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It’s taken me some time to come to realise the truth behind this post title: “Blogging success lies with a focused niche”. And this principle applies in several ways for me and my business:
- Greater focus differentiates my information and opinion from everyone else
- A narrower niche makes finding post subjects easier
- The resulting greater concentration makes finding somethjign interesting to say easier
The previous posts in Social Web Report have been my interpretation of the wider issues of the social web. Now there are plenty of bloggers with far more experience than me bringing considerable experience to bear on these same issues – so what can I bring to the world that they haven’t already? Also people I meet are still unsure what I mean about the ‘Social Web’. So I’d pitched myself alongside the big profile names, only to find myself unable to communicate my message and interest to the people who matter to me!
So, I’m still trying to find the niche which will help me blog regularly. I have two other blogs I run, RRF Viral, which is my entry into the world of viral video making, and the local National Union of Journalists (NUJ) Grampian Branch blog (just set up this week). Now time will tell whether I can continue posting regularly to these, but they are both driven by activities. For example, I’m pushing the viral video work as part of my business, and I’m secretary of the local NUJ branch. But the Social Web Report is about ideas.
This difference between activities and ideas is an important one to bear in mind when you’re working out the subject of your own blog:
- Find a subject you’re knowledgeable in, or are passionate about
- The subject should be relevant to you, your life, business etc
- If it’s a common subject (especially tech) then find your own niche – to make your content stand out
If there’s one thing the net teaches us, it’s that the niche flourishes. In the traditional world of publishing, the market drove the breadth of niches – so they were broad. In other words, lots of people will read about fashion, football and gossip, and so there are magazines or TV programmes to meet that need (mostly supported through advertising). But how many people were interested in say buying and reading a magazine about one farm in Georgia, USA where the husband is building a waterwheel? Much less, of course (if any!).
The internet allows us to all to publish our own ideas in words, pictures, audio and video. So the publishing world has opened up. Surf the web today and you’ll find information about absolutely anything. It’s a challenge that’s almost too scary to try – human nature being what it is!
So find your niche and focus on it. That’s what I’m going to do with Social Web Report. I’m going to steer it back to what I do best… as a journalist I ask the basic questions: How does that work, why is that the case, what about this and that? SO, I’m going to try going back to basics to explain the minutiae of the ‘Social Web’.
Let’s see if this niche is focused enough for me.
I went to my gym the other day, the Cannons in Aberdeen, and asked if I could bring a guest in. The assistant said it would cost £14 to do so. Considering a local authority pool might only charge £2.00 maximum I began an experiment there and then into how my query about gym guests would be dealt with.
The assistant said I could bring my guest in for £14, or apply for a 1-day guest membership online – with no idea of how long it would take to be processed. I told her how dismayed I was at that, but she couldn’t tell me anything more, just the information she had given me. So I asked to speak to a membership assistant.
The membership assistant spoke to me for the next five minutes, and confirmed what her reception colleague had told me, but didn’t add anything to my knowledge. And when I asked about how I could complain about the situation, she had no idea of any place on the Cannons website where I could do so. So, I thanked them (they were all very friendly) and went on to take my swim.
Looking back on that experience I wish someone had been able to offer me the full range of options and explain to me why they were the only ones. It was over lunch with a couple of friends later that day that I discovered there are probably good reasons for making the guest charge so high (for example, keeping the club from becoming a pool available to the casual, off-street visitor and therefore taking away from the ‘club’ feel). But I wish I had been told that.
Yet the website FAQs states the following:
Can I bring guests into my club?
The more the merrier! Visits to the bar and restaurant areas are free of charge, but all other facilities do incur a guest fee. Each guest can enjoy up to four visits within 12 consecutive months.
I certainly didn’t get any impression that the company wanted me to bring in a guest.
Now, the Seth Godin part…
It would have taken a little bit of attention to detail, a little bit of empathy, and a little bit of corporate knowledge to inform me of the situation and then leave me satisfied. Had one of the staff members done that I wouldn’t be sitting here typing out this blog post – using Cannons gym as an example of bad marketing. They haven’t lost me as a customer – I like the gym, and I like the staff there. But they might have lost a new customer – my friend, the guest.
Now translate this into a website experience:
A customer should never be left confused about what action to take or the reason for that action. Confusion leads to doubt and in a web world where there are so many other options and so many other people and businesses speaking out to us, the first hint of doubt and confusion could be a lost customer.
And if I was a more angry person, then I might actually seek out a forum in which to make a more vocal complaint, and I would have entered the very realm of empowered individual with digital broadcast and distribution at my fingertips about whom I am writing.
I went to a concert in Aberdeen last night – part of the Burnsong Songhouse Tour 2008. It was a collection of musicians playing songs they wrote when they were brought together, as an experiment, for 5 days in the countryside of Dumfires and Galloway. And it as all inspired by long-dead Scottish poet Robert Burns. I thought maybe something interesting might come of the mix, but the songs they produced were okay, and nothing really notable. When I left the venue my memory was of 7 people on stage, 5 of whom were bellowing into their microphones trying to be heard over instruments and eachother.
This set me thinking about numbers and collaboration in the social web. We’re told (eg. Larry Weber, Seth Godin and Clay Shirky), that online communities can achieve important things, create synergies and make change happen. But what’s the relationship between the size of these communities and their effectiveness? Is it the case that more members equals greater effectiveness? We might think so, but how true is that?
Online communities form for various reasons:
* To learn
* To share information
* To effect change
But depending on the objective, I can see a situation where the quality of the member is more important than the quantity, for example in the person’s activism (their willingness to take part in online discussion, lobby government etc) as part of a political protest group. But there will doubtless be examples out there of communities which look impressive because of membership stats, but which are less than effective in achieving their goal.
There’s more in this post than I have time for today and I’ll return to it in coming weeks, but the proliferation of online communities in the form of social networking sites, wikis and aggregation networks is being hailed by many as a fundamental shift towards democracy as information and its distribution balances out between the public and traditional media networks. But how effective are all these communities in their objectives? Hopefully more effective than the members of the Burnsong collaboration I experienced last night.
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Should I have been so surprised when about 15 out of 150 people from the museum sector raised their hands in answer to the question: ‘Whose museum has a blog?’ I was attending a seminar entitled “Exploiting the Potential of Blogs and Social Networks” at the Museums and Heritage Exhibition 2008 in London. It was speaker Brian Kelly of UKOLN who asked the question. After the talk I asked him if he was surprised and he replied No, adding he thought it was to be expected because people were there to for the exhibition. I thought it was a lot.
It’s really exciting to witness different sectors picking up on the possibilities offered by the social web. In six out of the six half-hour seminars I attended (on the first day) every single one mentioned the marketing benefits of web technologies such as blogs and social networks.
He told the packed crowd sitting and standing in the small theatre at Earls Court Exhibition Centre that www.museumblog.org lists about 270 museum blogs. Other speakers cited their team’s use of blogs and social networks such as Facebook in their marketing campaigns. As good examples, Brian Kelly listed the Brooklyn Museum in the USA, Powerhouse Museum in Australia, English Cut tailor’s blog and Bowers Museum Blog.
Where will it all end? Brian Kelly says it’s too early to tell. He says there’s a conflict between getting collections digitised and online and investing money and resources elsewhere in things such as marketing, exhibitions etc. So, they’re all vying for the same pot of cash. He can’t mask his faith in the value of information sharing (enabled by the social web). There is a multitude of ways in which museums can do this, but it’ll be some time before they all converge and create synergies.
So there I am travelling on the London Underground between Kings Cross and Victoria. I’m looking round me at the range of faces, the cultures, the advertising and the general speed of life and it suddenly occurs to me there are striking parallels between this and the world wide web.
Of course, the Web is a superhighway for information, for ideas, for data and communities. This same web is becoming a place of sharing of participation and collaboration through things like aggregation sites, social networking sites, wikis, podcasting and videocasting and of course blogging. And then I found myself wondering: Are there any sharing and co-operation parallels with this short journey of six stops?
Well, I looked around and yes, contrary to the common stereotype, I did see the occasional person smiling (usually an elderly person), or there was one young man who stood up to give his seat to an Indian woman. So I did see little glimpses that people were participating in eachother’s lives.
It’s common knowledge today that there’s a tendency towards social aggregation. You only have to look at the success of social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace and Bebo, or reputation aggregators like Digg or Delicious, or blog sites like Technorati, and many, many others, to see this phenomenon. People from all over the world are definitely are sharing, participating and collaborating.
And consider the benefits that all this brings. People are brought together, they’re communicating, they’re sharing stories and experiences and they’re learning from eachother. All this makes them feel part of a community – and we all want to experience that.
Which brings me back full circle to the journey I was making on the London Underground Victoria Line: All these benefits are being conferred on virtual communities around the world, but what aboutr the real life communities we actually live in – the villages, towns and cities? Most of us would benefit from a little more of this kind of activity in our real lives. Yet increasingly we know less about the people around us, our neighbours and people who live in the same street or building.
So, is there an inverse relationship between the popularity of the web and the isolation in modern living? And if there is, then what lessons can we learn from the Web to help us reverse this situation? Whatever the answer is, it’s all to do with sharing and participation.
I’ve started this blog to help me keep abreast of what I think is the most interesting aspect to the web – the way it enables people to create, communicate, collaborate and compete with traditional publishing and media.
In writing this blog I’m creating. It’s the first step into the social web – whether that’s text, audio, video or whatever. I think this is a truly profound step, which I look forward to exploring in the coming posts. Next, by writing about the manifestations and patterns of the social web I’m communicating with people – anyone who wants to read what I have to say. I want to collaborate with people in the exchange of ideas and the creation of the new social frontier based around the web. And finally, I want to compete with traditional media and publishing. I’ll be competing using this blog and through commercial activities with my company, Rufus Runs Fast.
But what is the Social Web? For me it’s the increasing ability of individuals to go online and create, communicate, collaborate and compete. More and more people are using the tools of the large media companies, newspapers, TV corporations and radio stations to tell their own stories in movies, audio shows, and the written word.
This represents a huge shift in power. Control over information and its distribution is power. And since most people in the Western world, and increasing numbers in the developing world, have access to the web and the digital tools to distribute their ideas, so power is changing is reaching the hands of the masses.
How that will affect our future, we’ll have to wait and see. But I’ll be reporting on the trends I notice, and hopefully playing my part in developments of the biggest change in our social history.
Stay tuned.
