Lessons in Niche Blogging Part 2: Give'em What They Want
The Blog That Jane Likes isn't niche blogging in the sense that the target audience is small (AntsMarching.org, perhaps the biggest of the aforementioned communities has 118k members, a little less than twice the subscribership of TechCrunch ;)), but because the amount of topics covered are relatively small. I maintain only three "real" categories: Shows, Downloads (Audio and Video), and Lyrics. The site is extremely content-rich. Each post has something readers want. There are no musings or links to funny sites or anything to distract readers from the content they came to get. It's been said many times, and that's because it's important: Focus is key.
Contrast that to what I've done here on occasion. I feel that only ill effects have come from posting about DMB on here. The people who view this as a tech blog are uninterested in the DMB content and the people who come here for the DMB content are uninterested in the tech talk. I lose out on both sets of readers because neither are interested enough in the other content to stick around. No one has time to read a blog where only 75% of the content is what they want when there are hundreds of other blogs that'll give them 100%.
While there is no way I would have made all the posts I've made on BTJL on here, I probably would have made a lot more posts about the new tour than the handful I've made. By starting this new blog I've been able to satisfy my DMB blogging fix while still being able to keep some kind of focus on this blog.
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DrFaulken wrote:
I understand what you're saying here, but do you think that specializing also reduces introducing readers to new things? Maybe someone who's involved in tech hasn't really listened to DMB before, and after reading post after post about them finally picks up a record, or goes to see them at a show?
Posted on 31-Jul-06 at 10:47 am | Permalink