"Link-Building & Guest Blogging the Right Way" with Justin Champion of HubSpot (Content Lab, Ep. 24)

It was only going to be a matter of time before I found an excuse to bring one of my favorite content nerds back to the show -- Justin Champion, content professor extraordinaire at HubSpot Academy. 

While I am prone to theatrics -- which, as an only child, I believe is my birthright -- I am not being hyperbolic when I say this is one of the most actionable episodes of the Content Lab to-date. 

Fresh off launching a brand new business blogging course for HubSpot, we zeroed in on the final lesson -- guest blogging as a link-building strategy and how to do it well.

We wanted to talk about this topic for two critical reasons:

• First, link-building is one of the most criminally overlooked aspects of building out effective topic cluster-based content strategies; and
• Guest blogging has a bad reputation, and there are a ton of people in the digital and inbound marketing fields who say guest blogging is totally ineffective. 

So, in this episode, we talk about:

• Why link-building is so important if you want to see long-term success with any content you create, but particularly topic clusters and pillars; 
• Why guest blogging is a strategy you need to bring into your content processes;
• What you should be guest blogging about and the strategic approach you need to take to develop topics and create guest blog drafts;
• How to build relationships and effectively pitch story ideas to other publications;
• How to write an incredible guest blog author bio, because I learned in this episode that I was totally blowing this step. (Oops.)

Enjoy!