One of the problems that just about all of us who use the old Interwebs for our businesses face is the challenge of building a receptive audience.

One of the most effective strategies that you can use is Guest Posting – if you don’t believe me ask Danny because his name and byline has appeared all over the Internet, from Copyblogger to Problogger to The Sales Lion to Think Traffic and beyond.

And Danny will tell you that although the strategy really, really works – the problem with guest posting is that it’s time intensive. For maximum effect you should only submit your best work. And creating your best work takes time and effort – especially if you guest post as often as Danny does.

But what if I told you that there was a way that you could guest post on multiple sites simultaneously using the same piece of content?

You’d probably object, say it’s not possible and trot out the old ‘Google doesn’t like duplicate content’ argument.

Well, what if I told you that not only does this strategy NOT entail any risk of duplicate content – but that it’s actually approved by Google! Would you be willing to listen then? I bet you would.

So How Can You Guest Post On Multiple Websites Simultaneously?

The answer is video.

In July YouTube produced their first ever set of guidelines for content creators who use video (go ahead and download a copy of the YouTube Creators Playbook).

If you work with video, you should definitely download and read the Playbook – you’ll find some material that you expected to see. But you’ll find a lot of information that is unexpected.

One of the things that the YouTube algorithm likes is videos that get shared and embedded on external websites and blogs. YouTube actively encourages this as a means of growing video traffic– they call it Blog Outreach (you’ll find it discussed on page 60 of the guide).

And if you’re familiar with YouTube at all, you’ll know that the default setting for most videos is that they can be embedded on other websites and blogs by simply grabbing the embed code. (It’s actually easier in WordPress – there are plug-ins that allow you just to paste the link from YouTube, and the plug-in takes care of the rest).

Now just posting a video to YouTube and hoping that other website owners and bloggers find it and like it enough to embed it on their sites isn’t enough. Instead you need a detailed 4-step plan to Video Guest Post:

Step 1 – Build A Relationship With Target Blogs

This is a step that should be part of your daily promotional activities – commenting on other people’s blog posts, retweeting their posts, engaging with them on Twitter and Google+ – you probably know the drill as well as I do.

Step 2 – Create A High Quality Video

This is the most crucial step in the process – as with traditional guest posting you have to have your best content loaded and ready to rock and roll. Your video has to give high value to viewers – otherwise your target blogs will have little motivation to share that video and your video traffic will suffer.

Step 3 – The Guest Video Post Approach

So you’ve build your relationship and you’ve created your high value video. It’s now time to start getting your video posted on some of your target blogs and websites.

Here’s what you do:

1. Email the blog owner, say Hi, and tell him or her that you’ve created a great video that you think would be a good fit for their audience and you’re wondering if they’ll embed it on their website as a video guest post. And obviously you’ll post a link for the blog owner to check the video out.
2. Chances are they’ve never really thought about video guest posts – so in this email you tell them that you’re really excited about the video and be totally transparent that you’re asking other blog owners to post it too.
3. That may make the blog owner twitchy – so immediately you personalize your offer (and add extra value to the blogger) by committing to answer all questions about the content of the video on the blogger’s blog. Not on YouTube. Not on your blog. But on the blog that you want to host your video. (Caveat – obviously you can’t send this offer out to 50 bloggers – but there’s no reason why you can’t get your video onto 4 or 5 different blogs).
4. Over time as you make new connections you can send the same offer out to different blogs and websites. Eventually one piece of content might end up on 10 different blogs or websites. This not only puts you in front of a wider audience – it also boosts your videos rankings in both YouTube’s search engine results and Google’s.

Step 4 – Additional Value

Some website owners may still be reluctant – in which case you can load your offer with additional value. You could offer them extra content in the form of a mini text interview on the topic of the video.

Or you could offer checklists or blueprints in PDF format so that the perceived value is higher.

Another good way of adding value is helping with the techy side – prepare a screencast or PDF tutorial showing blog owners and website owners how to embed a YouTube video if they don’t know. (If you’re video savvy, preparing a report that shows website or blog owners how to embed a YouTube video in a slick looking custom skin so it doesn’t look like a YouTube video would also be a great extra).

Or you might have a transcription of the Video that can be hosted by the blogger and given away to his audience.

There are many ways you can do this – just remember that the ultimate aim is to get multiple websites posting the same piece of content and exposing your message and your brand to a much wider audience.

Summary

Guest posting is a great way to get your message out to a wider audience – especially when you are starting out. The downside is that it’s time intensive (seriously – ask Danny!).

By using the shared feature that’s built by default into just about every YouTube video you can potentially get the same piece of content featured on multiple websites and seriously increase your video traffic. Not only is this a result for you in terms of making efficient use of your time – it’s also something that YouTube encourages! Win-win.

That piece of content needs to be exceptional though. Crappy videos won’t cut it. You have to aim high. And you have to commit some extra resources too to ‘personalize’ the experience – commit to answering questions on the sites of people you’ve asked to post your video, or providing checklists or blueprints, or downloadable transcripts.

Done right, this has got the potential to really goose your guest posting strategy. Depending on your market area there are few people doing this at the moment – so don’t think about it and act in 6 months. Start working on it now!

Your shout – have you ever thought about guest posting, but been deterred by the tonnage of work involved? Have you thought about using video in this way? If you’ve got any questions about this, please ask them in the comments below…