CNN's anderson cooperLast week, I mentioned that guest blogging is one way to market your blog. If you watch 60 Minutes regularly, there’s a good chance that you know Anderson Cooper (an employee of CNN) has contributed stories to 60 minutes every couple weeks for quite awhile (his latest feature was an eye-opening one on “War Against Women” in the Congo). Additionally, there’s news today that Charlie Rose from PBS is going to start contributing stories as well. What is the significance of this?

Anderson and Charlie are, in a sense, “guest blogging” (if they were writing). They are tapping into the massive audience of 60 Minutes and building their brand awareness with an audience who otherwise might not be aware of their work. How? By leaving “breadcrumbs” to their main shows. To me, it’s a win-win for everyone. CBS gets great content/reporting for 60 Minutes while Anderson and Charlie build awareness for their own shows — not by spamming — but by adding value.

The concept of leaving breadcrumbs is pretty straight forward. Go to a place with a large audience and build your brand awareness through providing value to that audience. In Anderson Cooper’s case, the “breadcrumb” is when 60 Minutes introduces him as “Anderson Cooper from CNN” — there’s no mention of CNN during his reports (and there shouldn’t be). There is also a significant benefit to CBS in this case; viewers who watch Anderson Cooper’s show are more likely to watch 60 minutes if Anderson is doing one of the featured reports.

There are several people in the real estate space doing a great job of utilizing the opportunity to leave breadcrumbs — two that come to my mind right off the bat are Larry Lohrman and Jay Thompson (both of whom happen to contribute to Geek Estate).

In an effort to keep this short and to the point, I’m not even going to get into the SEO benefit to leaving valuable breadcrumbs all over the web.

Anderson Cooper is “guest blogging” — so why aren’t you?

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  1. Scott Ficek on January 18, 2008 6:18 pm

    Great post Drew.

    I agree completely. I have offered to do guest posts in the past on some sites where I frequently comment and/or have spoken with the owner. Despite having common interests (and blog themes) with the blog owner and developing a rapport with them, I never get taken up on the offer.

    Any thoughts on how to get your offer accepted?

  2. Missy Caulk on January 19, 2008 11:29 am

    Great idea, I’ve leaving a few crumbs and will start to do more.

  3. Kaye Thomas on January 21, 2008 9:59 am

    I think we are going to see more sites utilizing guest blogging. Have a guest brings a different outlook to your blog..

  4. David on January 21, 2008 10:05 am

    Not only does it have SEO and Marketing value. It’s fun!

  5. Drew Meyers on January 21, 2008 1:48 pm

    Scott-
    “Any thoughts on how to get your offer accepted?”

    If you want to contribute here, just e-mail me — but I’m guessing you are directing that as a general question. I think the blog you want to guest post for has to want a guest author (I don’t think they all do). And second, send them a sample post right off the bat so they get a feel for your writing.

  6. Coed Naked Link Building for Real Estate Geeks! | GeekEstate Blog - Real Estate Technology News and Analysis for Real Estate Professionals on May 12, 2009 10:04 am

    [...] Writing Guest Articles: You know, this “guest blogging” method used to be so talked about and now, ummm, not so much. There is a big nasty four letter word that causes people to overlook [...]

  7. A Perspective on How to Get Work Done if Your Job is Social Media | My Thoughts on Microfinance, Life, Web 2.0, Blogging, and Business on November 18, 2009 1:08 am

    [...] over and read the whole article, and the comments. But note that I still think leaving breadcrumbs is a good idea; you just need to pick and choose wisely. 0 [...]

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