Connections: No Links, No Problem
There are many ways that one can build a good rapport with a publisher, ranging from interacting on Twitter to going back and forth in a series of emails. One of the best techniques I have encountered is writing a post without any links. I know what most people in connections or outreach are thinking, “Why would somebody not link to anything in their post?” I do this for the same reason that somebody banters with a blogger on Twitter or Facebook, I do it to build a relationship.
Make Sure Your Content is Errorless
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Many times the reason a blogger checks your post is to check for egregious errors in grammar. The grammatical errors that you may have could make the site look of lesser quality or even lose readers because the articles are harder to read. As a constant reader of blogs, I know that if the content on the site is hard to read I will simply go to another one of my favorite sites.
Zero Links in Your First Post or First Few
There are many ways that a relationship can dwindle with a blogger in our quickly evolving world of content marketing. This could be an article that is off topic, low quality, or a number of other reasons. The quickest way to lose business or a relationship is by immediately linking to a bad neighborhood site. The repercussions could range from a variety of things and the worst-case scenario is losing a valued contact and future guest posts because of impatience. If this site is in a network of sites, you could potentially be blacklisted for that one link. Build your relationship on the basis of good content with the only motivation being adding value to the site.
Ask What Kind of Content Blogger Wants
Bloggers oftentimes have ideas that they want to come to fruition in blog posts. Not all bloggers have time to write multiple posts a day and keep their blog up on all of the latest news. Usually the blogger will accept your guest post with a link after writing a story for them but not all of the time. Your relationship farm takes different amounts of planting before you can cultivate (see what I did there) the fruits of your labor.
Publisher Status
When doing connections, being upgraded to publisher status has become somewhat of a holy grail. Personally, I have been upgraded to this “instapost” status in a few occasions when I started out by submitting articles for approval that had no links. Once the site owner had established and knew that I was a valuable contributor who wasn’t trying to take advantage, I was given publisher status. That being said I still did not put a link in every post that I published on this site. After getting this status, it is also important to tow the line and try not to stretch off-topic content onto the site with links that can damage their SEO ranking.
For everyone who is in connections, managing your relationships should be at the forefront of your strategy to build links. A relationship with a blogger can lead to a lifetime of links in the future. This is much more valuable than a site where you can automatically attain publisher status because sooner or later the spammers will ruin that site’s Alexa and Google PR. Giving bloggers posts without links can help build this relationship more than any number of emails and tweets could. Many times this is much faster as well, the couple hours you spend writing the post can save you days of work over the course of a work year.
CopyPress writer
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