Be our GUEST! This inbound marketing strategy has business benefits you shouldn’t miss out on! [Thursdays: FYO!]
Software company Autodesk uses different strategies to maximize its online marketing efforts.
Aside from posting content on its own website, the company also uses other inbound marketing strategies to:
- Increase its target market reach
- Boost online exposure for its products and services
- Raise brand awarenesss
One of the strategies Autodesk employs?
Guest posting!
—the act of writing and publishing an article on another brand or business’ website. Its purpose is to:
- Attract traffic back to a guest blogger’s own website
- Boost a guest blogger and his or her brand’s domain authority
- Build relationships with other businesses within the industry
Autodesk’s team runs an active contributing column called, “Autodesk Sustainable Blogging Team” in the Fast Company magazine.
Aside from that, the software company also guest posts actively on other business websites to talk about design sustainability.
Here’s a snippet of one of its posts on Forbes.com in 2010 titled, “Designing a Sustainable World in 3D”:
What did Autodesk do right in this article?
Guest posting is a great way to increase brand awareness and the company knew it didn’t have to directly promote its products and services in the article.
Instead, Autodesk focused on an idea or concept related to its brand. Doing so helped the company position itself as an expert in its field.
The guest post on Forbes.com gained more than 9,000 views and Lynelle Cameron, the Director of Sustainability at Autodesk, was quoted in other articles on other websites.
In this case, guest posting was not just effective in boosting autodesk’s exposure and credibility, but it also helped secure brand mentions in other articles!
Autodesk’s website traffic also recorded a 21.8% increase a year after the article was posted on Forbes.com.
That was from the US market alone!
Web analytics company SimilarWeb also reported that Autodesk’s social media presence increased by 1.8% due to some online users sharing the article on their social media accounts.
As a business owner or marketer, why is guest posting an important tool in building your brand?
Utilizing guest posts offers a number of benefits for any business. By sharing your expertise on other websites, you’re establishing yourself as a figure of authority within your niche and exposing your brand to a larger audience.
Here are other benefits of guest posting:
- Provides instant exposure to targeted traffic
- Generates social media shares
- Grows your brand’s social media following
- Strengthens your business’ backlink profile
- Raises brand awareness
- Helps generate qualified leads
- Garners useful feedback from your online community
- Sharpens your content marketing skills
Our firm’s President and CEO, Professor Joel Litman, also wrote an article on Forbes.com last May 27, 2020.
The headline of his article was:
The article talked about the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on businesses’ earnings, particularly during the 2nd quarter of 2020.
As of February 9, 2021, Professor Litman’s write-up has 10,820 views on Forbes’ website.
Is that a good number?
It definitely is, especially if most of the readers from Forbes.com are business owners, executives, investors, wealth advisors, and others within the same industry!
The article also includes Professor Litman’s profile, which includes links to his Twitter and LinkedIn accounts and the Valens Research website, at the bottom of the page.
Not only does his article reach more readers, but it also helps strengthen the backlink of his own company’s website and drive traffic to it.
In short, it’s one way to help readers FIND Professor Litman and Valens Research online!
The “Big Bath” article was also posted on the Nigerian news website called The Latest Nigerian News and became the topic of a webinar session conducted with CFA Society Singapore last July 9, 2020.
Yes, a new set of audience reached once again!
Developing a guest posting strategy for your brand boils down to delivering new perspectives and fresh content to a larger market.
It’s about providing helpful and relevant messages to educate readers―not low-quality content simply used for the sake of backlinking to your own business’ website.
One thing to take note of before moving forward with this strategy?
Make sure you’re clear about what your goals are for guest posting. Look for credible websites within your industry where you can deliver real insights to your target market.
As long as you’re careful about creating high-quality content, guest posting can be a great tool for building your domain authority and moving up in SEO rankings.
As a result…
People will easily FIND YOU online!
About The Dynamic Marketing Communiqué’s
“Thursdays: FYO! Find You Optimization”
Why should you stop thinking SEO and start thinking FYO?
We’re not saying that you should abandon Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
Don’t get us wrong, of course, we know this is something very important, especially in today’s digital marketing age.
The internet landscape is vast, and a world of its own. You really need to distinguish yourself and make your brand/company/website known and easily searchable.
Better yet, get to the top of page one for Top Results on Google or any other search engine.
However, what is the purpose of SEO? It’s that customers Find You!
That’s what matters. So, while SEO is one factor of FYO… it really is only one, and we ought not to abandon all the myriad of ways digitally and offline for improving your FYO.
How can we look at this from a different and better perspective?
Let’s say you have it in the bag! You and your team are experts in SEO. Awesome. But did you ever wonder what else you could do to push it further and give your SEO skills a boost?
FYO! Find You Optimization!
You need your target audience to FIND YOU—your brand, product, service, or offer. This is SEO plus other tools that increase visibility online (and offline).
Every Thursday, we publish content on how you can get your target market to find you, beyond the typical “type and search.” There are other things you can do along with your SEO to give your online advertising process a boost.
Try considering other tactics beyond it—WOMO (Word Of Mouth Optimization), RO (Referral Optimization), and “All-Other-Means-Of-Getting-Your-Target-Market-To-Find-You” Optimization (AOMOGYTMTFY, if you’d like a long acronym).
Part of a great marketing strategy is knowing how to adapt new methods and make use of different types of marketing and promotion that best fit your business goals and which give you the results you want.
Hope you’ve found this week’s insights interesting and helpful.
Stay tuned for next Thursday’s FYO!
Cheers,
Kyle Yu
Head of Marketing
Valens Dynamic Marketing Capabilities
Powered by Valens Research
www.valens-research.com
