How to Use Guest Blog Posts to Promote Your Children’s Book

​What is Guest Blog Posting?

Guest blog posting is when you create an article for a website that is not yours. Many authors are utilizing guest blog posts as a tool to promote their children’s books.

Why Do a Guest Blog Post as an Author?

There are a few reasons authors should be doing guest blog posts. One is to create a sort of “billboard” for your book. The more blog posts you have about your book, the higher the probability of someone coming across it. Another reason to create guest blog posts is to create a backlink to your website. If you don’t know what a backlink is, it’s when someone has a link on their website that takes the visitor to yours. Why this is important, having more links pointing to your book’s website will not only funnel more potential customers to buy your book but it will also increase the domain authority of your website. What is domain authority? It is a measurement tool that search engines use to grade the popularity of your website. The higher, the better. Guest posting is a great way for an author to build their brand. When laid out properly, it gives the writer another searchable link when their name is Googled, which increases visibility and credibility.

Benefits of Guest Blog Posting

• Enhance Your Own Reputation
• Exposure to Targeted Traffic
• Expand Your Personal Network
• Increase Book Sales
• Increase Organic Traffic
• Grow Your Social Media Following
• Improve Your Online Authority
• Grow Brand Awareness
• Offers Network Expansion
• Generate Qualified Leads
• Get Useful Feedback from the Community
• Expands a Portfolio of Work
• Improves Credibility

Just because your content is on someone’s website doesn’t mean it’s not serving a purpose. Backlinks, name recognition, authority and more are all derived from that blog post on another site with your name on it.

Research Potential Blogs to Post on

You want to find blogs that will be willing to accept your post. You want to find authoritative websites that discuss children’s books. Don’t just find any random website to post on. You want to find a website that looks like people will follow it and see your post. Try to find a website or social media account with a good size audience. Go to Google and search for the word “blog” and type in some keywords relevant to your book or the topic you want to write about. Find Facebook groups dedicated to children's books and ask a question to the community to see if anyone has had luck with a website for guest posting. 

Give Your Pitch 

​You need to reach out, typically by email, to the website you want to guest post on. If you think you have a great article to submit, great. But, you should offer more than one topic idea so that they have options to choose from. Make sure you read instructions on the website. Some guest posting blogs give specific instructions on how to submit. Tailor your pitch specifically to their blog. Make it sound like your article is perfect for them because this or that. Don’t just write a template that you mass send out to 100’s of blogs. Personalize each one. Trust me, it will increase the chances of them saying yes. 

Look for Paid Guest Posts

Yes, a lot of guest posts are for a fee. Quality blogs know their worth. They know that it's more of a benefit to you to promote your children’s book on their website. You are receiving marketing for your book as well as a backlink to your website or purchase page. Expect there to be a fee. 

Write Quality Blog Posts

​Don’t just write a quick article and link it back to your website. Most websites won’t even allow this. Write a well thought out article. Don’t just write about your book. Write about a topic that you think people want to read about. Target readers in your audience and bring up your children’s book as an example but keep the main focus of the article on the topic. Use Google to search for questions that people may have about books and then try to answer those questions in your post. The better your article is, the better chance you have of it being found. You can even discuss other favorite children's books. People love seeing/reading about their favorite books from when they were a kid. I’ll see an article on Facebook with an image of a book I used to love which will make me want to click on it. 

Don’t Reuse Blog Posts

I know it’s so much easier and tempting to just resume the same blog post over and over, but you really should make each post unique. If you reuse the same one, it won’t get picked up by search engines. They only allow the first original source of text to be indexed on Google. That’s one major reason why you want to make sure everything you write is unique. 

Draw the Reader's Attention in with Intriguing Headlines

Make sure the headline really pops. People tend to skim through articles and only click into them once they see a headline that resonates with them. Make it interesting enough that they want to read to find out what your post is really about.

End the Post with a Bio

Include a short biography at the end of your guest post, with a link to your author website or to a website where readers can purchase your book.

Use Cross Promotion

​Now that You have your guest post published, share that baby! Use your social media account to like and share. Get your audience to see that you were featured on someone else's website.

Follow Up and Blog Again

If your post does well and brings in lots of book sales, follow up and ask for another guest posting opportunity with that blogger. Develop ongoing relationships with high-traffic blogs and become a regular contributor. If you write quality posts that bring in lots of traffic for the blog, they may reach out to you to do another post. 

Increase Your Book Sales More Directly

​A purchase is only one click away in a guest post. When someone sees your book in other media outlets, they have to remember your book to look it up later and purchase your book. With a guest post, you can link directly to your book website or Amazon page. Your prospective reader can purchase your book quickly and efficiently.

​Bottom Line

​Guest posting works. You can get higher search engine rankings and more book sales. For me, it’s worth the time to write your post. If you want to try other methods of marketing first, that’s fine. Eventually, most people reach a plateau and they just run out of ideas to help market their books. It’s exciting when you make your first post and you look at your website traffic and there it is, your first referral source from that awesome blog post you just did. I always think of guest posts like billboard advertisements. Each time you create one, there's another billboard out there on the internet with your book on it.