One of my clients emailed me last week to touch base about a recommendation they’d received from their SEO team.Essentially, the idea was that they should be pitching partnership articles with similar businesses as a means to put the coworking space in front of new audiences.And, while coworking spaces often profile their members or host them as guest experts for articles on their own blogs and email newsletters, it’s less common for them to pitch articles to other businesses.So, the big question was this: should we pitch articles to other companies and, if so, how?My response was that this could be beneficial in a few ways, including:
- Getting the coworking space in front of new audiences
- Including the coworking space in a value-driven article
- Getting a backlink, which helps with SEO
However, there are a number of considerations to keep in mind when doing so, including that we’d need to:
- Craft a topic to pitch that would be beneficial to the other business’ audience rather than just self-promotion for our space--it would need to include the message we wanted to convey within a larger topic, packaged among other benefits, and tailored to align with what the audience comes to that blog in search of
- Pitch the idea to the company and get their approval
- Write the article on their behalf rather than asking them to write it for you
- Ensure the other business was willing to promote the article via social media and email for maximum exposure
- Confirm that the article would mention the coworking space and link back to the website]
So, the answer to the question of whether you should pitch guest articles to other websites is maybe.You should do it if:
- There’s a strong brand fit between the two companies
- You’ve thoroughly researched the other site’s reach and audience to ensure they align with your target demographic
- You’ve got the time, bandwidth, and expertise available to write a strong article
It can definitely have a big pay-off. But you just need to make sure the juice is worth the squeeze.