How To Use Twitter For Guest Posting

Twitter is one of those social media websites that is used by almost anyone with a website or blog these days. Millions of people use Twitter all around the world which gives you a whole load of opportunities as an SEO. Typically, SEO is a job that can be quite mundane with a lot of link prospecting, emailing and things like that. Of course, this is all part of SEO but as sites like Twitter pop up, it might be possible to find more fun ways to interact with people and ultimately, get links to your website.

Social media is also a big part of SEO so you will probably be using Twitter anyway. However, Twitter is not just a great way to get your own personal message out there, it is also a great way to make contact with influential people in theory, get links. Twitter is actually a great way to increase your chances of getting a guest post on a site too. Here is how to get guest posts published using Twitter.

#1 – Start Off The Normal Way

If you’re an SEO, you will already have a number of different ways of finding sites that you’d like to get links from. It might be using things like Open Site Explorer or any other backlink analysis program but basically, this part is the same.

You need to find a list of the sites that you actually want to get links from in the normal way. Sure, you could use Twitter for this in some respects too. Perhaps you could look for the influential people in your industry that have a lot of followers. In theory, the more followers they have, the more a guest post on their site is going to be worth as they are probably going to have quite a loyal following that are going to share your post and things like that. All adding to the SEO benefits.

#2 – Get Their Twitter Handles

Of course, if you were using Twitter to actually find sites that you might want to guest post on, you will have already done this but if you found the sites without twitter, you’re going to need to find the person in charges Twitter account. This is usually pretty easy as most people with blogs want people to interact with them on Twitter so their twitter handle is sure to be plastered on their blog somewhere. Start out by checking out their contact us page as it is usually somewhere on there.

Once you’ve done this, start following them on Twitter. Sure, they probably have hundreds of followers a day but it’s good to keep up to date with what they are up to anyway. It might naturally bring up opportunities to build your relationship further with them.

#3 – Tweet Them

Now, this is when you are going to make contact with them for the first time. However, you don’t want to simply tweet them any old rubbish, you want them to take notice of it. If you’ve used Twitter before and posted out blog posts you’ve done on there, you will know, not everyone usually pays that much attention, which is upsetting. Even if these people have got a lot of followers, it is probably the same for them so you need to pay them some attention.

Go to their website/blog and have a look what they’ve been talking about. Take the time to actually read some of their content and then, tweet them explaining how much you liked it or something like that. Don’t make it rubbish though, say something meaningful like “Really loved your post on {TOPIC}, although I disagree about your view on {TOPIC}”. By doing this, you are ensuring that they are more than likely going to tweet back, which is the first part of establishing a relationship with them.

#4 – Be Friendly

Unlike a lot of people seem to think, now is certainly not the time to ask them if you can guest post on their site. This is going to come later down the line. For now, it is important that you work on building up that relationship. Maybe read their blog regularly for a little while and comment on a few things that they talk about. Make them feel loved and let them know that you love their content.

If you have the opportunity at all, it can really pay off to meet these people in real life. This is usually possible when it comes to local SEO, but not so much for nationwide SEO.

#5 – Ask If You Can Guest Post

Now, you know this person, you’ve been tweeting at each other for a couple of weeks so it’s time to worm your way into their blog. Now, I want to stress that you shouldn’t just say the words “Can I guest post on your site?” but rather, you need to be clever.

Maybe tweet them something like “Just been looking into [RELATED TOPIC], looks amazing, next blog post for @LINKPROSPECT perhaps?”. This does two things, it shows that you know something about a certain topic and it asks them a question, which will hopefully spark a conversation.

After this, you might want to offer to write them a short post about it or something like that. Ask if you can send them a quick email and tell them want you want to write. Write a nice email and hopefully, they will say yes”.

Conclusion

Of course, this is just one technique for getting links on twitter in the form of guest posts. There are a lot of ways to get links on Twitter in other ways too which are definitely worth looking into. The bottom line is that you should be creative on Twitter and make sure that you utilise it. There are a lot of well-known names on there that you can communicate with directly so don’t waste your opportunity.