Why you need to find a niche market
If you look up "niche marketing" online, you’ll find a LOT of marketing "gurus" who will tell you that a niche market is one that has been overlooked by every other business owner on the planet. They’ll tell you that finding one of these secrete niche markets is your key to success and wealth. Just find keywords that no one else is using and VIOLA!
Unfortunately, life just doesn’t work like that.
Lucrative niche markets are those where the audience’s needs are concentrated. The internet allows us to focus on these ultra specific needs. For example, if you have a product or service that appeals to the owners of Cocker Spaniels, the internet allows you the opportunity to target PRECISELY these dog owners.
Of course, you could choose to target ALL dog owners, but if your product appeals primarily to the owners of Spaniels (Cocker Spaniels in particular), then you’ll probably find success in focusing your message on Cocker Spaniels.
Contrary to popular thinking on the net, it’s not neccesary that you be the only one TALKING to Cocker Spaniel owners. What is important is that you TIGHTLY TARGET your message to owners of Cocker Spaniels.
In other words, the key isn’t finding keywords that no one else is targeting, rather you choose a specific market and alter your offering to fit that target’s needs PRECISELY!
Mistakes many new bloggers make
A blog is a powerful marketing tool, however many "beginning" bloggers start blogging because they want to "get rich quick".
In an attempt to "cash in quickly" many new bloggers focus more on pushing products than creating meaningful content. Combine that with a plethora of Google Adsense ads, and you’ll end up with a blog that most visitors will run from instead of reading.
Hock over at the Marketing Tools Review offers this great advice:
If you want to stand out amongst the thousands of internet marketing blogs out there, make sure you offer something useful and unique. In the beginning, it’s better to start off without ads. Just focus on good content. Don’t even worry about monetization until later.
Great advice.
One of the great things about a self hosted word press blog is you can change the theme quite effortlessly. My first attempt at blogging has been very successful. Beyond Niche Marketing began life with a self created theme. I then moved on to another theme as I built my audience. Finally, once I had achieved a respectable audience and was drawing nearly 10,000 visitors per month, I applied the Semilogic theme to the blog which allowed me to manage a Google Adsense campaign.
Because I didn’t start out with lots of Adsense ads, I built a large volume of traffic to the site before I tried to monetize it. It took a year and over 100 posts to begin generating the kind of traffic that makes Adsense a viable way to monetize the blog.
Begin by focusing on creating great content. Then, begin focusing upon building links. Once those are in place, then you can consider adding Adsense to the mix.
Case Study: an avalanche of traffic
When Andre Guthre casually wrote a post about the most common pitfalls in photography, he truly didn’t think this post would be the one that "launched" his blog. As a matter of fact, he confesses that he had written the post a long time ago, but had never gotten around to posting it on this site.
Shortly after posting the article, the article was submitted to Digg by simply clicking on the button that the blog software puts below each post. One thing led to another and before he knew it, his post ended up on the front page of Digg. Not only did the article stay on the front page for nearly 12 hours, but it was also picked up by a bunch of secondary sources. The result was 100,000 Visitors in a single day, most of whom came within the first 12 hours of the post to Digg.
That kind of traffic caused real problems for the poor web site owner, but his post is an excellent example of a pillar post. A pillar post is a how-to or a tutorial which helps readers find answers to common problems are GREAT pillar posts.
In the end… the Digg effect moved the blog into Alexa’s top movers and shakers list, coming in at #4 with a 4,100% increase due to being "Dugg". It also shows the power of creating an article that either teaches or illustrates "how to" solve a problem or do something better.
Have you created a pillar article for your blog or website yet?
Creating Pillar Articles
Every blog needs a foundation and the way you build that blogging foundation is through the use of "pillar" articles.
Great pillar articles are usually very informative, tightly targeted and are often the response to frequently asked questions.
They usually begin with such titles as:
10 tips to…..
7 things you need to know about…..
5 ways [blank] will change [blank]
How to [blank]
Fill in the blanks with topics your potential customers or partners need to know or would find interesting.
Sort through your outgoing email box to find emails you’ve sent to clients and use those to create these pivotal blog entries.
Then, as you create these pillar articles, keep your desired keywords in mind.
These pillar articles will provide a foundation for your blog. If you’re planning ahead, create a pillar article for each category you set up on the blog.
Pillar articles are so important, you may want to hire a ghost writer to prepare these essential foundation pieces for you. You’ll find that well written pillar articles will become your most popular posts on your blog.
Be careful. Pillar articles can become tools to create an avalanche of traffic for your blog, especially when focused upon essential keywords for your business.
Want more readers for your blog?
In his Ten Tips for Blogging Thomas McMahon’s eighth tip for building your blog (and your blog’s audience) is:
Post Frequently
A blog isn’t a magazine. It doesn’t come out once a month with a bunch of great articles. You should post once every other day to keep it fresh and alive. Preferably once a day for best results. Only going to post once a week?! It better be a good, original and well thought out post as it has to last for seven days.
Posting frequently will help you in two ways.
The first way posting frequently to your blog will help you is that you will be providing regular content for the human readers. Never underestimate the power of having a reader arrive to find a well populated blog with lots of information.
Readers who are looking for information will find plenty to choose from while visitors who are looking for back links will also find a variety of posts from which to link.
In my ebook about Google, one theory that is not discussed in is the preference Google has for LARGE sites. Google seems to love tightly targeted content and LOTS of it. While thousands of "small" publishers were being pummeled by the Google Slap, mega sites continued on their merry way on auto pilot as if nothing had changed.
Which brings us to the second way frequent blog posting will benefit your blog which is this: by posting to your blog frequently, you are creating content…. and eventually you too will have a large site which gets favored status amongst the search engines. Lots of content means, assuming you have your blog set up correctly, that your site a has, by nature, a LOT more search engine fodder.
In other words, the more posts you have in your blog, the greater the likelihood that a FEW of those posts will rise to the top of the search engine rankings for your desired keywords.
I never cease to be amazed by the bloggers who, with only a few blog posts to their credit, start complaining ON THEIR BLOG about their lack of readership.
Start posting. Put your head down and start running. Promise yourself that you won’t "look up" until you’ve been blogging for 3 months. Set a posting goal. I encourage my clients to start with a goal of posting to their blog 3 times a week. Then start posting to your blog.
In other words, don’t start worrying about building a reader base UNTIL you’ve been posting for at least three months. By then, the "blogging habit" has been established and then you can add the next task to the list…. building a reader or subscriber base.
Does it take a village to create a blog?
Ever wonder how some of the top blogs made their rise to the top?
One secret to success that top blogs know is it takes a LOT of posts to provide a robust offering of content for visitors. In addition to providing lots of material for visitors, frequent posts and lots of content help to generate the inbound links that are essential to getting your blog to rise above the rest and be found via the search engines.
Micheal Arrington, founder of Tech Crunch claims to have worked 16 hour days 7 days a week to launch his mega blog but one not so well kept secret used by top blogs is that instead of relying upon a single person to create all that content, these top blogs rely instead upon a team of people working together.
Gotta Quirk is a South African blog with a PR 5 that’s been online since September of 2002. This ultra popular blog with an Alexa ranking of 65,057 relies upon a team of 24 bloggers to fill almost every day with a new post.
Most people don’t have the drive or the inclination to put in 16 hour days 7 days a week that Micheal Arrington did to build a mega blog…. but chances are you too can put together a team of bloggers whose skills and abilities complement each other and can combine to create a great blog resource.
If you’re finding it difficult to get started blogging, volunteer your services to an established blog. You might be surprised at the grateful reception your offer to guest blog may bring.
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