Josh Peters is a freelance social media consultant and corporate trainer from Salt Lake City, Utah who, when not frolicking in the fields of social media, enjoys working on his startup RoyalAnts, watching horror movies with his wife, and playing with his dogs. He blogs at Shuaism and would really like to connect with you on Facebook, LinkedIn, and/or Twitter.

Josh has a unique challenge for Planting Seeds readers - check it out near the end of the post!

Guerrilla Social Media Marketing: Guest Post and Articles
By Josh Peters

What’s the best way to get your name spread around town? Have someone else do it for you!

The last Guerrilla Social Media Marketing (GSMM) post was about using tools to create a features and benefits list to extol the virtues of your brand and get others to spread it for you. This one is about sharing your insights, which I thought was appropriate since I’m guest posting here on Mark Goren’s fantastic Planting Seeds blog.

One of the age old guerrilla marketing tactics was to write articles for local newspapers, dailies, or newsletters on subjects you were familiar with. This usually pertained to your business and at the end of the article the publisher would allow you a little byline about yourself and your business. This was the epitome of a win/win situation. You received free publicity and the publisher received valuable content for their readers.

The same thing works today as it did yesterday and will work tomorrow. If you can’t tell that’s exactly what I’m doing with the GSMM series (in fact the whole GSMM series is a case study of its own ideals). I wanted to spread the ideas and help as many people as I can by posting the entire series on other people’s blogs. This works for me because I get my ideas in front of their readers, they win because they get free content and get to take the day off.

When posting on someone else’s blog there are a couple of things to remember and consider. Since people like lists, and since you and I are both people I’m going to “list out” some key points.

Remember

• The blog, ezine, site, etc you’re putting the article is not allowing you to post a 300+ word advertisement of yourself. They are expecting content and value.
• Make it the best advice or content that you can. Don’t just slop something together and throw it out. Their readers will be judging you on your post/article.
• When sending your article make sure you attach all relevant images, don’t create work for your host by making them hunt for images.
• Ask if your host wants to have anchor tags for links or just the links so they can add them.
• If you’re a pain to work with it dramatically decreases your chances of being asked /allowed back.

Consider

• Their audience and if your content fits their subject or audience.
• Your language and writing style and if it’s going to fit or if you’ll need to change it around a bit.
• If the blog or other online publication is really the right fit at all. You don’t want to make a Meatball Sundae.
• If it’s something you will enjoy doing.

The blog is pretty much the hub of social media. It’s a point to gather, discuss, and share ideas. Your information can be tweeted, bookmarked, emailed, and shared from that one location in an instant.

If you run a blog for your company then writing a guest post will probably come easily to you, if not you might want to find someone in your company who does like to write or perhaps runs their own blog. Either way the rewards alone for guest posting will be great for both exposure and experience. It’s something you can link to from your own site and point customers to help build your credibility. It’s a great way to build out your body of work and share your ideas and your passion.

Some people have even turned it into a regular gig and its helped them gain great exposure for their own stuff while working with big names in the industry. Look at how Jesse Stay has helped grow himself and his Twitter service Social Too by becoming a regular guest on Louis Gray’s site. This also helped Louis Gray by giving him someone else to help pump out great content.

This is the part where I tell you how I’ve applied this idea to myself and give out a project that I’d like you to get involved with.

Me: You’re reading it. I’m doing 50 guest posts to spread the ideas of GSMM, start new conversations and look at tools from a new perspective.

You: This is going to be easy. I want you to do a guest post somewhere and then comeback and post the link in the comments here. If you’ve already done a guest post somewhere then I’d like you to post both your blog’s link and the link to your guest post in the comments.

I’d love to see you readers fill the comments with examples of your work. If you want to plant a seed the best way to do it is to share what you’ve done. Go ahead and brag a bit. Give us your blog link, a link to your best guest post and if you have a story about how that guest post helped you (or didn’t) leave that too. All examples will also get linked from the Guerrilla Social Media Marketing resource page!

Thank you for reading,

Josh “Shua” Peters

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This is part of a year-long project about taking offline guerrilla marketing ideas/tactics and applying them to social media marketing. If you enjoyed this post and would like to host one of the Guerrilla Social Media Marketing series on your blog, please email me: shua (at) shuaism.com. To easily follow the series please subscribe to my feed via RSS or email.

Tags: GSMM, Guerrilla Social Media Marketing, Jacob Morgan, Jesse Stay, Josh Peters, Louis Gray, Meatball Sundae, Planting Seeds, Planting Seeds online, PlantingSeeds.ca, RoyalAnts, RoyalAntsJosh, Shuaism, Social Media, Social Too