Frank Schulte-Ladbeck

To become a successful blogger, you need to find a niche, but that may be as simple as coming up with a unique message.

I was taking a look at several top bloggers with twitter accounts. I wanted to understand the relationship between a social sphere with ablog as its base. Networking is vital for any business or venture. Facebook with its fan pages are great, but twitter was easier for me to investigate. Being more curious about blog design, I paid more attention as to how these bloggers had their websites arranged. I think that a business needs a base on the web, a hub where all of their social and marketing efforts go back to. I would love to see more functionality of accessing my social media accounts through my WordPress dashboard (yes, there are plugins that provide this to a degree, but I would love to see this expanded). I noticed a few things about bloggers who were being listed heavily on twitter and their blogs: a consistent, easy to understand massage.

    I am sure that you have read the articles that state that you need to find a niche. You cannot just be a plumber in Katy on the web, because there are other plumbers from Katy. These articles will encourage you to be the “tankless water heater specialist in Katy” instead of the plumber. This has its merit, but you may not have to go that route. All of the blogs that I picked solely based upon looking through lists of having a good number of visitors and how well they were being added to lists on twitter by their followers, I found to have one basic message: we are here to help you. Help with what? Make money, save money, become thinner, be a better boss. The message was refined with a personal connection that made sense to the readers. Make money becomes make enough money for that dream vacation; save money becomes save money for your child’s college fund; become thinner becomes become thinner to fit into that slinky black dress. That is the hook which defines the niche. The plumber then could be the plumber in Katy who is always there to answer your questions, or the plumber in Katy who finds the cheapest way to fix your home.  Once you hit upon the message, you bring it across your efforts. It becomes the tag line for your marketing, your social profiles, for your website, and for your blog.
    Going back to the creating the message, you can make it appropriately vague, but then build around that hook with clarifiers. Taking the line ” make enough money for that dream vacation”, we can strip out the word “vacation”. A dream can revolve around any goal that the reader has, so you could go onto to describe dreams involving cars, homes, vacations, or some other good. Describing how to achieve these dreams can be quite similar: save money earned towards that dream; find deals to make the dream cost less;and refining what that dream means (do you need a yacht or a nice little boat). Making money can involve to work, side jobs, passive income, stock market, or selling goods. Here we need to analyze who is writing this blog. Let us take a financial advisor. With this job, I would want people to use my service, so I would help clients understand what the tax consequences are with a second job and how you should invest that money. I now have my niche: fulfilling your dreams through smart second job choices and investments.Doesn’t sound inviting does it? Let us simplify the concept in a quick phrase: “dream money”. The tag line becomes: “finding ways to make money to fulfill your dreams”. Then we can clarify the idea further in a header or text box in the sidebar: “Using second jobs and extra cash to make wise investments to reach our goals”.
    Finally we can integrate this into our brand across the net. “Dream money” can become the name for fan page on Facebook;, our twitter account name, and in our advertising. The one thing about using this network to improve your blog statistics or business: be social. Automated tweets only annoy, as does over tweeting. (If you are constantly tweeting your message, are you listening to others?). Read and respond to tweets of others to let them know you. Be consistent in your message. This is hard at times. You may be tweeting for your business, but you have opinions, and they may hurt your business when expressed. Have a separate account for that aspect of your social adventures. Not all of our dream money tweets have to be exactly on topic, but the idea of helping others and wanting to achieve a goal should be tied into your message.
    As a disclaimer, I do not know if someone is using “dream money”. I am writing this early in the morning, and I was trying to think of examples as I am writing. If it is not in use, I have no plans to use it. You may have a message for your site, but ask these questions: how does it help your reader/client?; does the message connect in a personal way with the reader/client?; what method will be used to help the reader/client?; and how can we tie this into a quick to remember message? I took a look at various blogs in my market to see how they hold up. Being green is a big trend in real estate, so finding green or eco professionals was easy. This may be a niche, but the questions that I just asked where not answered. Now for the hard part; I have to look at my own sites.