Chapter 11
Creating Something Worthwhile
So you have started a blog. You might want to make money from it, or you might have some other goal in mind. You are in it for your own goals or you want to spread your ideas. This is all well and good, but to actually achieve those goals, you have to network, gather readers, build traffic, and build links. Basically, to achieve your goals you have to serve an audience.
What does “serve an audience” mean? Rather than prioritize your advertising, affiliates, and sales, you have to give readers what they want or need. It means making something useful, something that people will want to talk about (favorably).
This is the real trick, the difference between winning and losing, and the subject of this chapter.
Before you can serve an audience, you need to know who they are! You need to really understand your readers, both through research and planning before you launch, and through talking to them after you launch.
If you are already a member of the community in which you are working, you will have an advantage here; however, you still need to consider who your target readers will be and what they would like to see. Consider the following:
- What are they called?
- Who do they think they are?
- Who are they really?
- Who do they want to be?
- Who do they like?
- Who don’t they like?
- Who is their peer group?
- Who do they not identify with?
- What are their beliefs?
- Where do they live?
- Where do they work?
- Where do they learn?
- Where do they want to be?
- What are their needs?
- How old are they?
- How youthful do they act?
- How conservative are they?
- What are their driving ambitions?
- What are their wants and needs?
- What are their pleasures?
- What are their pains?
- What do they love?
- What do they hate?
To really appeal to an audience, you have to go beyond “nice,” “ok,” and “good enough.” Ask yourself how you can take your blog to the next level, to be not just merely adequate, but must-have. Not just interesting, but compelling.
Exercise
Create pen portraits for your reader group. This means writing down everything you know about them, and describing them as well as you can so you have a fully formed impression of what they are like and what will please them. Once you have a good idea of who you are targeting, try to brainstorm content ideas that they would absolutely love.
Thanks to Seth Godin and his books, in particular Purple Cow, many bloggers know and understand the need to be “remarkable.” Remarkable is what makes ideas spread. Essentially, you need your content to be good enough that people “remark” on it to others. The problem is that being aware of the need is not the same as putting it into practice. Take these points, for example:
- Attention is not compelling—Stripping naked or shouting “fire” gets you noticed, but is not valuable. Forget attention seeking and create value.
- Be radical—Half-measures won’t do. People only remember the biggest, fastest, richest, easiest, hardest, most expensive, cheapest, and whatever superlative you can think of.
- It’s not fashion—Fashion is fleeting. It is following a bandwagon; if it is already being talked about, you are already too late.
- People should care—If people do not love it or hate it, then you need to push harder. “Like” is not remarkable; it should cause passion.
Note
This is not about you. This is about your reader; leave your ego out of it. One of the biggest mistakes bloggers make is being all me-me-me.
If you manage to make something remarkable, your task of spreading your message and promoting your blog will be so much easier. A successful blog is all about having your brand spread far and wide.
Exercise
Seth Godin tells us to look out for purple cows. Think of things in your life that are remarkable. What lifts them above being “average,” “normal,” or “nice”? When was the last time you told someone else about a blog or article you happened across?
What Causes Ideas to Spread?
If you think about the last time you told someone something you heard, it will likely have been the following:
- Different/New—People do not talk about things that are usual and ordinary. People take notice of things that are new or different. English Cut (www.englishcut.com) was the first blog about men’s suits that anyone had heard of; start a similar blog like that today, and nobody will take notice.
- Newsworthy—News is probably the biggest type of information to spread, but that doesn’t always mean it is new or different. In some cases it is the nature of the story that helps it spread. Sometimes ordinary things can become news if they happen to someone important.
- Easy to understand—If you have to puzzle over something before you get it, it will in most cases seem like too much effort, even if you think it is important in some way. Simplify your message, and it will spread more effectively.
- Easy to remember—How will people spread your ideas if they can’t remember them? It’s just like jokes; some of us have a talent for remembering and telling them, but even though I love to listen to comedians tell complex stories, I can recall and retell only the most basic.
- Easy to communicate—Politicians use sound bites for good reason; they are easy to remember and communicate. Make it easy to get the point across. Provide “send to friend” and bookmarking features.
- Beneficial—Will your story help someone? Will it make them laugh? What will the sender and recipient gain? The more beneficial, the more it will spread; self-interest almost always comes into play.
- Emotion—There is a good reason why human-interest stories do well. We are hard-wired to be interested in people, and in particular, the underlying emotion behind a story. The more touched or emotionally impacted they are, the more likely people are to respond, remember, and share (Figure 11-1).
Figure 11-1: Use stories with emotion.
Exercise
For a week, make a mental note of every piece of news and gossip you come across. Try to determine how the piece of information was transmitted to you, and which ones you take note of or share and which ones “wither on the vine.”
Useful blogs can be difficult to define, but we can all spot one. Spend any meaningful time in the company of a blog-reading tool, and we become masters at it. We decide the fate of a feed in an instant sometimes, like cruel judges on some reality-TV talent contest. But the question is: What defines those blogs that make it? Why are some blogs useful and others a waste of time?
Ask yourself what your favorite blogs have in common. Think of your absolute, number-one, favorite blog in the world. For Darren it is Lifehacker. For me, it is Scott Adams’ Dilbert blog (www.dilbert.com/blog).
Why do you like the blog that you’ve identified? What keeps you going back so often?
Scott Adams is an incredibly witty guy, but he also makes me think. I go to his blog to escape, to think about something other than work. With Lifehacker there are a few things Darren enjoys, but the main factor is that it’s a blog that regularly provides life-enhancing tips.
In general, your audience wants to move toward or away from something. They may want to escape a situation or pain, avoid future problems, or bring something pleasurable or beneficial into their lives.
The most popular topics often come down to relationships (dating, family, parenting), health (diet, fitness), and money (business, investing). Your challenge is presenting the required information in a useful way that also makes your content stand out from the crowd. Take a look at how you can do that in the next few sections.
Useful-Blog Properties
We’ll all have different answers to what makes a blog useful, but if we gathered the properties of those favorite blogs together, I expect we could group the answers into one or more of the following categories:
- Entertaining—Blogs are increasingly being used as entertainment. People are going to them for laughs, gossip, and fun conversation. You can turn an ordinarily dry topic into a more uniquely entertaining experience by bringing out some of your own personality and sharing humorous anecdotes from your own experience.
- Educational—Some blog readers are primarily interested in learning something new about a given topic.
- Informative—Many successful blogs are built on the thirst that some people have to be informed on an issue, product, or topic.
- Thoughtful—Some blog readers want a place where they can open their minds to new viewpoints, and have a good, old-fashioned dialogue, debate, or even a fight over an issue.
- Breaking news—Many blog readers just want to be kept up-to-date in a field.
- Community—Some very successful blogs tap into the need that people have to connect and belong. Quite often the topic is secondary to these connections.
Each blog has the potential to be “useful,” and each successful blog will approach it in its own way, perhaps using a combination of the preceding factors.
When you know your readers, you can really help them solve their problems and achieve their goals. Your content should get your readers one step closer to where they want to be.
Now think about your current or planned blog; which of the preceding properties can you provide?
ProBlogger Blog Tip: The Ultimate Goal
Creating a blog that people absolutely cannot live without is a rare thing indeed, but should be your goal. If you do not strive to make your blog the best it can be, it will be easy to slip into “good enough” and then on toward mediocrity. Always be thinking, “How can I make this better?”
Creating Useful Content Today
Whether you have an existing blog or want to get started today, read through the following tips and implement them right away.
Add Value
Don’t just report the same news that everyone else is reporting; add value to it by expressing your opinion, analyzing it, helping readers interpret it, and so on. If your blog is a “newsy”-type blog, the next time you write a post, take a moment before hitting Publish to ask yourself if you’ve added anything to the story. Tell your readers what you think, make a comment about how it applies to you (or might apply to others), look back and identify patterns in the story, or look forward and make a prediction about where things might be headed. Though some people do want to hear the latest news, they’ll become loyal to you as a news source if you help them make sense of it.
Ask Questions
Asking questions brings you closer to your readers and gives you insight into how they think. This works better on some blogs than others (the topic and reader numbers come into play), but a real question for readers is a great starting place for useful content. I love to ask questions on my blog, and I try to do it regularly.
When I launched Social Media for Business Workbook (http://socialmediaworkbook.com), I put a survey form right on the homepage to capture my readers’ questions. Make note of the question “How difficult has it been to find info or help with this” (see Figure 11-2), which is almost as important as the question the user types above it. I don’t just want to know what is on my audience’s minds; I want to share solutions for which my audience has been looking but which they have not been able to easily find. You are not going to stand out when you only share easily found content that your reader can get elsewhere.
Figure 11-2: Social Media for Business Workbook research phase.
Mine Your Feedback
Your comments and inbox are rich sources of relevant material and burning questions. If readers take time to ask you a question, you know it matters to them—and more than likely to many of your other readers as well.
ProBlogger Blog Tip: Steal Feedback
Read blog comments and forum messages in your niche (see Figure 11-3) and take a note of good questions and suggestions! Using feedback doesn’t have to be restricted to messages sent to you directly.
Figure 11-3: Monitor niche forums to find audience questions.
Tell Your Story
Telling your stories can be very powerful. Put yourself into your posts; talk about how you learned what you are talking about. Give examples, be humorous, and express emotion. Readers want to connect with you, and telling a story rather than “just the facts” helps bring the topic to life. Whatever your topic, keep the following in mind:
Exercise
What stories do you have to tell? What are the lessons you learned? Next time you are relating a story that you think is interesting, make a note of it for use in your blog.
- Be entertaining—Be humorous, intriguing, irreverent, fun, push boundaries, surprise your readers, include a little spice. Use entertaining pictures, video, audio, and so on. Be playful.
- Be informing—Produce “how to” or “tips” posts. You might also want to do “introduction to…”-type posts. Ask readers what they want to learn about and then answer their questions.
- Build a community—Write inspirational posts with heart. Pay a lot of attention to the readers you have, ask lots of questions, answer their questions; empower people to contribute as much as they can. Include everyone; do not fall into the trap of “in” jokes and shorthand. Warmth, welcoming, and discussion are the keys to a great community.
Exercise
When was the last time you felt welcomed into a community? When did you feel unwelcome or even hostility? What did the community members do differently in each case? Can you implement any of those positive factors into your blog?
Each blog will have a different mix of goals and objectives. You might want to attempt to achieve more than one goal, but the key is to know what exactly you’re aiming for!
The most critical aspect of this chapter is to put your audience first and do it in a new and original way. As time goes on, standing out among the crowd is going to get harder and harder. You need to find a way to better serve readers while covering new ground.
Aim to be unique, remarkable, compelling, and, most of all, useful, and you will have success long after many other bloggers have given up.