As a business blogger, you’re always looking for ways to increase traffic and subscribers. You started using Facebook and Twitter for this very reason, and have had some success. But for some reason, your traffic and email subscribers have tapered off.
The Pro Of Niches
One of the most powerful ways to build authority with a blog is to research and develop a niche.
Before I launched my blog a couple of years ago, I spent a couple of months researching the other bloggers who were writing about nonprofit social media marketing – something I have a lot of experience and passion for. With each blog, I looked at three aspects:
- Topic – What (and how) were they talking about this topic? Are they talking in specific tactical terms with lots of detail? Or were they talking in general, broad terms?
- Medium – Did they use text only? Pictures? Video?
- Voice – What was the quality of the content? Serious and scholarly? Humorous and human?
Based on this research, I had a pretty good idea of how I could present content that was both useful and authentic.
A couple of years later, I have a fairly successful business that primarily uses blogging and social media to get business.
The Con Of Niches
Go to my blog and search “Facebook“ or “Twitter“ – you’ll find close to 150 posts mentioning those keywords. It’s been great for SEO – and great for business.
However, a few months after I started the blog I noticed that my traffic and subscriber numbers leveled off.
It was then, that I started applying a principle Dan Zarrella calls “Combined Relevance“ to cast a wider social media net.
Combined Relevance is the idea of combining two seemingly unrelated interests that your prospects have. For example, many people have a secret (or not so secret) love of bacon. When you tweet about bacon along with topics you discuss on your blog, your readers feel more compelled to share your post with friends who are bacon freaks. They think to themselves, “this-is-right-up-so-and-so’s-alley”.
Combined Relevance In Practice
So instead of just tweeting about social media marketing for nonprofits, I started talking about music, Nutella, Zombies, politics and other things I like. I soon noticed that I started getting followers on Twitter who were interested in the work I do, but wouldn’t have found me if I didn’t tweet about my love of AC/DC.
You can also apply combined relevance to blogging. One post I wrote about a silly t-shirt I made still gets lots of traffic.
Same goes for this post. Although it’s not really about Zombies or Bacon, it will get shared with people who are interested in business blogging and zombies / bacon.
Sizzle.
