Rather than produce your content first and then go look for an audience for it, why not find what the audience wants and produce content for that audience?
It’s amazingly obvious and so simple that it shocks me to see that the majority of people blogging, producing web content and even linkbait do not seem to do it.
I understand why this is. I have done it myself, I still do it. It’s because we think we know what people want us to write. It comes down to the ego. And there is nothing more egotistical than a blogger.
Here’s the thing. It’s not what you think you know that is important. It’s what you know. Most times your knowledge will not live up to your desired results.
You have to go out into the woods and sniff the trees.
It may be that you have spent so much time in your space you have built enough instinct and experience into your mind set you can just crack one off whenever you want. An article that is.
When faced with writing for a subject I know little of I spend hours and hours researching, you have to burn bytes to be able know what you are talking about, or at least convince people you know what you are talking about.
Most people do not invest the time in their subject or their target market to produce a piece of content which will get links. Which is great, because all we have to do to rise to the top is to simply read, read and read some more.
Soak in that information like a sponge. Suck it in and digest.
Your target market for a piece of linkbait should by studied, observed, examined, scrutinised, watched – to enable you to kno their desires, prejudices, proclivities, ambitions etc.
What are they fond of, what fascinates and excites them? What is it that motivates them to click through to a story, to link to a web page, to even take out their credit card from their leather wallet to buy your home made Gooseberry Jam you have started to sell online.
It’s simple, but I constantly see content where the target audience has been given the attention of a gnat on sugar coated crack.
Know your target audience.
{ 2 trackbacks }
{ 7 comments }
Out of interest has anyone ever asked you to write for them, but you turned them down because you didn’t think you’d be able to get anyone to lap the bait up? Like for a train spotting site :)
Thanks! I just choked my coffee and blew the rest across my screen when I read “crack one off whenever you want. An article that is.”
Good article and well put (as always).
Daz
LOL! I think that viewing logs tell what your readers like and what they don’t like. Once you find something expand on it.
This is precisely what is needed for any successful site. Your points are correct but I wish you’d given some examples. But here’s a tip on “how”: look at your top queries for the previous month (G Analytics, StatCounter, SEO Elite, Domain Dashboard…whatever tool you’re using) and then write an article that targets those exact keywords. If people are finding your site already for those words, and you then write content aimed at those words…well then you’ll solidify your position with searchers.
Thanks Darren, sorry about the mess you made, you really should not drink or eat or, ahem, do anything else whilst reading my blog.
The answer is to find a niche with as many people as you can. That represents a large pie, and you can take a small slice and be perfectly happy. Actually, the bigger the pie is, the better, because your slice can be that much larger.
Thanks for the article. You want to write articles that contain your main keyword or keywords that you want to get high search rankings for, writing articles that contain these keywords will help you rank well in the search engines and will hopefully bring more traffic to your site.
Comments on this entry are closed.