There is this one little thing I noticed on a lot of blogs I read, and have to admit, my own too, that I think can be the end of some of our blogs. And we don't even notice it happening, so we let it happen until we realize we are too deep into it to fix it.
When you start your blog, you have a target market, and a lot of beginners, in any niche, will have beginners in mind as their target market.
So if you are starting a blog about WordPress and blog design, you will start the blog by writing posts (or making videos) about how to register a domain, how to install WordPress, how to post, how to add an image to your posts and so on.
When it comes to blog design, you will talk about how to change font colors in themes that have automatic settings for fonts, how to change a header for themes that have one-button-header-settings, etc.
As time passes, you will start writing more and more about intermediate and advanced topics, like reinstallling databases, creating page templates for your blog themes and messing around with the php files.
And that is natural, because you learned more and more over time so you want to share it with your readers.
But unless you changed your target market, this is wrong! Yes, you learned more and you know how to do more complicated things, but if your target market are still beginners in your niche ' then writing all this will push them away from your blog.
They are sticking around for what they are familiar with as your work and in this case those are tutorials for beginners, not something they can't wrap their heads around. It is hard to remember how it was when you just started out, since you learned so much since, but just think how frustrated you get when you want to do something and you can't because everything looks so complicated' That is how your readers feel when you talk about editing a php file!
So before you mess it up completely, stop doing what ever you are doing and analyze it all. Here are some questions to ask yourself.
Create Content for Your Readers ' Questions to Ask
- When you started ' who was your ideal customer/reader?
- What was your target market?
- Has that changed since you started?
- Has your content changed since you started?
- Has it become too complicated for a beginner?
- Have you noticed less returning visitors, less engagement?
If you didn't change the idea of your ideal reader but your content has changed and became more advanced, you are doing exactly what I am talking about here. Demian Farnworth wrote a guest post on Coppyblogger about becoming an exceptional writer, but this will not help you if you are writing for the wrong audience.
Content Confusion
You have two solutions: you can either make your readers happy by going back to what they are used to reading from you, or you can make a sketch of your new ideal reader and start changing the direction for your blog.
The reason is that mixing it all together just isn't going to work. You will lose your old readers with new content because it is too much for them or you won't be able to get the new ones (advanced ones) to stick around unless you always write content for them.
Now, I can hear you saying 'But won't the beginners learn with me and move to intermediate and advanced users?' but the answer is 'Most of them won't'. See, some people are tech-fobic, some don't have time to learn and some just don't want to move ahead until they perfect everything they can at the beginner's level.
On top of that, if your blog is your business and main focus, you will learn faster because that is what you do all day long, but most of your readers will have day jobs, family and maybe a second job to take care of, so they won't have time to catch up with you!
So question what you are doing at the moment and if change in direction of your blog isn't what is holding you back, line up your goals with your market and go for the win !
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