2 (Alternative) Ways to Share Your Guest Posts on Your Own Blog

It is quite obvious that you may want to make the most of your guest post and share it with your blog readers.

But what’s the best way to do that?

The most frequently used method is to just drop a short notice at your blog linking back to your guest post inviting your readers to comment. But is there actually a better way?

Let me share the two tactics I use to announce my guest posts at my own blog:

1. Take advantage of some alternative format

This is the most time consuming but if you provide quality content and want to share it on your own blog without sacrificing on your blog quality, you should definitely consider it.

Here are a few ideas:

• Create a video how-to screencast of what you are talking in your guest post and publish it on your site;
• Create an infographic visualizing your guest post content;
• Create a slideshow giving a step-by-step overview of what you are covering in your guest post.

Here’s one example from my own experience. Back in 2008 when I wasn’t contributing to SEJ on a daily basis and most people only knew me from my own blog, I guest debuted at SearchEngineJournal.com on with the guest article called “Make the Most of SEO Competitive Research : Evaluating the Competition”.

Of course, I was pretty much excited with that and wanted to share my experience with my blog readers. I didn’t want to just mention it with the link back. I wanted to give my readers something special as well. So I created a short slideshow containing the main post key points and the screenshots and embed it to the short update on my own blog.

I thus ended up with posting to my own blog:

• Absolutely unique title and content;
• Interactive and entertaining overview of the post.

2. Take advantage of a cool WordPress plugin

There’s one cool WordPress plugin that provides you with a very easy and quick way to “cross-promote” your guest posts on your own blog.

The plugin is called External Permalinks. With it you can write a short intro to your post, then provide the URL of your contribution and the plugin will:

• Display the intro on your blog;
• Link the post title and “Read more” text to the original post;
• Redirect comments to the original post;
• Display social media buttons of the original post (e.g. Tweetmeme button).

The plugin options include:

• Notice Text: If you want to, you can add a notice to tell your readers to continue reading the post at the external link.
• Show notice in the loop: Whether to show the notice on the homepage/category pages, etc.. (for each post)
• Show notice in the RSS feed: Whether to show the notice in the RSS feed (mind that the link in the RSS feed will take you to your actual guest post)
• Redirect comments page: If you want to, you can keep the comments page on your own site. Default is to redirect to the external link.
• Show only excerpts: Since you’re linking to an external site, you may decide that you only want to show an excerpt. If you haven’t added an excerpt, but still only want to show partial content, choose “Yes, always” and the plugin will automatically create an excerpt for you.

I found it to be a good way to help promote my guest posts without interfering into my normal blogging stream (if I exclude those entries from the RSS feed and/or archives).

And how do you share your guest posts with your own blog readers?

Post image by woodleywonderworks