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While I get many questions from bloggers asking for advice on ‘how to blog‘ perhaps one of the biggest questions a new blogger needs to ask themselves before they move on to the HOW to blog question is ‘WHAT will I blog about?’

There is no real right or wrong answer to this question as blogs come in all shapes and sizes and focus upon all manner of topics. However thinking through the question before you start a blog will help you make some of the other decisions that you’ll want to make later on in this guide (for example the domain name and the name of your blog will probably come out of this decision).

Reasons to Focus Upon a Niche with Your Blog

Choosing a niche to blog about is important for a number of reasons. These include:

1. Niche Blogs Appeal to Readers

My first blog was a personal blog with no real niche focus. It did start with a main focus upon Spirituality, but over time began to cover a large range of topics including blogging, photography, culture, politics, personal stuff that I was doing etc. The more topics I covered the less I appealed to everyone.

Sure a certain group of people were interested in Spirituality and Blogging, but less of them were into photography, even less also liked my stuff about Australian Pop Culture….. each topic narrowed the chances of me writing something that would appeal to all of my readers. I started to get complaints from them – ’stop writing about XXXX’.

When I began to break topics out onto their own blogs my audience responded well – those who were into photography gathered around that topic, those that were into blogging gathered on that blog.

In the end this is about relevance – people seem to be drawn to niche focused blogs because they know that they’ll see content on them that focuses upon the things they are specifically interested in.

2. Niche Blogs Monetize Better

I tried to make money from my personal blog for a while but found the going really tough. At the time I mainly tried to make money from advertising and found that sponsors were simply not interested in promoting their product (which had a specific focus) to an audience who were there to read about a whole range of things.

What camera manufacturer wants to promote their latest camera on a blog about photography that also touches on spirituality, politics and what movie I saw on the weekend?

Niche blogs also tend to work better with contextual ad networks like AdSense. AdSense is getting better are providing ads that related strongly to what is on a specific page of content but I have seen instances where blogs covering lots of different topics attract ads that don’t always relate to content on a particular page.

The other thing about AdSense is that it is a system that gives advertisers the ability to target specific sites. These types of targeted campaigns can be quite profitable but they are less likely to happen if a blog covers a large range of topics, many of which don’t relate to that advertiser.

When I went niche I found monetizing with advertising a lot easier. In fact monetizing with a variety of methods seems to be easier on niche blogs. Affiliate promotions and selling your own products work better because your audience is there to get information on certain topics – so when you promote products on those topics…. they’re much more likely to buy.

3. Niche Blogs Do Better in Search Engines

It is possible to rank well for all kinds of topics on a generic/multi topic blog. It’s possible – but I find it is easier when you have a blog with a focus upon a niche topic. If your whole site is about the one topic Google treats it as more of an authority on that topic the more content you add, the more you interlink the posts, the more other sites in your niche link to it etc.

There are certainly exceptions (mega sites like Wikipedia are obvious ones) but unless you have the pulling power of a massive site like that a niche focused site could be the way to go.

4. Niche Blogs Build Credibility and Profile

One of the consequences of moving to more of a niche focus with my blogging was that I noticed I was starting to become known for that topic.

The first time this happened was after I started my first photography blog and 2 months later had a phone call from a city-wide newspaper asking for a quote on a photography related story. This had not happened to me before as a result of my personal/multi topic blog but having a site purely focused upon a single topic gave a perception that that topic was ‘my thing’.

For me having niche focuses has helped me to become known on different topics – which has led to all kinds of opportunities in those niches – including writing books, speaking opportunities around the world, main stream media appearances and all manner of partnership opportunities with wonderful people in my industries.

Not everyone wants to build their profile and become known in an industry – but if that’s part of your goal then a niche blog on those topics can be powerful.

Note: Niches Need Not Just be Topic Related

Before I conclude this post on niches I thought it might also be worth noting that a blogs niche need not only ever be focused upon a topic. I explored this more fully in a post titled – Does Your Blog Focus Upon a Niche Topic or a Niche Demographic? As the title of that post suggests – there are some successful blogs around that cover a variety of topics – that appeal to a similar type of person or demographic.

So instead of just writing about video games – a blog might choose to blog about topics that appeal to teenage boys – video games being one of the topics that they might have an interest in.

Worth noting though is that if you do decide to target a niche demographic rather than a niche topic – you could be opening yourself up for a lot of work. Covering a diverse range of topics can certainly work – but to cover them all comprehensively can take a lot of time and energy.

How to Choose a Niche for Your Blog

Now that we’ve looked at some of the reasons WHY a niche can be a powerful thing to think about before you start looking at HOW to blog – later this week I’m going to continue this post with a followup post exploring a number of factors that those looking to start a blog might consider when choosing a niche.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

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How to Blog: Choose a Niche for Your Blog [Why Niches are Important]

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Last week on Twitter I was asked by @southrngurl6489 the following question:

If you had to pick only one thing that makes a blog stand out from its peers, what would you pick and why?

I thought it’d be a good question to open up to a wider audience as its something I’ve touched on quite a few times over the last year or so and because what makes a blogger distinct is often, by definition, something that can vary from blog to blog.

What are you doing to make your blog stand out from the crowd? What have you seen other blogs do that makes them stand out?

Further Reading: Here’s a post I wrote on the topic earlier in the year – The Power of Uniqueness [19 Starting Points for Being a Unique Blogger]

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

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What Do You Do With Your Blog to Make it Stand Out from the Crowd?

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Do you want a formula to guarantee the success of your blog?

Yesterday I was interviewed by a journalist about blogging and half way though the interview he asked me what the formula for successful blogging was.

His question was innocent enough and asked without agenda but as I pondered it and pondered the many successful blogs that we see in our medium it became very clear to me that while it might be simpler to have a formula to follow to make our blogs succeed that there are many many different approaches to success in this field.

One of the things that I love about blogging is that there really is no wrong or right way to do what we do and for every ‘rule’ us people who blog about blogging might write – there is always an exception of a blog that has done the opposite and still had good results.

Yes there are some principles that we might see in many successful blogs – but even as I’ve been recently exploring some of these I see examples of blogs that buck the system and succeed despite doing so.

Last year I came up with a list of ‘debates’ in blogging to illustrate some of the diversity of approaches in blogging. Recently – after being accused of being too narrow in my focus – I revisited the list and added a number of ‘debates’ to illustrate the variety of approaches that bloggers take.

All in all I’ve come up with 29 areas that bloggers take different approaches in – yet there would be many many more.

Some of them are debates that might come down to a bloggers ethics, although most are simply different approaches that might be based more upon a bloggers goals, the niche that they’re in and the type of audience that they’re attempting to connect with.

29 Debates Bloggers Have about Blogging

  1. RSS Feeds - Full vs Partial Feeds
  2. Comment Sections – Comments vs No Comments
  3. Post Frequency – Post More vs Post Less
  4. How Many Blogs? – Focus upon One Single Blog vs Having Many Smaller Blogs
  5. Domain Names – long vs short, hyphens vs non hypens, .com vs other extensions (like .net, .org), local vs global domain extensions
  6. Hosting – hosted vs self hosted
  7. Post Titles – descriptive vs keywords
  8. Content – Link content vs Original content
  9. Paid Reviews – Happy to Write Paid Reviews vs Not Doing Paid Reviews
  10. Design – Professional Design vs Templates
  11. Links to External Sources – Should Open in a New Page vs Should Open in the Same Page
  12. Ownership – Use Social Media vs Build Your own properties
  13. Post Length – Long in Depth Posts vs Short, Sharp Posts
  14. Topic – Niche vs Broad Topics
  15. Dating Posts – Dates on Posts vs Non Dated
  16. Blogger Name – Anonymous blogging vs Using Your Name
  17. Subscribers – RSS is Best vs Email is Best
  18. SEO – Writing for Search Engines vs Writing for Humans
  19. Personal Blogging – Sticking to Topic vs Injecting Personality and Personal details
  20. Comment Moderation – Highly Regulated and Moderated vs Anything Goes
  21. Social Media vs Search – focus upon social media rather than search engines as traffic sources
  22. LinkBait – Anything goes (e.g.. Personal Attacks) vs Strong Boundaries Around What is and Isn’t Acceptable
  23. Bloggers Participation in Comments – Respond to Every Single Comment vs Let Readers Talk to Each Other and Don’t Interact
  24. Blog Platforms – WordPress vs ((Insert Other Platforms Here))
  25. Monetization – Blogs Should Be Monetized vs Blogs Should Never Be Monetized
  26. Affiliate Disclosure – Disclose every affiliate link vs Site Wide Disclosure vs No Disclosure
  27. When To Start Monetizing – From Day 1 vs Once You Have an Audience
  28. Text Links – To Sell them vs Not Selling Them
  29. Outsourcing – Outsourcing content (or other aspects of blogging) vs producing your own.

Some of the above debates are over things that some bloggers feel quite strongly about (there are a few that I do) – but in almost every one there are blogs doing a full spectrum of things.

I wanted to share this updated list mainly to celebrate our diversity and variety as bloggers and in the hope that those who might be looking for ‘the formula’ might see that there’s a wonderful array of choice at our finger tips and with that comes a lot of freedom to forge our own paths as individuals.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

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29 Debates Bloggers Have about Blogging

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A Guest Post by Nathan Hangen of Making it Social.

Ah, the “It Factor…” that something successful people have that the rest of us can’t seem to figure out. To some, it’s an enigma, while to others, it seems to flow like Willy Wonka’s Chocolate river…boundless and with fervor. Well, until it was clogged by Augustus Gloop, but I digress…

We’re all looking for some of it. It’s obvious that you need it to get noticed and to hold your audience captive, but no one knows how to get it. Believe me, I’ve asked. But, that didn’t stop me from trying.

As part of another project, I’ve been studying a lot of A-List bloggers and I have been trying to figure out both how and when they were bestowed with this “It.” Furthermore, I wanted to know what it was so that I could try and quantify it.

Did I find it? I think so, but if my conclusions are any indication, it’s not quite as mysterious as you might suspect.

What is It?

It’s the buzz around your blog that gets people interested. It’s the special factor that makes people want to RT, share, and comment on your posts.

In my studies, I believe it’s that feeling you get when you find a blog that you know isn’t going anywhere. For instance, when I read Problogger, I buy in because I know that:

1. Darren knows what he’s talking about, we trust him.
2. His blog isn’t going anywhere. He’s invested, and it’s part of his life.

Other blogs feel temporary, like they’re an experiment. Those don’t have it…they can’t. People want to know you aren’t going anywhere before they invest energy into propping you up. That’s just human nature.

It’s also a style of writing that speaks to people on their level. It’s confident and unabashed. Those bloggers that have “It,” aren’t afraid to speak their mind.

Is there a way to quantify it? No, but you and I both know what it looks like. We can sense a blog that’s on the rise or at the top…that’s about as close to measuring it as you can get.

How Do You Get It?

This is the crux really, because this is what we really want to know. You might not care who has it, but you know you want some. You want to turn your blog into a success, and you want people to not only subscribe, but to hang out and comment. You want people to listen to your advice, and maybe even pay you for it.

It’s funny, but looking back to a year ago, I was an unknown. I had a blog, but it was all over the place and I was doing a terrible job of building an audience. Now though, although I’m not on everyone’s radar, I’m at least moving in the right direction. Whereas people a year ago commented just to be nice, people these days tell me that the future looks good. My blog is an entirely different place, and it’s starting to get some of that “It.”

I’m not saying this to toot my own horn, but as someone that has been on both sides of the equation, I think it’s important to say that I understand where people are coming from, because what I’m about to say might not be what you want to hear, but it’s the truth…

It is nothing more than hard work…

Disappointed? Surprised? You shouldn’t be. In fact, you should consider this good news. Why?

Because if “It” was nothing but a mysterious aura that to some was given and to others was withheld, than you and I would have no chance at it. However, if it’s nothing more than a little bit of elbow grease, then there’s hope for all of us!

Looking at the history of some of the most popular bloggers in the world, you’ll find a common element that binds them all. Yeah, there is luck involved, but more than that, there was a lot of hard work.

Hard work cranking out content on a weekly basis…hard work writing guest posts for popular blogs…hard work managing dozens of blogs until they found one that worked…hard work interacting with their 1 or 2 commenters until they got a 3rd, and then a 4th.

“But I’m working hard!” you might say, and I don’t doubt it, but are you working hard consistently? Are you learning, implementing, analyzing, and fixing on a daily basis? Are you doing everything that you can to become a successful blogger?

Are you networking? Are you honing your writing style and finding your true voice? Are you giving as much as you are taking away?

These are the questions you’ll have to answer for yourself, and only you know the truth.

I’ll be honest

Some people just might not make it, at least not the first time. Show me a blogger that did get it right on the first effort and I’ll show you another thousand that didn’t. The difference though, is in persevering and not giving up. If one project fails, start up another.

One of the most inspiring things any blogger ever told me was that he didn’t have a backup plan…he was in 100%. He said there was no way he was going to fail, because he couldn’t afford to. That man was Gary Vaynerchuk, and now he’s built an empire.

You too can have that “It Factor,” and can have your own empire, but you have to start building it first. It might be tough, but you’ve got to be more resiliant than the obstacles you face. Accomplish that, and you’ll have it, I promise.

I think Chris Brogan said it best, when he mentioned that being an overnight success required 11 years of hard work. Remember that when you see a blogger that appears to have come from nowhere. It was probably 11 years in the making.

Nathan Hangen is an entrepreneur, social media consultant, and co-author of the book - Beyond Blogging.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

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The ‘It Factor’ – How to Get It as a Blogger

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When WebProNews spoke with Nick Fox back in August, he indicated that the future of paid search could be without keywords. At the recent SES Chicago, WPN sat down with Mona Elesseily of Page Zero Media who shared with us how this development would impact advertisers.

Up to this point, Google has used keywords as a proxy for relevance. In the future, however, the search engine hopes to allow advertisers to state their desired outcome and then, use its machine-based learning to produce that desired result. In other words, Google would essentially take the necessary information and put the ad in front of the most relevant audience.

Why is all this important? According to Elesseily, it’s important because query length is increasing, new and unique search terms are increasing, and searcher sophistication is increasing. All these elements make it hard for advertisers to keep their keyword lists fresh.

Incidentally, not all of the advertising community supports this new development. Elesseily said that some advertisers believe it’s too broad of an approach and don’t like the idea of putting that much trust in Google.

Although Elesseily doesn’t believe keywords will go away, she does believe the future of paid search is changing.

What are your thoughts regarding paid search without keywords?

“Tell us how you ‘really‘ get traffic to your blog?”

After presenting to a group of bloggers at an event recently I was surprised to be asked this question by someone in the audience.

I wasn’t surprised that people would want to know about how to get traffic to a blog – it’s something most bloggers want to know about – I was surprised to be asked it at THIS event because i’d just finished speaking for 30 minutes on the topic of ‘getting traffic to your blog‘.

After 30 minutes of sharing how I generate traffic to my blogs – I was asked to share what ‘really’ works. Hmmmm – was my presentation that bad… or was there something else going on here?

I sat down for a coffee with the person who asked me the question to dig a little deeper and as the conversation unfolded it became clear to me that the blogger was after a ’silver bullet’.

He wanted some secret method of generating traffic that would flood his blog with new readers, some new technique that most bloggers had not cottoned onto yet that would lift him above the rest and propel him to blogging super-stardom.

He told me that he’d tried all the normal tips on how to get traffic – some had worked and had found him new readers and others had not – but now he wanted something new. What advice could I give?

I decided to share my ‘real’ secret to big blogging traffic.

Identify What Works…. and Do it Again…. and Again….. Improving it Each Time

Here’s the thing – there’s no one technique that is going to bring every blog new traffic.

But if you try lots of different approaches and identify what does work – even if it only works a little – you’re on the way.

Find something that works for your blog, your niche, your demographic and then build upon that.

Here’s an example of how this worked for me:

What started as a fairly simply idea (giving readers a place to share their shots – not even on my own site but using Flickr – evolved into multiple ideas that built upon that initial idea. Each time we evolved the idea we created buzz, reader engagement, traffic and site stickiness.

Keep in mind that this process has taken us over 3 years. The changes have been gradual, we’ve made mistakes along the way, but instead of spending all our time trying to find a ’silver bullet’ that we could just drop into the site to bring heaps of traffic – we improved something that showed promise in the early days.

A further example of this would be the site’s email newsletter list. In the early days when we first tried it I remember wondering if it was worth the effort of sending a weekly newsletter out to 100 people… but I saw some potential in it and each week it grew, each week I learned something new about improving the newsletters and each week it became more worth the effort. Today it drives hundreds of thousands of visitors to the site each week.

Some questions to help identify what is working (or what might work) with your readers and niche:

This list could go on and on – really it is about looking for points of life on your site (even small ones) where there’s some kind of energy or positive outcome happening – and then repeating them in some way – looking for opportunities to build upon and improve what you previously did.

Got any examples to share of where you’ve done this on your own blog?

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

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My REAL Secret to Growing Traffic to a Blog

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Posted by randfish

I’ve been a big fan of Chris Dixon’s excellent blog for a while now, so you can imagine that I was really excited to see him writing about SEO in a post last week. Chris kindly called out SEOmoz, which humbled me, but he also espoused some thinking in the comments that made me a bit concerned and was the catalyst for this post. Here’s how it went:

RAND: Chris – I think the biggest thing you’ve forgotten to mention is that 70%+ of the weighting/ranking used by all of the engines depends on links. If you’re not thinking about how your content and pages will incent users/bloggers/writers/media/other sites to link to your work, you’ll lose out to someone who does.

A while back I got riled up about the lack of SEO in startup marketing and wrote about it – http://j.mp/4q9zkh – might be relevant/useful, though I did write with a bit more anger than was likely deserved.

CHRIS: Rand – totally agree re links. But isn’t getting links primarily about creating great content?

Read the article you link to btw and am in complete agreement.

RAND: Tragically, at least in my experience, the answer is a resounding no. Great content is easily missed by the web’s link-heavy audience, while some pretty crummy content that’s been marketed well (or made the right connections or comes from the right sources) will tend to overperform.

The web’s link graph isn’t a meritocracy – like everything else in life, it’s a popularity contest. Those who find the best ways to distribute, promote and market their works to the audience most likely to link to it are going to succeed much more so than just the "great content" producers.

Just think of it like politics. The best, most rational, reasoned, intelligent arguments are the exception, not the rule. Instead, the conversation and media attention (and thus, public awareness) is focused on concepts that are easy to grasp, virally distributable (which often puts rumor and innuendo above fact) and fit a compelling narrative (rather than add complexity).

A post on this topic – http://j.mp/4tYThK

I would love to tell Chris that he’s right, that the better the content, the better, higher quality and greater quantity of links that content earns. But, perhaps sadly, that’s not the case. What those in the content world would call "better" does not always (nor even mostly) garner the links and rankings. Instead, those who have "better optimized" for attracting links tend to far outshine their peers with rankings and traffic.

This may seem like a tragedy, or even a travesty of the democratic structure the web is supposed to represent, but in fact, it’s the way all marketing has worked for generations. The "best" restaurants are often family-owned, hole-in-the-wall, never-marketed-themselves joints whose fabulous epicurean creations are a secret to all but the most diligent culinary Clouseaus. Meanwhile, the affront to humanity and cooking that is Olive Garden advertises relentlessly, conducts impeccable market research and appeals to the lowest common denominator in town after town to achieve geographic and market-penetration ubiquity (BTW – my wife is Italian and thus recoils at the very mention of this establishment and the tarnish it’s brought to her beloved countrymen’s kitchens).

Like many parts of life – it’s not about the quality, diligence or aptitude you bring to your field, but your ability to market it successfully. As SEOs, our responsibility is to help the best of the best become the most noticed, most beloved and most linked-to in their field. It’s a strange, almost paradoxical leap of logic, but one you internalize this principle, it gets easier to accept and to spread to your clients and managers.

p.s. I’m also a fan of Chris Dixon’s startup, Hunch – I’d urge you to check it out and try answering a few dozen questions. The results are quite fascinating.

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People frequently discuss the differences between traditional marketing and social media marketing. However, Rebecca Kelley, the Director of Social Media at 10e20, does not think there are too many distinguishing factors. Instead, she believes that social media marketing is a natural extension to the traditional form of marketing.

For example, she compares pulling an ad out of a magazine to setting up tabs on a Facebook fan page. Although one encounter is offline and the other is online, the same action is present in both situations.

According to Kelley, the primary distinction between traditional marketing and social marketing is that in social, there is a greater emphasis on social interaction and building relationships. Traditional marketing is accustomed to a one-way communication model and social marketing requires a two-way channel.

Many businesses embraced social marketing early on to simply mimic other businesses. Now, some businesses are hesitant to join after witnessing mistakes others have made by sharing too much information. While Kelley does not think a silencing approach is the answer, she does believe businesses should implement policies for social usage. A balanced approach is the best solution.

Ultimately, marketers need to realize how to make a connection with their audience and make decisions according to what is appropriate for their brand.

Internet video is continuing to grow by leaps and bounds. While this growth has provided advertisers with many opportunities, it has also raised the bar for the level of quality and engagement that advertisers must reach with video. In an interview with WebProNews, AJ Vernet of the Digital Broadcasting Group talks about current trends and misconceptions regarding advertisers and online video.

While advertisers realize the need for customized and engaging content, they do not always understand that their video may not go viral. Vernet said a viral video is “a real moment happening.” Although competing with viral cat videos is difficult, advertisers can succeed by using creativity to create good online content.

The 30-second spot doesn’t work online. Instead, advertisers need to look beyond traditional tactics and look for new opportunities. Vernet said:

“I think what advertisers have to do is start thinking outside the box and say, how do I associate my brand with a cool piece of content or a theme…”

In the future, Vernet sees users going directly to the Web for content and being able to find a particular show on multiple sites across the Web. He believes the future is online and advises advertisers to invest more money toward online advertising and targeted video content.

Since the online marketing space is still relatively new for so many businesses, SitePoint approached Brandon Eley and Shayne Tilley about writing a book on the subject. The book called Online Marketing Inside Out provides an introduction to Internet marketing and explains why it is important for businesses to embrace.

WebProNews caught up with Brandon Eley who discussed specific elements of the book. Each chapter covers an area of online marketing such as search engine optimization, pay per click marketing, email marketing, social media, and more. In the end, the book ties all the areas together and offers advice for creating an online campaign and tracking the results.

Many businesses have a website but do not know how to make it visible to their audience. Eley said this is one of the biggest challenges businesses face. The book provides answers to this challenge and also gives tips that encourage customers to act.

If you would like to learn more about Online Marketing Inside Out, you can purchase it at any major bookstore or on Amazon.

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