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"How You Can Avoid The Internet Marketing
Mistakes That
Are Costing Businesses £1000's"
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Do You Read Niche Blogs?
One of the most popular business models for Internet Marketing is Niche Blogging and my question to you is, if you're a niche blogger, do you read any other niche blogs other than your own? And I don't mean do you go to look at them to see what you're competition is doing. I mean do you actually have a niche blog or two, or maybe even three, that you read on a regular basis?
Do you go back to that blog two or three times a week to see what new information has been added, have you signed up to that list, are you receiving that RSS feed so that you're notified every time that blogger makes a new post?
I'm willing to bet you don't. You might follow a few blogs regularly. I know I do. But I'll just bet that not one single blog you follow is a niche blog. Take a look at the blogs that you do follow and then compare them to your niche blogs.
Before we go any further into this, let's define a niche blog so you can see what I'm talking about. If you have a niche blog, you're not just talking about a topic, like Dogs or Babies or Investing. You're talking about a little corner of the Dog market – like Dog Collars or Dog Food. You're talking about a small segment of the Baby topic – Baby Bedding, Baby Clothing. And you're talking about one area of investing – Investing in Property or the FTSE or what have you.
When you create the content for a niche blog you have to use specific keywords to make sure you show up in the search engines and attract exactly the visitors who will be interested in the product you're trying to sell. If you have a niche blog about dogs, you don't want to write an article about cats because you're not selling anything that has to do with cats. Therefore, if someone who had a cat came to your blog it would basically be wasted traffic.
Now go back and look at those blogs that you read every day or so. You might read a celebrity gossip blog that talks about everything having to do with celebrities, and they feature videos and Red Carpet pictures. Or you might read a sports blog that covers all areas of sports like ESPN or Sky Sports.
I happen to follow 5 different blogs, too, and not one of them is a niche blog. One is written by a waiter and he tells stories about what goes on in his restaurant. Another is written by a barmaid and she talks about her customers and her personal life. Two of the blogs I follow are written by teenagers – only thirteen years old and they are the most entertaining blogs I follow! The fifth is a Formula 1 blog (a personal passion).
None of these blogs is a niche blog. When you look at all of them you won't see them focusing on keywords or SEO or trying to sell you something. Their blog posts aren't full of facts and information about why you should use THIS acne medication. Their posts are just... interesting. Sometimes funny, too. They use videos and images and polls along with their written content to keep their blogs light and entertaining.
And each one of these blogs is making money. Three of them have been approached by publishers offering them book deals. The Waiter is on his second book now. I know of two women who write a fashion blog and not only do they have a book deal, they've also been syndicated and they get free tickets to all the major fashion shows – in New York and Paris! The teenage girl also gets free tickets to those same fashion shows, gets free clothes from the different designers, and has a contract with Target, while the teenage boy has a band and gets bookings from his blog. James Allen is a Formula 1 journalist and he has numerous books he uses his blog traffic to promote
The point I'm trying to make is that each of these blogs, that I read 3 or 4 times a week, was started with no intention of making money. They were all started as personal blogs, with no attention to keywords or SEO and if you look at them they all have hundreds, sometimes thousands of followers. And they all make money.
Now I'm not trying to tell you that niche blogging is a bad business model and that SEO and keywords should be tossed out the window. Just the opposite. Look at the blogs that you follow and ask yourself why you follow them? What keeps you coming back day after day?
When I need to find out information about Dog Collars, I go to my Google search box and I type in Dog Collars and go to the top two or three links until I get my information. If those sites happen to be niche blogs, I don't stick around and read them. All I want is information on dog collars. And typically I find niche blogs extremely boring. Because all the bloggers do is feed you information and statistics and then try to sell you something. There's nothing interesting to hold me on the page or to make me want to come back.
But I do follow these other 5 blogs. And it's because of their content. It's informative, fun, entertaining, and engaging. These bloggers aren't trying to sell me anything and they don't care if I read their blog, they don't care if it shows up in the search engines, all they care about is expressing their opinions on the Internet and engaging the followers that they do have.
Now, here are my questions. Do you read niche blogs? How many niche blogs do you follow on a regular basis? If the answer is none, why not? And the even bigger question – would you come to your own niche blog every two or three days to see if there was anything new posted? And if no, why not?
There's nothing that says a niche blog has to sound like an encyclopedia. And we all get so caught up in using keywords and SEO that after 4 or 5 posts we start to sound like robots. If you have a Dog blog, try this. Write a blog post about your own dog, some cute little story, and don't even think about keywords. But talk about YOU and YOUR dog so you can connect with your readers. And then after you've written your post, go back through and see where you can put in your keyword and make it sound natural. Better yet, write a blog post about a cat! You're readers will be so surprised they might just come back tomorrow to see what you're going to write about next.
And so what if you use cat as one of your keywords? A lot of dog owners also own cats. That doesn't mean you have to make every other post about cats. But don't be afraid to shake it up a little bit. One post out of 10 or 12 isn't going to hurt your rankings. But 70 or 80 posts that all sound like they were written by the same boring person certainly won't help. You need content that's compelling and engaging to not only attract your visitor and hold them on the page, but to keep them coming back, too.
If you forget about keywords, SEO and selling when you write yout posts they'll sound more like YOU and your readers are much more interested in hearing what YOU have to say than reading an encyclopedia. Since the average reader has to return to your site at least 7 times before they'll buy your product, then you need to make it your business to write content that's compelling and engaging enough to make them want to return 7 times. You not only have to be concerned about generating new traffic, but you have to keep the existing traffic engaged enough that they'll come back 7 times. Think about the blogs that you return to over and over again, determine why you keep going back, and try to add some of that into your niche blog. |
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