When To Stick With Your Niche

Posted by on January 25, 2012 No comments

There has been many discussions within the online business world about staying on topic for search engine optimization reasons. One problem with this logic is you are not creating content for your audience. The same thing with picking titles which have search traffic. This is fine for search engine optimization, but really does not satisfy the audience. With the amount of competition in any given niche one extremely important factor to your lasting success will be repeat business and to receive repeat business you must please the people that come to your presence. To please your audience on occasion you will need to go off your topic.

Now when I say go off your topic I don’t mean writing about something completely unrelated. If you are running a blog about cooking there is no reason to write about poetry or something else that has nothing to do about food. You may stray off topic to write about health or another topic that is at least some connection with your own topic. Your audience will come to your blog for certain information and that is what you should be focuses on giving them. Finding out what they want and need can be done by using email, facebook, twitter, and other social sites. You should also be looking on your competitors blogs and sites to see what they types of content they are producing.

When you find a need that your audience has you should attempt to fill the need even if it means going off your specific topic and straying into topics that are related. Now I can’t tell you how far you can stray off topic this will have to be done by you. It is easy to see how certain content pleases your audience. When you write about something off topic keep a close eye on your feed and stat counter. These will let you know if the content went over well with your audience or if the content was not well liked. If you notice a higher bounce rate than usual with the new content that you have produced then you should probably stay away from that genre.

One important note about keeping visitors and readers is content production. One of the biggest reasons I stray somewhat off specific niche content is running out of things to say. Tapping into a different niche which is closely related also taps into hundreds or in some cases thousands of possible new article and blog post topics. One of the biggest reasons visitors come to your presence is for information and they want the information to be new and helpful. If you hit a wall when finding new topics on your niche straying off niche is better than not producing new content. Write as much as you can and you will notice that people will begin following you.

Keeping Online Business Integrity

Posted by on January 24, 2012 No comments

There will be few things that separate you from your competition and one of the biggest should be your honesty and integrity. We as online business owners do not have close personal contact with our customers so we have to build trust and loyalty through a computer screen. The reason building this trust is so important is the way information spreads online. One of the biggest factors for your lasting success will be people telling others about your business. If what they are spreading is good then you will see increased profit and traffic. On the other hand if you are screwing over your audience or even sharing information which is inaccurate the backlash from scorned people can potentially be devastating to your business. Something to remember about reputation online is when you please people they are likely to be happy and go on their way, but you will probably not see much in good reviews on your site. On the other hand if you are dishonest with a visitor or rude that person whom you hurt will be very likely to post anywhere they can telling people about how you hurt them.

Saying you will be honest with your online business is easy, but following through you may find it more difficult than expected. Everything you do online can have different shades of honesty. Perhaps you publish work which you have not thoroughly fact checked and was slightly off. This may not be dishonest, but could definitely hurt your credibility. Everything you do online will tell visitors who you are and you should always be attempting to put your best foot forward. The first and most important aspect of building trust and credibility is the work you publish. This is basically what you say on your presence. Every word written should be the truth as you know it. Most of the time you will need to research what you are writing about to ensure your words have truth behind them. Another important aspect is remembering that as people read your work they will be making judgments about you so be sure your spelling and grammar is up to par. Personally all work I do online is firsts done in a word processor. This allows for spelling and grammar checks.

The second aspect of credibility and trust is your personal interactions with visitors. These can be done using social sites such as twitter or facebook and through email. Every time you speak with your visitors be sure to treat them with respect no matter their education or demeanor. You may run into someone who is angry with you or your presence and is rude within an email. Rather than reacting to their email with your emotions you should attempt to resolve the situation by treating them kindly. Once you start seeing some success online people will be attempting to contact you so keep these thoughts in mind when you begin communicating with your audience. For bloggers one of the biggest things to focus on is how you respond to comments. Always be civil on your blog even when the visitor is not this will make you look very good and those who hatefully spam your blog very bad.