Building Up Sources
If you want to know what to write about on your site or what to share on social media channels you have to know how to pick a topic. If you follow our suggestion you will track conversations on Twitter, Google+, and Facebook to find what is trending or popular in your niche. What you will start to find are a lot of stories will come from the same places. These people, apps, and sites are called sources and can be used to find new stories in the future.
Subscribe & Follow Any Way Possible
A high quality source will publish and share high quality content. When you find a source you want to follow the site and/or author on every available social media channel, sign up for their newsletter, and subscribe to their RSS feed so you can be sure to get notified about their latest updates. This enables you to be one of the first to share their high quality information, building your reputation.
Where to Find New Sources
Use Google to find additional sources. Search for your keywords plus blog to find blogs related to your market. You can also search social bookmarking sites or the social networks to find new sites and authors. The key is to read their stuff and make sure that it is of high-quality. You don't want to damage your reputation for sharing junk to your audience.
Wash, Rinse, and Repeat
The longer that you are involved with your niche, the more stories you will see. If you find a new author or site, check out the rest of their work. If it's relevant to your market consider them a new source of information. It won't take long for you to build your sources up and you will have a constant flood of ideas on what you can write about and stories to share to your audience.
Picking Topics
Picking a topic is basically deciding what you are going to talk about. Topics are used for the content you develop on your site through article creation and for discussion on social media channels. It's obvious that you need to pick winning topics if you are going to have success online. Writing content that people are actually interested in reading will generate interest in your site. It's also vital to having success on social media where interesting topics lead to discussion and conversations.
Start Following Influencers in Your Market
Does picking a topic sound tough? It doesn't have to be. What I recommend you do is use crowdsourcing when you start out in a new market. You will do crowdsourcing by following influencers (your top competitors and potential partners) on the social media channels and see what they are talking about. You'll then start to follow the people that interact with the influencers you are following and follow them.
See What's Popular
You can see that in no time you will have quite the stream of tweets, status updates, and Google+ posts that are highly relevant for your market. The more people that are talking about a topic, the more popular it is and it normally means the story is highly relevant and interesting to others in your market.
Add Something of Value
Now that you know what topics are interesting to your target audience you have to do more than just repeat what everyone else is already saying. Expand on the story, add your own two cents, take a different angle, agree and state why, or tell everyone why you disagree. The worst thing you can do is simply take a "me too" approach and regurgitate what's already out there.
Expand Into Other Channels
If you find a popular status update on the social networks, expand into a more in-depth article on your site. You can then link to it via your social media channels and have people click through for more information. If articles on other sites are becoming popular, put your own unique spin on the story to separate yourself from the crowd. You can also turn that information into an infographic or create a video. By using a different medium to get the information out there you are standing out.
Discover New Stuff Yourself
Once you start to get a feel for your market you won't need to rely on crowdsourcing quite so much, you can start to discover your own topics. Once you find enough interesting stories from a single source, follow that source and be one of the first ones to break their new stories. Trust me, site owners love it when others quickly get the word out on new content that they published.
Create Your Own
After seeing what is interesting and popular in your niche you can start to create your own stories without relying on others. Now, not everything you write or share is going to be a big hit, but by being the first to report and share something interesting and unique has massive benefits, so when you do succeed you win in a big way.
Where To Build Your Online Audience
Audience building is a key component in creating a successful online business. If you don't have an audience it is very difficult to reach potential customers, network with partner sites, or build your brand. Having an audience will allow you to leverage the rest of your marketing efforts. But first, you have to know where it's important to build up your following. There are several platforms that you are going to want to establish yourself on.
1. Your Website
The first and foremost place to concentrate on is your website. You have to produce quality content that people are going to actually want to read and interact with. If you don't then all of our other efforts are going to be wasted.
As soon as you create your site and before you even start writing quality content you want to make sure that you have a few things already in place.
- Email Signup Form - Your visitors need to be able to signup to receive updates from you. Growing your email list is the single most important thing you will do in growing your online business.
- RSS Feed - Most people will not subscribe to your RSS feed. In fact, depending on your niche 75% of your visitors won't even know what that is and will never use an RSS feed in their life. It's popular among webmasters though so you will want to allow them an easy way to get updated on what is going on with your site and hopefully if they like what they see they will link back to you.
- Social Buttons - You want people to be able to follow you on the major social networks, specifically Twitter, Google+, Facebook, and if you do videos then you'll also want to build a following on YouTube.
2. Twitter
This is the platform that is easiest to get started on and allows you to build an audience quickly. It's easy to find people to follow and also to get people to follow you back. You can send out multiple tweets a day and if people are interested in your market they will appreciate the information instead of being frustrated by you clogging up their feed.
3. Google+
There isn't as big of an audience here but Google wants to make it work so it's going to be around for awhile. Google also wants to integrate social signals into their search engine rankings and this is the platform they have full control over. Which do you think will be the most important for future rankings? Since it's the newest social network it is easier to become an early adopter, you definitely aren't late to the game.
4. Facebook
I have not had a lot of success on Facebook. It's not as easy to get people to like your page. When people actually do "like" you there is the hurdle of actually showing up in their news feed. You don't want to post nearly as often on Facebook because a person's news feed is like the holy grail. They want to know about their friends and what they are up to more than what you are up to. If you are getting in the way of that, you'll get unliked quickly.
5. YouTube
YouTube is a very big site that you can gain a lot of attention on if you post quality videos about your topic. I have only dabbled with Youtube. Most of my content is news that I have to get out quick and since creating a video takes quite a bit of time, I haven't had a chance to run many experiments on YouTube. In some niches that have longer lasting content and visitors really need visuals YouTube does very well.
Why the Platforms are Ranked Where They Are
Some of you may ask why I think creating an audience on your site is more important than on social channels. The reason is simple, you have more control. If you are relying on your social media channels to build a following and market to, what happens when one of them shuts down your account? You lose EVERYTHING!
Now, you might think that this won't happen to you, but I've seen it happen to others so why take the chance? With your own website you have a lot more control. You might not control your search engine rankings, but you can control your email leads and who subscribes to your RSS feed. Your content will never be lost (as long as you are backing it up!) and you have a tangible asset that you can possibly sell in the future.
So, to sum it all up: work on building an audience on the five major channels listed above, but funnel as much of that attention as you can to your site and building up an email list.
Building an Online Persona
Before you get started with building an audience you have to define a persona. A persona is the face of your brand. It's who you are going to be and what market you are going to an expert in. Your persona will be involved in the online conversations in your market, contributing stories, sharing your knowledge, agreeing with others, disagreeing with people, and interacting.
Defining the Market
What market are you in? This is more general than just what you sell. It's the topics that people who are potential customers might be interested in. If you sell golf instruction, equipment, or are a golf course it's golf in general.
Your market includes potential customers, clients, and users but also includes potential partners and website owners. If you sell golf training aids, then your market will also include professionals and pro shop owners who can sell and recommend your products to their customers.
Defining your market means you are asking questions like who do you market to, what are you marketing, and are your known for something already.
Creating Your Persona
Once you know you thoroughly know your market it's time to build your persona. The first thing you want to do is use a real name. On this site I use my real name, but in other niches I have also used pen names. It doesn't matter as long as it's a "real" person.
You also want a real person's faced attached to it. On all of my social networks you will find a picture of myself. You won't find any cartoons or generalized logos. People want to interact with other people not a company brand. Don't get me wrong, you want to openly associate yourself with your company, just be a person from within the company.
When you fill out your bios create a story. I use my real life experiences for every bio that I write. Why am I interested in this topic, how did I get started, why do I think I am an expert, that kind of thing. This kind of information helps you to connect with people.
You should also use the same handle and picture everywhere. If you signup for a forum, social media account, or anything else you do online try to keep everything streamlined. Use the same picture, the same name, the same everything. It will be easier for people to recognized you across multiple channels and when they do, it starts planting the seed in their minds that you are everywhere and must be an expert in your topic.
I know that Google+ and Facebook have real name policies. They don't want fake users on their sites, but if you use the sites correctly you are not very likely to get booted. You just can't spam people and act like an idiot.
Once you define your market and create your persona stay on topic. Don't post about tennis if you are a golf expert. It's ok to add some personal information every once in awhile, in fact it helps people to connect with you. What you don't want to do is string yourself out in too many areas. If you are interested in both golf and tennis, create two personas and keep the information on each one on topic. See what to share on social media for ideas on what you should be talking about.
What to Share on Social Media
So you have decided to build an audience on the popular social media networks, defined your market and have created your persona. Now the trick is figuring out what to share.
The key is to only share stuff that is highly relevant to your market, interesting, and is well-written. The different content that you will share all boils down to one of three things: sharing stories, supplying your knowledge or engaging in conversations.
Sharing Content
Do you want to network with other site owners while also giving your audience exactly what they want? Of course you do. The best way to do that is to link to content from other sites. Webmasters are going to be thrilled to see their links sent out to your audience and hopefully will want to reciprocate in the future and do the same for you. Your audience will love that you supplied them with quality information and will anxiously await your next contribution.
Notice how I said content on other people's sites? That's not just so you can network with other webmasters. It's also how you build trust up with your audience. If you are only pushing your own stuff, they are going to quickly realize you are into self-promotion and will take what you say with a grain of salt. However, if you are giving them quality content from wherever you find it, they will conclude that you are actually a quality source of information and an expert in your market. You can mix in your own content as your audience builds, but you never want the majority of your updates to be about you or your site.
Supplying Knowledge
People are going to ask questions, if you are the first to answer them that is a huge plus. Not only in their minds, but in others that are watching the conversation. You don't have to wait for questions, you can post high quality information yourself. It's even OK to start a post out with a "For those of you asking...(your answer)" even if nobody is actually asking the question yet.
If you are truly interested in your field you know more about your topic than the average person. You don't have to know more about it than anyone else, just more about it than average to be seen as an expert. Give away some of your knowledge in tiny bits. If you find that people like what you shared then you have a great idea for a longer article to post on your site.
Engaging in Conversations
Answering questions is a form of engaging in conversations, but there are a lot of other ways to join or start a conversation as well. If other site owners post content about a topic you can add your own two cents. Tell them why you agree or what parts of their story you disagree with. Talk about the story from a different point of view. The key is to add to the conversation, don't just respond with "Great post" or "I agree" because that isn't adding anything of value and will be ignored.
Do not use social media to do shameless self-promotion. If you have a big sale going on or a rare opportunity then go ahead and send out an update. This has to be rare though. People do not go to social media sites to be sold to. They go to be informed, have fun, and interact. If you do those things you will build relationships with potential customers and other websites and that will lead to far more sales and deals for you than any hard selling will get you in the short-term.
Do not stray off topic. Post about what's relevant in your market. Nobody cares what you had for breakfast or what you do in your free time. You can post personal updates rarely just to show your audience that you really are a person, but they are following you do their interest in the market you are an expert in. Posting about politics when your market is dog training will likely lead to people unsubscribing from your updates.