Although LinkedIn is more serious than other social networks, it provides a great opportunity to connect with professionals without all of the fluff. In fact, a recent study shows that website traffic from LinkedIn converts to leads at a much higher rate than Twitter or Facebook.

If you want to take advantage of this, here are some ways you can leverage LinkedIn for your business:

1. Get active in groups

The number one web referral traffic source for one of my clients is LinkedIn. Why? He is very active in LinkedIn groups filled with his target audience. Sharing his content, which is relevant to group members, is an excellent way to introduce his products to the right people.

Find industry or local groups to join and share useful information (not just your content), answer questions and engage with the community.

2. Find leads

If you’re looking for business leads, you can search keywords (job title, industry, location, etc.) on LinkedIn to help you find the right people or companies to target. Then, you can see if there is anyone within your network who can make an introduction. Here’s a great step-by-step guide on how to do this.

Also, company pages tell you if there are any fellow college alumni that work at the organization. That information can help you make a connection and get your foot in the door at a company.

This is way better than cold calls, don’t you think?

3. Build a Company Page

Last fall, LinkedIn introduced company pages, which allow businesses to showcase employees, services, job openings, blog posts and updates from your company. Here’s our page, for example.

Because company pages are linked from every employee’s profile, it offers a nice way for someone to learn more about your company without leaving LinkedIn.

LinkedIn users can also follow your company and receive updates that you share, which is a great way to expand your network. The pages also offer some nice stats to show you how many people are visiting your page and user demographics for visitors.

4. Get referrals

Referrals are a great way to drive business, so why not leverage your LinkedIn network for some endorsements?

LinkedIn makes it easy to ask for recommendations – either for your profile or company page. Not only will the recommendation show up on your profile, but on theirs too, providing additional exposure.

5. Answer Questions

Spending a little time answering questions on LinkedIn Answers can be a great way to showcase your expertise and provide help when someone is looking for it. You can even subscribe to an RSS feed of questions asked in a specific topic category to help you stay on top of potential opportunities.

Yes, Facebook or YouTube might be more fun. But, if you want results, businesses should pay more attention to LinkedIn.

How are you using LinkedIn for your business?

This article originally ran as my guest post for the Nashville Business Journal. 

Image credit: Esther Vargas

For much of my childhood, my Mom created cornhusk dolls and floral arrangements and sold them all over the country. When we would come home from school, we would often find her in her workroom putting together her latest creations.

I credit her for every creative bone I have in my body. And, I’m pretty certain I get my marketing chops from her.

But, besides all of that, she has taught me invaluable skills that have helped me in business:

Be Flexible or Break

I am a planner. Always have been. And while that has incredible value for my line of work, there are some things in business (and in life) that cannot be planned.

My Mom has always reminded me to “be flexible or break”. That advice is certainly relevant as a business owner. While it’s good to have a plan, sometimes, the best things in life come from recognizing and taking opportunities that come your way.

I think this advice also has incredible relevance for the dramatically shifting landscape of marketing and social media. Just think – a year ago, Pinterest was relatively obscure and Google Plus didn’t even exist.

While marketing and social media strategies are important, your business needs to be nimble enough to adjust to the rapidly changing marketplace and tools available.

Challenges (and Chores) Build Character

Growing up on a farm, my three sisters and I often had to do things we didn’t particularly enjoy. Every time we had to load out pigs, move cattle or walk beans, my mom would cheerily remind us that these were “character building experiences.”

I have to admit, that line wasn’t a great motivator for a kid. In fact, I would often retort, “I have enough character already!”

Oh, but my Mom was right.

Life presents us with plenty of challenges, chores and tasks that we really don’t want to tackle. But, each time we face them head-on, we become stronger, wiser and much more capable to handle the next hurdle that comes our way.

Building my company while holding down a demanding day job was certainly a challenge. I just wanted to quit my job and take my marketing business full time. But, going through that experience taught me patience and helped prepare me for the long hours ahead of working on my own.

Next time you face a challenge or task you don’t enjoy, view it as an opportunity to learn. It will help you appreciate the experience that much more.

Treat People Better Than You Want to Be Treated

Yes, I’m sure every mother teaches the Golden Rule. But, my Mom lives it. She is the master of relationships.

She taught us that listening is more important than talking. And, that making others feel special is one of the hallmarks of successful people.

In high school, she had me read How to Win Friends and Influence People. I’ve read it several times since and I think it’s one of the most important books a businessperson can read.

No matter what kind of business you’re in, relationships matter. When you treat people with respect and integrity, you’ll go far!

Happy Mother’s Day!

Thank you, Mom, for being such a remarkable role model and cheerleader for me! I’m blessed to have you as a mother. Happy Mother’s Day!

What business lessons have you learned from your Mom?

In fact, that happened yesterday when I shared an article on Twitter about a Chrome extension that allows you to schedule updates on Google Plus. I thought that was pretty nifty.

But, some people will tell you that all forms of scheduling and automation for social media is wrong. That it removes the “social” aspect of the platform. Or, that it turns you into a robot.

I disagree.

Scheduling or automating social media is not inherently wrong. It can help you be more efficient on social networks, which is especially important for small businesses short on time.

For instance, I do all of my reading either early in the morning or late at night. Instead of sending updates all at once at those odd hours, I use tools like Buffer, Timely and Hootsuite to schedule updates at optimal times throughout the day.

That works well for me.

But, the problem is that it’s so easy (and common) for businesses to screw this up. If you’re not careful, automation and scheduling can be a disaster.

Automation isn’t the only thing to ruin engagement

Let me be clear. There are plenty of businesses that have set their social profiles on complete autopilot, and as a result, lack responsiveness and engagement.

But, there are also businesses that fail in the engagement department even WITHOUT scheduling or automation.

If your business never takes the time to respond to questions or invite a dialogue – whether you use automation or not – your company may not be suited for social media. After all, the point is to engage with your customers, prospects and peers. But all too often, company culture gets in the way of that.

Automating Done Right

Whether you decide to schedule posts on social networks or use tools to automatically follow people on Twitter, there are some things you should keep in mind to approach automation the right way:

• Pay attention to timing. If you do schedule your posts, keep it during hours when someone is able to respond. Even if you’re not on social channels all day long, it helps to be available should something arise that needs your attention.

• Continue to engage. A “set-it-and-forget-it” solution becomes little more than an RSS feed. If you’re going to schedule or automate updates, make sue you still take the time to engage with your audience. After all, if you never respond or talk to people on the social web, why would someone tune in?
• Don’t oversell. Whether you’re scheduling updates or automating tweets, make sure you’re not just sharing your own content. No one likes non-stop promotion.
• Watch out for spam. If you decide to use a tool to auto follow people on Twitter, be mindful that you may end up following a bunch of bots and unsavory characters. Before you go this route, think about which is more important – your time or who you choose to follow.

• Be picky. Tools like Triberr and Twitterfeed allow you to automatically share posts from designated blogs. Even if there are sites you share regularly, chances are you won’t always agree with everything they write. That’s something to keep in mind before you go down this path.

The Bottom Line

Not all scheduling and automation is bad. There are definitely some practical applications for many of these tools if used properly.

The bottom line is that you need to look at your social media strategy and determine the approach that’s right for YOUR business, not someone else’s.

It’s Your Turn

I’d love to know what you think. Let’s create a healthy discussion about the pros and cons of using scheduling or automation for social media.

Do you automate or schedule any of your social media activities? Why or why not? Do you think this approach helps or hurts a business?

Image credit: randychiu

With all of the options available, how do you know which ones to choose?

As you might suspect, there is no one right answer. It all depends on your social media strategy and what you want to accomplish via the social web (i.e. provide customer service, find new business, drive traffic to your site, etc.).

Once you’ve taken the time to determine your goals and how you want to use social media, you can look at the various options and determine the right network one for your business.

While this isn’t a complete list, here is a quick run-down of some of the most popular social networks to help you determine which one is right for you:

Facebook

Facebook has more than 900 million users, so chances are good that your target audience spends time here. Although the user-base skews younger, the fastest growing demographic is for people over 45.

Facebook is great for customer engagement, testing ideas and getting feedback, and sharing coupons or deals. However, as Jason Falls aptly pointed out yesterday, people don’t go to Facebook to engage with your brand, they go there to check out pictures of their grandkids. That’s something to keep in mind if you focus your energy here.

Twitter

Even though the user-base for Twitter is much smaller, more than 40 percent of Americans see tweets through the media on a daily basis. That’s pretty stunning.

Twitter is fantastic for providing customer service, finding potential business opportunities, engaging with your community and developing relationships.

Even if you don’t use Twitter, you can still reap the benefits of it by using it’s search functionality to learn more about what people are saying about a topic or scope out your competitors.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is more than just an online resume. Yes, it’s more serious than other networks, but it offers a great way find and connect with professionals without all of the fluff.

LinkedIn also offers the ability to connect with people through groups. I have one client who gets most of their traffic from LinkedIn because the owner is an active participant in various industry groups.

Google Plus

There’s much debate about whether Google Plus is a viable option for businesses right now. Google is undoubtedly forcing businesses to think about Google Plus because it is so closely tied to search results. Even if your business isn’t using Google Plus, how you rank in search results is still affected by how people use the network.

Although there isn’t a ton of action on the social network itself, businesses may want to add a “+1” button to their site to give users the ability to easily share your company’s content.

YouTube

People love video, which explains why more than 4 billion videos are viewed on YouTube EVERY DAY.

Because YouTube is part of Google, there are great search engine benefits for having videos on YouTube. Also, adding video to your content mix, can help you appeal to a wider audience. If video is part of your plan, YouTube definitely needs to be in the mix.

Pinterest

Pinterest is a photo-lovers dream! It’s very visual, which is why food, fashion and crafts rank high among the content there. And, as a result, women dominate this network.

If you’ve got a visual business – photography, design, real estate, restaurants, stylists, retail – you might want to consider Pinterest, especially since it is driving more revenue per click than Facebook or Twitter.

Just Pick One

Although it may be tempting to rush out and create profiles on all of the social networks available, I encourage businesses, especially smaller ones, to just pick one network to start with.

That way, you can focus all of your time and energy mastering one network instead of several.

If you want more information, check out this infographic for a nice, visual comparison of some of the top social networks.

And, if you need a smart social media strategy for your business, drop us a line to see how we can help.

Does this help? Which social networks do you use for your business?

If you weren’t able to attend, here are my top takeaways from the event.

I also thought you’d enjoy reading what some other folks got out of it too:

•  Thoughts After Social Slam 2012 – Jayme Soulati
• 9 Quick Takeaways from Social Slam – Jenn Whinnem at Connecticut Health Foundation
• 50+ Huge Ideas from #SoSlam – Courtney Seiter at Raven Tools

Let me know if there are some other good ones I missed.

In addition to all the great articles about Social Slam, there was lots of other great stuff floating around the web this week. Here are some of my favorites:

• The 3 Essential Qualities of a TRUE Social Media Expert – This post from Marcus Sheridan is one I wish I had written. It cuts to the heart of what any social media expert should be. If you’re thinking about hiring someone to help you with social media, you should check this out.
• Goodbye PostRank, Hello Google Social Reports – In case you haven’t heard the news, Google has added more social reporting tools into Google Analytics. There’s some pretty nifty stuff in there, including the ability track conversions from social media and learn about the behavior of site visitors from each social network. This article from Small Business Trends highlights some of the key features.
• Traditional Advertising is Truly Dead – This post at Copyblogger has sparked quite a debate. While I don’t think traditional advertising is dead, I do agree that the age-old approach of brand advertising needs to change. If you’re going to go with interruption marketing (i.e. TV ads), you’d better find a way to solve problsm or tell a story in a compelling way…otherwise folks will just tune out. Go read the post and the comments for a lively discussion about whether content marketing has replaced advertising.

• How to Use Google Trends to Get Better Traffic – My friends over at Fluxe Digital Marketing wrote a tremendous step-by-step guide about how to use Google Trends to gain intelligence about topics to write about on your blog and when to write about them.

• 7 Blog Promotion Tests You Should Try Now – If you’re stuck on how to grow your blog’s audience, you should check this simple ideas. Stanford Smith at Pushing Social wrote this post as part of his 1K New Reader Challenge. Check it out if you’re serious about growing your blog.

What were your favorite reads this week? 

Below is my first article for the NBJ and I wanted to share it with you here also because I think it’s important for businesses to ask these questions before diving into social media. You can see the original article here or read on below. Enjoy!

* * *

It’s no secret that social media continues to grow in popularity.

In fact, latest research shows that 54 percent of Americans over the age of 12 use Facebook and more than 40 percent see tweets through the media on a daily basis.

Businesses would be wise to take advantage of this opportunity.

But if you’re diving into social media because you want some shiny icons on your website or because “everyone else is doing it,” you’re in for a rude awakening. Plunging into social media without a well-thought-out strategy will lead to wasted time and failed efforts.

Before setting up profiles on every social network, here are four questions your business should answer first:

1. What are my goals?

There are a number of ways you can use social media for your business – raise awareness, provide customer service, build relationships, find business opportunities and so much more.

Pick the one thing you want to get out of it and then determine what success looks like. That way, you know how to measure your efforts.

2. Which networks does my audience use?

One of the biggest mistakes businesses make on the social web is choosing the wrong network.

Where does your audience spend their time online? If you’re not sure, ask them. Send a survey to your customers. Encourage your team to ask clients when they call. Or, you can even use handy tools like Rapportive, Social Mention or MailChimp to help you do some of the sleuth work.

Once you know which social networks your customers and prospects use most, you’ll know where to invest your efforts.

3. What will I share?

If social media were a hamburger, the content would be the meat. To make your efforts worthwhile, you must have some content that you can share. Without it, your social media efforts would be very thin on value.

Your content can be any number of things — blog posts, videos, case studies, white papers or webinars — as long as you provide something useful for your audience.

4. What is my budget?

Although most social networks don’t cost anything to sign up, social media is NOT free. It takes time to manage your company’s social media efforts, so determine who will do that — you, a staff member or an outside consultant.

If you don’t enlist the proper resources before you get started, you’ll have trouble sustaining your efforts.

So, this begs the question, is your business ready for social media? Which questions do you still need to answer?

I FINALLY got to meet some people IRL (“in real life”) that I had gotten to know online – folks like Stanford Smith, Gini Dietrich, Marcus Sheridan, Margie Clayman, Sean McGinnis, Adam Toporek, Davina Brewer and others. I love it that I got huge bear hugs from people I’ve never met and from those I met for the first time last year. That’s certainly a testament to the power of social media!

But, in addition to reuniting with friends, the day was full of tips and ideas from digital marketing leaders. If you weren’t able to attend, here are my top 10 takeaways from the conference:

1. Focus on Integrated Marketing

Gini Dietrich kicked off the day with an awesome keynote about the importance of an integrated marketing approach. Gini encourages companies – large or small – to tear down the silos and create a “marketing round”, a roundable of various departments (i.e. HR, customer service, marketing, etc.) working together towards business goals.

I’ve seen this approach firsthand and it definitely works if you’re willing to invest the time into it. Gini’s got a book coming out in a few days that talks more about this. I encourage you to check it out!

2. Creatively Promote Your Blog

Stanford Smith of Pushing Social offered up 10 blogging ideas in 10 minutes and it was jam-packed with good stuff (see the link above for his slides). He encouraged folks to find creative ways to promote your blog, such as printed materials, invoices (after all, everyone reads those!), email signatures and offline advertising.

I also liked how he talked about personalizing your blog to include “bright faces” – you, your customers and employees. Readers love seeing content that focuses on PEOPLE.

3. Use LinkedIn for Personal SEO

Although LinkedIn has tons of potential for business purposes, it’s also a great SEO booster for individuals. Presenter Jon Moss shares a name with a band member from the Culture Club, so he used LinkedIn to help his name higher in Google search results.

He also talks about you can use LinkedIn to pimp your blog and showcase your expertise by answering questions. You can see more of his tips here.

4. Start Using Video

Companies don’t have to have professional actors or high-level equipment to use video effectively. Stephanie Wonderlin tells businesses that they can get started using video for less than $2,000. She encourages businesses to tell stories and also emphasized the importance of speed – videos should be between 1-2 minutes.

5. Use Social Media as a Focus Group

The super-smart Tom Webster of Edison Research shared his insights on the deluge of data we see regarding the social web and how to make sense of it all.

He talked about how social media can be a tremendous focus group. And, while social media will never give you all the answers, it will help you ask better questions. Tom urged attendees to do your homework to help you find the right answers for your own brand.

Tom also did an excellent job recovering from some technical difficulties during his talk. Truly, the mark of a skilled presenter!

6. Pay Attention to Social Search

Whether you’re a fan of Google Plus platform or not, there’s no denying it has an effect on search, said Sam Fiorella, Sean McGinnis and Eric Pratum during the Social Seach Panel.

Google Plus is a layer on top of your search engine experience that ranks certain pages higher based on the number of times an article was shared for +1’d, regardless of whether you have a Google Plus profile. Even if you don’t engage on the Google Plus social platform, you might want to add the +1 button to your blog posts and set up a Google Plus Profile page.

Also, the panelists suggested using the “rel = author” tag to connect your Google profile with your blog. This pulls your avatar into search results, which helps improve visibility.

 7. Use Personalization to Give a Better Experience

With social media, brands, platforms and retailers are at war for our attention. Mitch Joel’s keynote focused on urging businesses to start thinking about the consumer – what’s in it for them?

Mitch gave an excellent example with Charmin’s “sit or squat” app. Instead of being another lame app that points to a company website, it uses GPS to locate the nearest public bathroom. And, it provides user-rated feedback about cleanliness and amenities (i.e. changing table, etc.).

This app isn’t focused on overt selling. Instead, it’s about helping consumers. But, in doing so, it breeds brand loyalty. More companies should follow this example.

8. Email Marketing is Not Dead

Although social media is all the rage, DJ Waldow shared that 77 percent of people want to get permission marketing messages via email.

He offered a few ideas to integrate your email and social media efforts – add social icons to your emails to make them shareable, add links to share your emails on social networks and send dedicated emails with a call-to-action to follow you on each social network. You can find his full presentation here.

9. Use Content as a Sales Tool

Marcus Sheridan, aka The Sales Lion, is one fierce presenter! He got the crowd energized while talking about how content marketing helped turn around his fiberglass pool company during the recession. Just Google “fiberglass vs. concrete pool” and you’ll see his company, River Pool and Spas, comes up first.

Not only does blogging help businesses from an SEO perspective, it also gives you information to share with prospects. In fact, he requires that anyone who wants to meet with his company has read a few designated blog posts and their ebook first. That way, their sales team spends less time teaching and more time closing. Smart stuff.

10. Anyone Can be an Influencer

Mark Schaefer ended the day with some tidbits from his book, Return on Influence. On the social web, you don’t have to be a celebrity to have influence. Mark shared stories about how regular folks like Calvin Lee has become a citizen influencer with the extraordinary ability to spread content online.

Mark also shared a story about how one company was receiving criticism through social networks and they were trying to decide how to respond. The company checked the Klout scores of the people complaining and determined the individuals did not have the ability to spread content in a way that would make it go viral. So, the company decided not to respond and the issue quickly blew over. That’s a win.

Whether you agree with Klout and other influencer measurement applications, it proves there are meaningful ways these tools can be used for businesses.

A Round of Applause

The event was championed by Mark Schaefer and put together by the Social Media Club of Knoxville. They deserve a huge pat on the back! Also, thank you to all of the volunteers, speakers and the sponsors for putting together an excellent and affordable social media conference!

What were your takeaways from the event? What did you learn?

Thanks to Jenn Whinnem for the picture of her, Stanford Smith and me. It turned out WAY better than mine! You can see more of my photos from the event here.

Sure, you need to share your own stuff. But, you need to mix that in with other useful and entertaining pieces of content so you don’t turn into a non-stop promotion machine.

There are a number of free tools and resources available to help you curate content to share on your various social networks. Here are the ones I use and recommend the most:

StrawberryJ.am

StrawberryJ.am is one of my secret weapons. It looks at all of the people you follow on Twitter and then sends you a daily email with the articles that were shared most within your network (and who shared it). While popular content isn’t always the best, this is a really good indicator of the trends and articles that people are talking about. It’s a huge time saver and I often find new content this way too.

P.S. I shared this one with my newsletter subscribers last year. If you don’t want to miss tips like this, subscribe here.

StumbleUpon

I have the StumbleUpon toolbar installed in Chrome (my browser), which lets me easily bookmark content. But, I can also use it to randomly stumble or find other articles that people have recommended. I also get a weekly email with recommended articles within my chosen content areas.

LinkedIn Today

LinkedIn has recently started sending a weekly email with top headlines based on the industries you are following. You can also find LinkedIn Today when you login right under the status bar. There’s always great stuff here.

LinkedIn Groups

If you are a member of groups on LinkedIn, you can find all sorts of content based on your interests and industry. If you’re not a member of any groups, I encourage you to find some within your areas of interest.

RSS Feeds

I subscribe to more than 60 blogs and I regularly turn to Google Reader to check out these feeds. My Reader always has way more articles than time to read them. J

Zite

Zite is a great tool for your iPad that includes content from your RSS Reader and uses it to help you discover new content relevant to your interests. You can give their recommendations a thumb up or thumb down to help the tool improve the articles it serves up for you. Pretty nifty.

Flipboard

Flipboard is a visually stunning iPad app that pulls in your RSS and social media feeds so you can view everything all in one place. It’s a great app for discovering content in a visual way.

E-Letter Subscriptions

I subscribe to a number of e-letters to help me keep up with content from a variety of sources. For instance, I get daily emails from the Nashville Business Journal to keep up with my local community and Jay Baer’s new “One Social Thing” email to stay apprised of the latest news on the social media front.

Social Networks

Of course, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+ are all great places to find content to read and share.

AllTop

If you’re looking for some blogs to follow, AllTop is a fantastic resource. It showcases the top blogs on all sorts of different topics. So, no matter your niche, you can find blogs in your area of interest there.

NutshellMail

If you have trouble getting over to Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn, you can use NutshellMail to deliver you an email summary of updates from those networks. You can customize your settings to determine what information you receive and how often. Pretty handy.

I’d love to know – what tools and resources are you using to discover content to share online?

Before you begin any marketing program – social media or otherwise – you need to determine WHY you are doing it and what you want to accomplish.

That’s what I set out to teach people during my presentation on Saturday at PodCamp Nashville, a free “unconference” geared to helping people and businesses promote themselves.

During my talk, I shared questions businesses need to ask before getting started with social media along with some tips to help them be successful.

You can check out the slides from my presentation below or you can click here to get them.

PodCamp Nashville is a wonderful event put together by a fantastic community of volunteers. Kudos to Lisa French and everyone who made the event a success!

Did you attend PodCamp Nashville? What did you take away from the event?

Image credit: The very talented Kerry Woo! You can check out all of his images from PodCamp Nashville here.

And, after waiting anxiously for a response, you finally got word that your post has been approved!

After you do your little happy dance, it’s time to get back to work.

Getting your guest post published on another blog is a great way to expand your reach and engage new readers, but there are still a number of things you should do leverage this opportunity.

If you want to be a standout guest blogger who has an open invitation to write for other blogs, here are five tips to make the most of your guest post experience:

Create a special landing page to link to in your bio.

Most bloggers allow you to include a link back to your blog in a short bio at the end of your post. Instead of linking to your home page or blog, why not create a special place to welcome readers from the guest’s blog?

I learned this trick from Stanford Smith who created nifty landing pages for when he got published Copyblogger and Problogger. Not only is it a nice touch, it also gives you an opportunity to quickly share your story and provide an easy way for readers to connect with you and subscribe to your blog.

Also, don’t forget to make your hyperlinked text keyword optimized. For instance, for my guest post on Spin Sucks, I placed the link on “Nashville-based marketing and social media strategy firm” instead of on Blue Kite Marketing.

Actively participate in the comment section.

As Gini Dietrich correctly pointed out last week, engaging in the comment section is one of THE most important things you can do once your guest blog post is published.  Not only does it relieve pressure off of the host blogger, but it also shows you’re willing to be an active member of their community.

Besides, readers may have questions for YOU – not the blog owner. It would be bad form to ignore them.

Aggressively promote your post.

Although guest posting is good for you, it can also help the host blogger – especially if you bring your audience over to their place.

Show the blog owner that you’re worth having on their blog by sharing the post through your social networks.

Thank people for sharing.

I’m honored any time someone wants to share my content, so I want to make sure people know that – especially on a guest post.

If you want to stand out as a guest blogger, thank every person who shared your post on social networks. It’s a classy thing to do and they’ll be impressed that you took the time to engage with them. Yes, it’s a lot of work, but it really pays off.

Write a killer post for YOUR blog that shows up on the same day.

Jeff Goins is the master of this. Every time he scores a guest post on a popular blog, he writes a complementary piece for his blog.

This does two things – let’s your audience know that you’ve got a guest post somewhere else that they should check out and it also gives new readers who came over from the other blog a familiar topic that will make them eager to subscribe and learn more.

What works for you?

Have you tried any of these? What has worked for you? I’d love to know what guest blogging best practices you’ve seen!

Image credit: AlaskaTeacher