Guest Posting for Franchises

One of the strategies that internet marketers are turning to more and more frequently as the calendar turns to 2015 is the idea of the guest post.

I’ll organize this into three different sections:

1. What is guest posting?
2. What are the benefits of guest posting?
3. What are some examples of guest posting?

1.What is guest posting?

First of all, let’s assign a quick definition. According to WP Business Tips:

As the name suggests, guest posting involves writing an article or post to be published on someone else’s website or blog, with you acting as a guest author.You might choose the topic of the article or post, provided it is on the same theme or topic of the target website, or the website’s owner might give you a topic to write about for the post. In either case, you will be required to write an article that will be of interest to the site’s readers.

So essentially, it’s providing content to another publisher in an attempt to reach a new audience. So, for a franchise, it’s about promoting your franchise to an audience that you’d otherwise be unable to reach.

2.What are the benefits of guest posting?

• Access to a new audience for branding – It’s important to get your brand in front of new people. As more people know about your franchise, they’re more likely to either seek you out as a franchisee or as a customer. Both are great! Think about putting up a billboard in a new location.
• New way to drive traffic to your website – Most times you guest post, the publisher will allow you to include direct links to your website. As more and more people read that article, the higher the likelihood that those readers are clicking off to your site. Given that you’re not paying for those clicks, it’s a very efficient way to drive traffic.
• Link-backs for SEO benefits – Depending on who the publisher is, the links from their website to yours is a very strong sign in Google’s eyes that you are a reputable institution. For example, if you guest posted for the NY Times, Google trusts the NY Times to only publish solid material. So they are going to credit your website. Eventually, this could lead to your franchise shooting up the organic rankings.
• Credibility – As you’re having all sorts of different discussions with potential partners, being featured on other sites is a wonderful piece of credibility to turn to. It’s not that difficult to see a world where you are selling a franchise to someone and you say, “We were even recently featured in the Wall Street Journal.”
• Personal branding – I’m putting this one last because it’s a bit of an ulterior motive, but guest posts are often credited to individuals as opposed to companies. Therefore, if you’re the one who’s credited with the guest post, then you get a bit of personal credibility that is otherwise not attainable as the Wall Street Journal will not likely publish your personal op/ed. If you were searching for a new job, for example, you could point to a guest post as a reason to hire you.

3.What are some examples?

The number of guest post examples are fairly grand, as it’s a ubiquitous internet marketing strategy, but allow me to share three specific cases, where FranchiseHelp is involved.

• FranchiseHelp guest posts an article about text messaging on HelloLeadGeneration.com– In an attempt to promote our expertise in lead generation, we reached out to this blog and offered them a piece of our content for their blog.
• The UPS Store guest posts an article on FranchiseHelp – In an attempt to get introduce the prospect of opening a UPS Store to our blog’s audience, a PR firm on behalf of the UPS store reached out and asked to write an article.
• FranchiseHelp guest posts an article on Business Insider – For credibility associated with being seen in a large internet publication, we submitted a number of articles loosely associated with franchising to BI.

We recommend at least trying a guest posting strategy. It can be a great strategy for lots of different reasons. Heck! You can even guest post on our site! Let us know when you’re ready!