- Image by Intersection Consulting via Flickr
This morning I was tooling around the internet, noticing what people are writing about, and how they are pulling their blogs together. It dawned on me we should probably talk about that now, while we’re still mostly in the planning stage.
Without getting all technical we need to talk about who you and your blog are talking to. This is called your “market”. Each market can have a different “feel” to them. You want to make sure you target your market so they will become not only readers, but avid fans. This is how word of your blog spreads!
Let’s take a look at what I’m talking about.
For example people who are way into going green and people who are really interested in cutting coupons and spending less than 5 dollars a meal are very different markets.
While they may both enjoy recipes, they may both be moms, and have many other things in common if you try to combine these two markets on your blog instead of capturing both groups you’ll probably end up alienating both. The way they speak, the things they want to read, the resources they want are completely different. If you try to cater to both you’ll end up catering to neither and lose your readership completely.
Here are a couple blogs that do each of those things well.
5 Dollar Dinners ~ Coupons, recipes, dinner meal plans always made for under $5 for the whole family.
Kid vs Produce ~ getting kids to eat more produce.
Everyday Paleo ~ an entire blog filled with only paleo diet recipes (some of which are super yummy!)
Crockpot Cooking ~ a New Year’s resolution to use the crockpot every day in 2008 (which has turned into a real cookbook for sale on Amazon.com)
Green and Natural Parenting ~ plenty of info to help families live a little greener
As you can see each of these blogs are very different. While you could probably add content from each to one site ~ it just wouldn’t work because the people reading each are so different, even though they may share a lot of characteristics.
This can be true in one niche as well. Let’s take the parenting niche. (just because I know a little about this niche). If one were to think about doing a parenting site you would need to think BEFORE you start about exactly what types of parents you are targeting. Then you want to create content that speaks to those people. You can not, in the same space, cater to the attachment parenting crowd as well as the spanking crowd ~ it just will not work. You will end up alienating everyone.
If you wanted to do a blog on attachment parenting, you’d want to do just that ~ or other similar gentle parenting methods. You could even open it up further like that ~ by doing gentle parenting techniques, and this may be a stretch for that market. You could also do a site on more “traditional” parenting methods. Either way is fine, but realize that the people in those groups have completely different concepts, beliefs and values on parenting. It will be nearly impossible to grow a readership if you tried to combine them. Keep in mind the more “fanatical” (for lack of a better word) people are on their topic the harder it will be to combine that topic with others.
Here’s a great attachment parenting blog. Take a look at the topics, the posts, what they write about.
Now take a look at this site. See how they are both about parenting, but the likelihood of people reading them both is highly unlikely.
Free Range Kids all about giving kids freedom without going nuts.
Along the same lines if you’re going to do a blog about horses ~ you want to do a blog about horses. You don’t want to do a blog about horses, cats, lizards, dogs and chickens. The owners of each of those types of animals are pretty different. I know as the owner of 2 cats, a dog and a small flock of chickens if I’m looking for chicken information and resources I don’t want to weed through a bunch of horse talk or cat talk to get to it.
If you want to do a craft blog ~ choose one type of craft to focus on. There are so many different kinds of crafts, it will be hard for someone to be a repeat visitor and reader if they want to learn how to stamp, and the first post they read on your site was about stamping, but then you moved to a different kind of craft.
The one way around this is if there is an overall theme to the site. For example here the main idea is internet marketing strategies. So I talk about different types of strategies. This still causes problems though. In fact, I just got an email this morning saying I thought you were talking about authority blogs why am I getting email about squidoo. So there are some logistical things even with an overall topic.
Here’s a great example of a craft blog who stays very focused on stamping.
Here’s another example of a great craft blog that does scrapbooking.
I hope this helps get you thinking about the topics and theme of your blog. We’re going to be grabbing domain names on Monday (if you don’t have one already) so think about what you want your overall theme to be, and how you’re going to speak to your target market. 
If you have any questions about this please feel free to ask. I’ll be on and off the computer through the weekend.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=282f00bd-0402-40e9-b9c4-4891b99e2d44)
No related posts.
Hey Jackie,
I Just wanted to say I couldnt agree with you more, finding who your target market is, is incredibly important. A valuable research tool I use is Quantcast.com
What this site allows me or anyone for that matter to do is get a detailed demographic of the people that visit sites which are linked to your niche.
By finding the information you talk about means you are able to communicate and put your message across more fluently as opposed to walking into it blindfolded.
Thanks again,
Daryl.
daryl@Tefal Actifry´s last [type] ..Tefal Actifry
I love that 5 Dollar Dinners. Aside from the coupons, I also have recipes that I can use for all occasions, even just for a simple dinner with the family.
Nice blog, it really helps me a lot. I am looking forward for your blogs in the future.
Jackie!
Hey I hope everything is well with you!! I just had a quick question about a niche blog with about 50 posts or so… What’s the best method for creating backlinks? Do we need to create links to each individual post or will backlinks to just the top level domain be enough to help each post rank well for the keyword? Thanks for all your help!
Dennis
.-= Dennis@A2000 Wilson Baseball Glove´s last blog ..A2000 Wilson Baseball Glove updated Sun Mar 7 2010 12:48 pm CST =-.
Hi Dennis,
If you’ve targeted a specific keyword for each post you’ll need to build links to each post. Top level links will not be enough to rank specific keywords for each post.
The easiest way depends on what you find easy. If you like to write, then write articles and use a submission software like UAW. If you don’t like to write the easiest thing is probably link packs ~ like Lynn Terry’s 5000 links packet.
There are lots of ways to get links ~ go through the link building category to find more.
which is why we’re talking about it now. AND the world isn’t perfect and you can tweak things along the way.
The hard factor is that you should, in a perfect world, have it nailed down before you even start.
This way, your domain name, tagline and logo will coincide right from the start.
.-= Dennis Edell´s last blog ..$100 – 10 Winners – Comment Contest! ‘Till Months End… =-.
I think it is important to have some thing for your visitors so that they can come again and again so it is important to know about what exactly they are looking for in your blog..
.thanks for all the point..great.
That is a really good point. You need to start working out who your target market is going to be. The one thing I have found, is that over the 2 years I have had my blog – my target has started to move and tighten. I am not targetting all the same people I was when I first started.
.-= Tom@Market Samurai Tutorial´s last blog ..Cheap Article Writers | $1.60 An Article Interest You? =-.
Couldn’t agree more. I certainly don’t target the market I thought I would here.
This can be true for content and topic as time goes on as well. The key thing is to get started. You can always course correct, get more clear and focused as time goes on. It’s part of the process. 
The whole point of this type of blog (as I am teaching it) is to be working on something you’re quite familiar with, something you’re passionate about. But you want to make sure you don’t try to put too many of your passions into one blog at the same time or you risk not being able to connect with your audience.
I’m not tallking, at this point, so much about the specific posts, as much as the overall topic/theme of your blog.
Excellent post Jackie! I think this is something that I’m lacking and it is definitely something I need to get better at. Sometimes it’s hard especially when you are not 100% familiar with your subject matter. I suppose it would be better to write each blog post as if you were speaking to someone face to face…telling them exactly what you want to convey.
You know…in the movie “Say Anything”, John Cussack’s character would drive around speaking into a little tape recorder to write things down later. Maybe this isn’t such a kooky idea – it could really help someone speak more conversationally. Could be helpful!
Looking forward to Monday!
Thanks for the shout out Jackie.
.-= Tiffany´s last blog ..Things That Make Me Happy =-.