by Skellie
Any successful blog or website must be innovative. If you’re not innovating, you’re not offering potential readers a worthwhile choice.
Solve the same problems and fulfill the same needs as a bigger site in your niche and readers will consistently give their attention to your more authoritative counterpart.
Innovation, on the other hand, will make you the only choice suited to solving the problems and fulfilling the needs of your target audience.
Innovation is only worthwhile when it’s useful. It needs to satisfy a need that currently isn’t being met (at least, not in the same way). That’s when you start to stand out.
In this post, I want to describe a simple exercise you can use to create innovative content by problem solving. Don’t worry — this kind of problem solving is a lot easier than the kind you might have done at school.
Starting with problems
A useful starting point for innovation is to list down all the shortcomings of your niche or, alternately, the shortcomings of the most popular site in your niche.
To illustrate how you might look at your niche I’ll complete this innovation exercise using the tech blogging niche as an example. Here are some of the key weaknesses of this niche:
- The emphasis on breaking news first means the well-staffed and resourced sites with industry contacts dominate the exclusives.
- The niche has been criticized for being too self-referential.
- With so much news flowing from the main tech blogs each day it’s almost impossible to keep track of it all.
- It has often been said that the focus lies too much on what technology means for the industry, rather than what it means for ordinary people.
The tech niche is not unique for its weaknesses. Every niche has weaknesses. What I want to stress is that most weaknesses for one person will be strengths to another.
Let’s say, for example, that the tech niche decided to focus on how technology impacts ordinary people, rather than its impact on the industry. Some would then point out its lack of industry focus as a weakness. It would then be innovative to write content with an industry focus.
No single website can satisfy the needs of an entire niche. Solving one problem creates others.
Focusing on analysis will create a problem for those who want news. Focusing on reflecting on developments after they occur will create problem for those who want up-to-the-minute information.
You can’t be all things to all people: what’s important is to solve different problems, or to solve the same problems in different ways.
Using problems as fuel for innovation
Here are solutions to the above problems. This is where the innovation starts to happen:
- The big sites will always win at breaking news. What about analyzing what the news actually means?
- Could you break out of the technology niche’s self-referential loop by sharing the implications of technology outside the niche?
- With Engadget, Gizmodo et al. updating dozens of times each day, could you simplify the key news down to one pithy, daily post?
- Could you focus on what tech news means for everyday people?
A blog focusing on in-depth news analysis rather than news breaking, with a vision reaching outside the self-referential loop, a daily round-up designed to be an antidote to the constant information overload and an emphasis on people rather than industry would be innovative in the tech niche.
It’s possible that such a blog or website already exists (though I’ve not seen it), but it would certainly buck the dominant trend in tech blogging.
In just a few minutes, we’ve developed a model for innovative content in the tech niche. To further show that the same process can be repeated in any niche, I’ll use another, different example.
Nobody is perfect: an opportunity
Earlier I suggested brainstorming the potential shortcomings of the most popular site in your niche. I’ll demonstrate by using Lifehacker.com — the most popular site in the lifehacks niche.
The site essentially aggregates the best news and tips in the lifehacks niche, updating dozens of times a day. It’s a blog I really enjoy but can’t subscribe to because I find the number of updates overwhelming. I’m sure I’m not the only one. Already, we have a problem to start with:
- Lifehacker updates so frequently that it’s hard to catch all the information without being subscribed to the blog’s feed. The feed raises another problem: it updates so frequently as to be overwhelming.
The key problem here is information overload. Let’s innovate by solving this problem with a daily digest of the lifehacks niche: one post, with links to the best tips, important news and downloads for that day. You could supplement this content with your own lifehacks. The essence of the blog is about providing you with information choice, rather than information overload.
On using this exercise
I’d suggest repeating this process with your niche as a whole, in addition to the most popular site in your niche. What are their main problems? What kind of solutions could you provide?
If you need any help with this process, we can use the comments section of this post to workshop some solutions.
A quick aside: If you have a Technorati account and a few seconds to spare, could you add Skelliewag as a favorite? I’ve been feeling sick the last few days and I think it would help put the spring back in my step. Thanks!
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15 Comments, Comment or Ping
Patrick
My favorite method for identifying my reader’s problems: sifting through the keyword searches in the stat search logs. I’m trying to write down at least one new post idea each night when I go through the logs.
Nov 16th, 2007
Evan Hadkins
Thanks Skellie.
You’ve got me thinking.
I don’t see what you list as all being problems, sometimes they are just gaps.
My niche is health and wellbeing (its very populated). There are some very big blogs by (what are seen as) authoritative institutions, and some by almost unbelievably prolific bloggers. It also tends to be dominated by lots of blogs providing tips on this and that, usually in the form of lists.
I think this can provide opportunities.
My question is how you communicate the difference. By the title of your site or blog? Advertising? This is especially a concern for those of us who don’t have a whole lot of traffic yet.
Thanks for a stimulating post.
Nov 16th, 2007
Frank
Your blog inspires me and many, many thanks for such clear and thoughtful commentary. I agree with Patrick, checking your logs and discovering what your readers want is the key to tailoring posts that meet their needs. Our bog is quite narrow in focus (hiking iin Australia) but we enjoy the research and posting, what we hope is valuable information for people who visit us from all over the world. Many thanks again, have favourited you in Technorati and subscribed - Frank
Nov 16th, 2007
Lexi
i hope you feel better soon skellie!
btw thanks for another great post. i’ve been wanting to create another breastfeeding & childbirth blog but was paralyzed by the sheer number of related websites and blogs already in existence. your post gave me a way to move forward.
cheers!
Nov 16th, 2007
Chan
Your website looks great, always improving!
Thank you for reading the article and for taking the time to write such an extensive comment. I will appreaciate!
Nov 16th, 2007
Grace Smith
Skellie your process is excellent! I actually went through a similar process for a site i am working on at present. This is a fantastic article, im printing it out and keeping it!
This post couldn’t have come at a better time as i am also in the process of brainstorming niche ideas for a new blog & e-book i would like to launch. Skellie your ideas are phenomenal and so clearly defined and objective.
Patrick is completely right in that searching through the keywords your visitors find you by is essential to really know why they are seaching for you and what they want to know upon arrival. Im adding you as a favourite now in Technorati!
Nov 16th, 2007
Mark
I am just now re-working my sites design/content/branding and will be looking to create a few micro-niches all on the same blog.
Your comments on innovation are very timely.
ps - you have been favorited!
Nov 17th, 2007
Michael from Pro Blog Design
Just a thought Lifehacker, it covers a lot of topics. You can pick and choose which feeds to subscribe to (I’m subscried to Windows and Productivity). That way, it’s not an overload. You usually get 2 posts a day then.
(And chuh - Skelliewag went into my technorati favs months ago! I hope ya feel better soon any way.
)
Nov 17th, 2007
Michael
Thanks for yet another great informative article. You are so right about information overload and blogs geared for the tech industry. Because of this I have kept one of my tech blog sites relatively simple in content and layout (basic software reviews/internet/web experience). As mentioned by LEXI, there are numerous blogs/web sites, often with a constant stream of indepth articles contributed by experienced groups of industry savy people - more than what I could ever easily provide on my blog. For the moment I periodically evaluate my favourite tech blog sites for content or sub content ideas, after unsubscribing to some of them. This I did because of the numerous daily updates, which were interesting posts, and perhaps a bit irrelevant sometimes, but too time consuming to digest. Though your updated posts are too relevant for me to unsubscribe - That’s why I added you to technorati recently, but perhaps should have done much earlier…
Cheers!
From Down Under in NZ…
Nov 17th, 2007
skellie
@ Patrick: I think that’s a really clever strategy. Another good thing is that as users have more success with search terms on your site, your standing with the search engines will go up, meaning more traffic. It’s a self-perpetuating process of growth
@ Evan: You can think of them as gaps — the name doesn’t matter so much. Whatever works for you
The best way to convey the difference is your content, your About page and your tagline. These are the first places visitors look to.
@ Frank: Thank you
@ Lexi: Thanks — and that’s great to hear :).
@ Grace: Thanks very much!
@ Mark: Cheers :).
@ Michael from Pro Blog Design: Great tip and thanks, retrospectively ;).
@ Michael: Sounds like you’re on the right track. Thank you :).
Nov 17th, 2007
Saad
Skellie,
Great post!
I’ve been reading you for the past two weeks or so after I ran into one of your guest posts at another site.
I used to keep personal blogs a long time ago, and I’m now looking to get back into the blogging world with a blog that people will hopefully want to read. So I’m looking for a niche.
My trouble seems to be that I don’t quite have a handle on the blogging world at large. What kinds of blogs are there, and what kinds of niches are being served? What “categories” are there in the blogging world? Knowing that would make it easier to find the gaps. Is there anything out there that you know of, which would give a nice overview? If not, then, oh dear, looks like I gave away a really good idea. Hmm…okay, now I’m very interested to hear a response
Nov 17th, 2007
skellie
Saad,
There are blogs on any topic you can think of. There are millions of categories. My advice is not to let categories constrain you: write about the things you love.
Nov 18th, 2007
Joe Jordan
Thanks much for some valuable insights and good tips about the heart of effective blogging–providing fresh, relavant content in a way that captures the interest of a target audience–and hopefully attracts a search engine’s attention.
Nov 20th, 2007
Barney
Skellie, yours is an excellent blog, both informative and inspiring, and very clear. I’ve subscribed for some time now and I’ve just favourited you in Technorati.
My blog is a personal one, with commentary on things that I care about. I don’t have a large readership, but I do have a good set of regular readers.
However, I do have ideas for another blog that would be more market-oriented and your post will help me think through what I’m doing.
Nov 20th, 2007
Latarsha
Thanks for sharing your insight.
One key point that you hit on is the fact that “no single website can satisfy the needs of an entire niche,”
This shows us that there is always room for your voice…as long as you use it to target the needs of your targeted readership base.
Again…Thanks.
Nov 28th, 2007
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