It is important to keep your blog fresh by adding new content every day.It can be tricky trying to find what exactly your readers want to know about however. You can’t just write for the sake of writing a blog post, you have to teach in your articles.
The only problem with finding out what your readers want is how long it takes you to do that. You have to experiment, and any good experiment will take some time to get accurate results from. But when you experiment to figure out what your readers want, you don’t just write about one topic about your niche, but about many. You are showing diversity within your blog posts.
Don’t Get Me Wrong — Blogging With Diversity is the way to go
Of course I totally encourage you to write posts on your blog ranging in many different topics within your niche. This is of course the way to figure out what works best in your community article wise. Nothing is perfect of course, but a few reasons why you want to have diversity in your blog posts:
- Create more interest with a variety of users — Talking about multiple topics on your blog can help larger varieties of people in your niche.
- Increase chances of getting linked to — Write more diversely, get linked back to from a larger community of bloggers.
- Give you more to write about — Writing about the same topic in your niche over and over again will make it harder to create content.
But like I said, nothing is perfect. And writing about multiple subjects in your own niche is not one of the things that has that perfect sensation. I can’t stress enough how important it is to write diversely, but I just want to bring up the problems you may face to doing it as well.
Not All Topics Are Useful to Everybody
There are some things in a niche that you can talk about that won’t be useful for everyone. A service, a product, or even another blog, chances are that not everyone will care!
Take me for example. I talk about the Thesis framework here a lot. I mention it in posts, and I even wrote a post with four ways I customized it. That post is probably the second most commented post on the blog, and it did not cater to everyone in my community. Just a certain group.
Not everyone here uses Thesis, that post made it clear as some of the regular commentators here didn’t reply to that. So by posting consistently about multiple topics, I completely exclude a certain part of my community from helping them learn information they want.
Just imagine if I kept writing Thesis posts here. How different would this community be?
Possible Conflict With the Blog Theme
Not the design of the blog, but the style of posts. Every blog has some kind of theme behind their posts. I feel like the posts we do here all revolve around the “creating a community on your blog” concept. Not all of your posts will be about your general writing theme. But how is that a problem?
- Branding Issues — I say this is a blog about creating a community. So with that being said, what the hell does most of our “Fun Stuff” category have to do with creating a better community?
- Going too specific — Is it possible to get too specific in your writings? To cover even the smallest of issues? Doesn’t that really exclude more of your community when you talk about something so minor?
The common answer to all of these problems
The common answer to all of those problems above is that your blog is meant to be diverse. With such a large variety of things you can talk about in any niche, there is no reason not to write about multiple things going on.
Your niche probably changes every day, something new happens. Just think of bloggers in the technology or celebrity niches — that probably has new developments every hour, and probably less.
Keep up with what is happening, and you will find out that there will be more things to write about. Again, writing diversely is something you should definitely try out. Just keep these problems I have mentioned in mind. Hopefully I have given you enough insight to not let this be something that consumes you!
15 Discussions
I think personally what matters is that your content remains on-topic, even if it doesn’t address everybody all the time.
Each niche can be exploited in so many ways that it may happened that you come to write something that is less general and thus potentially exclude some of your readers, but as long as it is just for a couple of posts, they usually don’t mind.
General information that targets all your readers is great, but sometimes, people do want more specific information, what matters in the end is to keep things in balance.
Nicolas Prudhon´s last blog ..Day 17: 21DSM – On-Page Analysis With IBP
You’re right, I also try to think of the “you can’t please everybody” concept for this situation as well. There is going to be some content that some readers will enjoy and use some, and there will be some that don’t. You just have to learn to be able to cater to different groups in your community i guess!
While innovation can have its dangers (like my most recent posts on my blog and the issues there…ugh) I think that it’s important to always try to put your own spin on things, and offer value to your readers in many different ways. Just as you said, blogs are supposed to be diverse. Otherwise we would run out of ideas!
Corey Freeman @ Outstanding Writer´s last blog ..How to Deal with Innapropriate (Stupid) Comments on Your Blog
Yeah, I see those comments you’re getting on your blog…doesn’t seem fun! But I’d rather be original and innovative and get flamed then write the same crap all over again and get a cliche response (if you know what I’m getting at).
Diversifying blog posts are a great way to attract readers from a range of interests. However, in some cases, it is virtually impossible to diversify posts, such as my blog, which is totally focused on domain names. I call it a domain name specific blog, so all I can blog is about domains and web hosting, with a little bit of SEO tips here and then.
It would look funny if I suddenly start blogging about life on my blog; my targeted readers would think I am plain stupid
Richael | Domain Marvelous´s last blog ..Can .sex (or the new gTLDs) finally dethrone .com?
But there are certain things you talk about regarding domains. You could talk about how to add them to a web host, which would be targeted at beginners, which leaves out the people who have already established their domain to their web host. That’s what i was trying to get at in this post.
I like the article, it all balls down to you can’t pass everybody. As long as you don’t focus on just one part of your blog community in every post. I think everybody will be happy.
Deneil Merritt´s last blog ..Business Is Like Chess
If only everyone understood that!
When it comes to blog posts only few of them become famous. Some blog posts though you expect them to become famous they fail. Good article Alex
Harish | Blogging Kid´s last blog ..A Recap of Some My Best Posts On This Blog
Yeah, it’s amazing what grabs the most attention of people now.
Hi Alex,
I really enjoyed reading your post. I sometimes also face the same problem of coming up with a good quality content for my blog. But your post gave me new ideas and has inspired me to write better.
Thanks & I wish you all the best.
Mani Raj
Havoc Marketing
Havoc Marketing´s last blog ..Easy Profit Pack – Easiest Way To Make Fast Clickbank Commissions
That’s great to hear! Figuring out ideas for posts isn’t the easiest thing in the world to do.
Very nice post! Coming up with good and unique content is definitely a problem with most of the bloggers and people accepting what you have to say is another ball game all together
Diversity is the key as you tend to satisfy eveyone’s requirements
Cheers
Sandeep
Curious Little Person´s last blog ..Article Marketing for Traffic!
As long as the targeted audience is interested in the topic, I guess diversification is ok. No point writing about tips for housecleaning when the audience is Economic students in college.
scheng1´s last blog ..Event planning ideas
Hey Alex,
. And I agree with you
It felt good to read your post. I am a blogger newbie even though I have around 11+ years of experience in corporate world. I for right now am writing on things that I have experience in and things I am learning. I do not think that I can ever write on a single topic for years and not repeat myself. I feel that I will write whatever I am feeling like. Sometimes , I want to put on Techie hat, I will write about it. If I would like to comment on poor HR practices in corporations, I do so. If I have some wisdom about entrepreneurship, I will share that. I think it is like my personality which feeds on variety and less on focus. I really get bored doing the same thing again and again
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