Sponsored posts as a complement to your content strategy

Sponsored posts are an excellent way to monetize your site, for those bloggers and influencers whose blogs are already beginning to be relevant.

And in turn, they are also a very good way for an advertiser to improve their visibility and conversions in an easier and faster way.

Currently there are several specialized platforms for finding these specific niches to help brands and advertisers select influential bloggers within their sector.

Today I would like to tell you how sponsored posts can be the perfect complement to your content marketing strategy.

Let ‘s begin!

What is a sponsored post?

A sponsored post is an article that a blogger or expert influencer in a niche market writes on his blog in exchange for a financial consideration.

Sponsored articles are part of the current content strategy of important brands and advertisers to reach a more specific target audience: social networks, thematic blogs, digital media…

More user-friendly advertising

The main objective of a sponsored post is to achieve an impact on a very specific audience without doing it aggressively, providing them with information that is of interest to them with added value content.

Ideally, for this strategy to work properly, the bloggers themselves prepare their content based on the agreements previously established with the advertiser.

How advertisers and bloggers can benefit from

sponsored posts

The benefits that sponsored posts can bring within a good content marketing strategy are numerous for both parties involved.

Benefits for advertisers

For brands, sponsored posts will allow them to obtain greater visibility in general and everything that this entails:

• Improve your organic positioning.
• Increase conversions thanks to qualified traffic
• And of course, brand awareness

For advertisers, it is almost inevitable with their content strategy to introduce sponsored articles.

To explain the reason we are going to see a case study of one of our getfluence advertisers for the objective: qualified traffic and visibility.

In this case, a market study needed to be promoted. In order to attract qualified traffic, various means of dissemination were used:

• social networks: Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn
• email marketing campaigns
• corporate blog
• sponsored post in a specialized medium whose target audience is similar to the advertisers target audience

Result: the publication of the sponsored content in the influential medium produced: 

• 484 new users to the site
• 55 conversions (subscriptions in the marketplace)

*Figures higher than the results obtained with other forms of dissemination as can be seen in the Google Analytics graph.

Some of the main advantages of hiring sponsored articles can be: 

• Campaigns that last over time: unlike other specific marketing actions, sponsored posts are static content that last over time.

• Increase in backlinks: either through direct links to a URL or through longtails, improving the SEO strategy and increasing the visibility and authority of the site.

• Improvement of organic positioning on Google: sponsored content of different kinds (press releases, guides, tutorials…) improve organic positioning.

• Genuine content: for brands, using influencers means approaching their target audience in a more natural and friendly way, multiplying the levels of engagement.

Benefits for bloggers

For bloggers, working with sponsored articles allows them to diversify their sources of income while adding value for their audience.

The guest posting strategy is something that has always been used by bloggers as a means of altruistic collaboration and as a link building strategy. 

With sponsored content, this technique evolves towards collaboration between influencers and brands, through a close relationship in which both parties benefit.

These are the prices that are usually discussed according to the objective of the advertiser. The price is determined by the degree of influence, but also by other aspects such as: if it appears on the home page or in a secondary section, if there is a newsletter sent out with a high click rate, etc.

For a blogger, opening their blog to sponsored articles can mean:

• Increase your routes toward monetization: a good way to increase your income without having to go to direct mail like Adsense.

• Offer valuable content for your community: based on the fact that sponsored content should always be related to your niche.

40% of blogger followers do it to discover new products or services.

• Freedom to create your own content: as mentioned previously, the ideal thing for the sponsored post to take effect is for the blogger himself to write it.

Each blogger has their own tone which is part of their appeal.

When hiring a sponsored article you can do it in two main ways:

• Contacting the blogger in question directly to find out if they are open to sponsored posts.

• Hiring a platform specialized in sponsored articles.

Today there are a large number of platforms and content publishers that offer this service.

The most important thing to keep in mind if you want to hire services through one of these platforms, is to analyze in depth the advantages it offers you.

How the platforms work:

Some of them simply connect advertisers with influential sites. Others, like getfluence, offer you the full service.

Full service could include assistance in choosing media from over 5,000 verified influential sites or finding new media specifically tailored to your project.

They also translate your brief when you want to post on foreign influential blogs and even do the writing when the blogger is unable.

Some tips to keep in mind when negotiating a sponsored post

If you have ever thought about the possibility of hiring a sponsored article, you should take this series of important tips into account.

Some key tips:

• Select the theme and the right site: the more specific the blog is with respect to your business, the better results you will get.
• Take into account some basic SEO metrics: such as DA (Domain Authority) or DR (Domain Rating), metrics that determine the authority and quality of a website.
• Select suitable bloggers and consider their positioning frequency.
• Create a good link strategy.
• Analyze the interaction of your article once published: comments, likes, shares…
• Combine different types of sponsored posts: press releases, reviews, product comparisons…

Taking all these details into account is essential to multiply the impact of your sponsored article campaigns.

As a general rule, specialized platforms are usually in charge of analyzing all these parameters in an internal control panel for each advertiser.

We’ll show you a picture of our media search service panel at getfluence so you can see an example.

Use Metricool to analyze your results

Finally, and how could it be otherwise, we want to recommend Metricool as a great tool that will help you analyze the results of your sponsored articles in a very visual and intuitive way.

Metricool is a tool designed to analyze, manage and measure the results of your digital content, characterized by having a very attractive interface.

Metricool allows you to analyze the main metrics such as (visits, page views, interactions…)

In addition, you can automatically monitor and manage your content on social networks.

Content Management

The most important thing to keep in mind whenever you carry out any action within marketing, is to analyze the results.

Metricool records all the most important statistics such as the number of clicks, interactions or impressions that have been received in each of your publications, which will allow you to obtain almost immediate results.

Check in real time if your sponsored articles are working as expected.

Metricool general panel:

The main difference of Metricool with respect to other analytical tools is its simple presentation and easy interpretation, intended for all audiences.

That is why it is a tool that we always recommend to our clients, especially to those who have not yet mastered more sophisticated or complex tools.

And so far our tour today through sponsored posts and their particularities.

Remember that a good sponsored articles strategy can help you increase your visibility, improve your organic results and boost traffic to your website more quickly.

I hope this article guides you in crafting your next winning content marketing strategy.

See you very soon.