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Where does your blog stand in the crowd? Is your blog progressing in the right direction? Here's a small warm-up exercise. Navigate to any random blog hosted on blogspot. I'll start with the official Google blog. Using the "Next Blog" button in the navigation bar at the top navigate to the next blog. See how many comments a random post gets. Do this for the next four or five. Remember the results; we'll use them at the end.
A blog's value in the market depends on a beautiful blend of two factors - its uniqueness and its usefulness to the visitors. So if I were to plot a cryptic graph, it will look like this.
I didn't use it to scare you, (but I'm sorry if it did). Our task now is to position your blog at a point where it is one of the highly valued blog on the net. There are four basic corners of this plot.
- The "another useful blog" - This is the bottom right corner. This blog is very useful to the audience. It could be a web design blog or a Photoshop tutorial blog or a make money blogging blog or a blog focusing on social media and social networking. Everyone needs it and uses it for one purpose or the other; people bookmark it and return back to it.
The only problem is whatever this blog's subject is, there are a hundred other blogs churning content on the same topic. A hundred other blogs on the same topic means that its luck or a lot of blog marketing that will work to promote your blog and make it visible to the audience. It is a promotion pressure job.
- The "only unique" blog - This is the top-left corner. This is a blog so unique that there's none which comes close to the subject. The sorry part is that the usefulness of this blog is missing. This is a blogger gone stupid. He is blogging about crazy stuff. Luckily he is the only blogger doing it.
- The "stupid-gone-burst" blog - This is the bottom left corner. A blog not only of ne use to the audience but every other blog is on the same subject. Useless and copycat as this blog is, it is most probably being run by another bot posting duplicate content at random. I get a lot of pingbacks from these kinds of blogs.
- The "useful and unique" blog - This is the position where everyone wants to be. The holy grail of marketing (as Guy Kawasaki terms it), this is the place where a blog focuses on a subject not only of great utility and usefulness but also a subject so unique that the blog is easily distinguishable from the rest and stands apart. This kind of blog grows popular with little effort. The popularity and growth is viral and ultimately this is a win-win for the blogger and the audience alike.
Back to the exercise we started with. There are millions of blogs out there on the net. We navigated to the four or five random blogs. You could navigate like this all day through and find few which have a dedicated audience with a growing popularity. They talk about all subjects (like the ones you went thru in the exercise). In all probability these blogs have no or few audience. If your blog has usefulness to the audience and if yours is the only one which focuses on the subject it will be the one-of-a-kind with rich and useful content. This is the reason why blogs like VandelayDesign and ZenHabits are so popular and get the audience they have. Target your blog for this position and you shall be there in no time. The point is to make meaning.
In the next part we'll focus on how to make meaning. Watch this space, do leave your comments and subscribe to the feed.
Image by Will Foster. Inspired by Guy Kawasaki
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Goodness, you are hot!
Thank you. This is great information.
Glenda