What’s the Recipe?
Posted: June 17, 2010 Filed under: Department of Digital, social media | Tags: blogging, crowdsourcing 1 Comment »
Earlier this week, one of my Edelman colleagues asked me to put together a quick list of “the three keys” of building a niche in blogging. I’m by no means an expert, so I wanted to open up the floor a little to crowdsource it.
Here was my answer:
- Read. Read about the topic as much as you can to become as much of an expert as possible. Reading is a competitive advantage in blogging, and one of the most overlooked.
- Never stop creating content – no matter what your blog looks like, constantly writing is what helps people find it.
- Find other bloggers with common interests and get to know them – don’t be afraid to e-mail a fellow author and offer your favorite recent post, they may start to do the same.
So now, by the glory of self-published content and technology, I ask for your help. What am I missing and what needs to go?
Voice. It’s not enough to have an obsession, but you have to cultivate and create a voice for yourself. Sometimes that means in-jokes, sometimes that means a styleguide, sometimes that means nothing short of slavish devotion to snark and humor.
If you can’t tell people why you’re in love with X, or why Y is crucial to X, then you’ve not done enough of your homework. Spend time working on the why, not just the what and the how.