, especially if your guest post is published on a reputable site.

What you do is go to Google and look for relevant roundup posts that list other articles. You can try any of these queries:

• YOUR-KEYWORD roundup
• YOUR-KEYWORD “this week”
• top YOUR-KEYWORD posts

Then, just reach out to the people publishing those roundups and ask to be included in the next edition. Of course, the quality of your pitch will play a big role here.

4. Comment on top blogs and link to your guest post.

A handful of comments can give you a good boost in terms of traffic to your guest post.

The idea is to pay attention to what’s going on in the niche, and if something relevant just happens to get published, jump in, comment on it (with a genuine comment) and link to your guest post.

One final technique to keep your guest posts alive

Okay, so now we have two separate sets of things you can do to promote your guest post right after it goes live. But what to do after that?

Well, you probably won’t be coming back to this post and re-tweeting it every couple of weeks or doing more blog comments, but you can do something else.

It’s a good habit to keep a list of all your published guest posts. That way, whenever you’re working on a new post, you can go through the list, hand-pick some posts that are related to the one you’re currently working on, and just link to them where it fits to do so.

This will not only keep your old posts alive, but also expand the overall reach of your content.

Do you need any help promoting your guest posts? What are you struggling with right now?