Marketing Ninja

AjaxNinja is only a few months old, and every time I write a new entry I struggle with the following question. Do I write about:

• ASP.NET (Data layers, Facebook.NET, Phalanger),
• general blogging concepts (headlines, saving articles),
• blogging specifically for businesses,
• Facebook Applications & Social Media concepts,
• general website management issues (hosting), or
• business concepts and entrepreneurship?

Every time I write a post I think “am I going to lose a ton of my readers who are just here for the ASP.NET articles if I write about blogging concepts?” While I’m still not absolutely certain, the answer appears to be “no.“

If anything, I find that the diverse nature of my content helps AjaxNinja convert more readers into subscribers, but that’s namely because all of the subjects I blog about are related.

Who’s my target audience and how does AjaxNinja’s diversity help reach them?

While I appreciate the patronage of all of my subscribers equally, I started AjaxNinja with the intention of reaching people just like me: self-starting technological people who want to start a website, a blog, or an online business.

Thus all of my content, in one way or another, relates to my target audience.

• I write about ASP.NET, AJAX, CSS, SQL, and sometimes PHP to cover some of the technological facets behind website development.
• I write about blogging concepts, ethics, and etiquette as they are necessary components to operating a blog.
• I conduct interviews with entrepreneurs or I give my 2 cents about some market trend because they are directly relevant to running an online business and online marketing.
• And so on.

There probably not a whole lot of ASP.NET programmers/bloggers who are in college and looking to create or join their first startup; so if I were looking to target only people like myself then my audience would grow much more slowly.

But what’s the point?

By expanding AjaxNinja’s mission statement and content to broader themes I ultimately expand my target audience; instead of just targeting entrepreneurial ASP.NET programmers, I now have a blog that can target virtually any person who wants to learn how to start a blog, website, or online business. I can now cut a slice from a much larger pie.

A quick homework assignment: write a mission statement for your blog or website and make it visible somewhere on your site. In addition, define your target audience.

But how do you stop readers who are interested in only a dimension or two from unsubscribing?

If there are readers out there who are so fickle that they will unsubscribe from AjaxNinja after I write single post on something that isn’t of crucial importance to them, then I probably won’t miss them. I guess I don’t love all of my readers equally :p

The trick to making this multi-faceted blog work, however, is to do your best to try and cover all subjects equally.

I use a round-robin system where I’ll try and cover my bread-and-potatoes subjects each week and add in some special stuff in the variable days.

Here’s how a typical breakdown might look for any given week:

The meat and potatoes:

• 2 posts on ASP.NET/Facebook.NET (my ASP.NET niche) and
• 1 post on blogging concepts or blogging for business.

Extra days: (any two from the following list)

• 1 post on social media
• 1 interview / entrepreneurship post
• 1 business concept post
• 1 code sample
• 1 book / product review
• 1 resource list
• 1 hot news item coverage (like my coverage of the .NET 3.5 source release)

I make an honest effort to try and cover all of the concepts equally in terms of what I deem important and what I think my audience wants the most.

I know there are some SEO/Social Media/Blogging types who read AjaxNinja in addition to a lot of the good folks from DotNetKicks who want to read about ASP.NET, so I have to make an effort to leverage the wants of all demographics of my audience.

Final Answer

Diversifying your content will enable you to reach a broader audience, IF:

• all of your content is unified thematically or by the shared interests of your audience,
• your content is unified under your blog’s mission statement,
• you make an honest effort to service all areas of your mission statement equally, and
• you make an honest effort to service the wants of your audience proportionately equal to their level of interest.

If you’re struggling to build an audience in a niche subject, try broadening out your blog’s mission statement and relate your experience within your niche to more universal lessons. It’s worked for me and it can work for you.

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