Photo by Annie Gray on Unsplash

You know that I don’t like sharing techniques.

But today I’m going to do just that, and in details, because I’ve been getting lots of questions about it.

But before we just right in,

This isn’t a hack.

It’s an old marketing strategies that can help you grow any business. On Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, in the ‘real’ world, anywhere.

It’s an old method, but it’s still extraordinarily efficient.

Guest posts.

Guest posts were the best way to grow a blog in the early ages of the internet. They’re still effective and they are probably your best bet if you don’t have a big marketing budget.

Guest posts are simple: you publish a post on someone else’s page. Ideally you add a call to action to follow your page.

The goal is to provide value to their audience, an audience that you would like to have. In exchange for that value, some of their audience will follow you.

To make this strategy successful you need:

• To add value to their audience
• To create a piece of content that fits the other page’s format
• To add a clear call to action to follow you, or a clear enough watermark so they know you are the author
• To choose the best pages to publish your guest posts on
• To share content that’s relevant to an audience that doesn’t know you

It’s rather simple.

Now, finding the best pages to publish your content might be a little tricky.

First, I want to say that you shouldn’t pay for guest posting. Because it’s a win-win. You get to advertise your account, they get an already-made, high added value piece of content to post.

The other page should be excited to share your content: it adds a lot of value, it’s a new perspective that they couldn’t provide to their audience, they get something ready to post without putting any work.

If someone makes you pay for a guest post, I would only do it if they have a particualrly big following AND an impressive engagement rate AND if I am 120% sure that this engagement is legit and organic.

Otherwise, it is most likely a scam.

Photographers, especially, beware of these pages. Lots of people are trying to sell exposure to photographers.

They will usually post your pic, buy likes on the post, buy you an extra 200 followers, and buy reach on the post to send you a screenshot of the post insights to show you how well your picture performed.

To identify a page that would take guest posts: try aiming for a page that has a larger followingthan yours (though you don’t have to), try aiming for a page that publishes a lot of content and that already seems to have guest posts on their feed.

You want to be pushing the argument that you are going to give free content to them, which will save them time.

So you better find pages that seem busy.

You can plan on posting on a personal brand’s page. But to do that, you should first get to know the creator behind the account.

Which will take extra time as building a relationship can take quite some messaging back and forth. These guest posts do perform best, though.

You also want to pick pages in the right niche, but that specialize in something slightly different than you. This will make your perspective more valuable.

For example, on a page that talks about social media management, building relationships, designing posts and stories, I would submit a post about Instagram ads basics. These people would probably be interested and they probably don’t know much about it. The page being specialized in something else probably wouldn’t have covered the topic already.

When it comes to contacting the page, keep it simple and straightforward: emphasize the win-win collaboration, and explain why it would be a good fit for both of you.

Remember, it’s a numbers game. You will be ghosted. People will say no. But some will gladly accept. And those who accept are likely to still do it in the future!

Don’t worry too much about asking lots of accounts.

The power of guest posts is the volume. If you publish lots of them, you will see your followers count skyrocket!

Let me know if I didn’t answer your question about guest posts. I will gladly give you more information.