Content marketing is hotter than ever, and if you’ve been working on your blog for a while, you’ve probably already chosen your niche. However, it’s not enough to only publish general articles related to your niche. You’ve got to publish articles that speak directly to your visitors and aim to develop rapport.
Rapport is developed with visitors when they feel like you’re speaking directly to them, and you understand what they’re going through. Many marketers are skilled in using neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) to establish rapport.
“Neuro-linguistic programming is an exploration of how we think, communicate and act,” says one NLP website. “Rapport is gained by understanding and respecting the way that another person sees the world,” says another. “It is like speaking their language. It results in a feeling of comfort and commonality between people. Rapport over a length of time evolves into trust.”
While many believe NLP is a difficult skill to translate to sales copy, A-list copywriters like Harlan Kilstein squash that theory. Although he acknowledges some NLP patterns don’t translate to print, Kilstein has been successfully teaching copywriters around the world to incorporate NLP into their copy.
Specificity in your title tells visitors “this applies to me”
Even articles written by the best writers in the world are ignored when a visitor doesn’t immediately think the article applies to them. Your title is a tool not just for capturing attention, but for telling people the article is for them.
For example, in an article titled How to Attract Military Tenants to Your Rental Properties, Houston property management company Green Residential explains the benefits of marketing to military tenants:
“One of the primary benefits of renting a property to military families is that you’re essentially insulated from the outside market. Even if there’s a crash in the local real estate market or the economy takes a dip, you still have a large pool of tenants. The military continues to operate and people continue to need housing. External circumstances don’t have any influence on this.”
A niche-specific article like this increases your chances of being found in the search engines for more terms. It will also appear more interesting to visitors rather than blend into the background. For instance, landlords might not think to focus on military tenants until reading that article.
Whenever possible, your titles should speak directly to a specific niche in your market. Even when the content is general and might apply to all niches, crafting your introduction to speak directly to a specific niche is powerful.
Do some research to find out if a niche is relevant
You can target an infinite number of niches for just about any product or service. If you sell coffee makers you can target college students, busy single parents, and just about anyone in America with a corporate job. However, how you choose to define each niche needs to be intentionally chosen.
Before selecting the niches you’re going to target, do some research to find out of those niches are relevant. A niche is relevant when you can speak to the group based on the factors that make them belong to that niche. If the factors that make up a niche aren’t going to help you develop rapport with a visitor, it’s not a relevant niche.
For example, there might be millions of 40-year-old men with beards who drink coffee, but targeting that niche isn’t relevant. If your product is coffee, trying to generate rapport with people by speaking to the fact that they have a beard is not going to catch their attention. Beards and coffee aren’t related.
Popularity is another factor you can use to determine if a niche is relevant. For example, if you’re selling a filterless coffee maker, you know targeting eco-conscious coffee drinkers will be relevant because preserving the environment is still a hot topic people can identify with.
Check out this article from Niche Hacks that describes some methods for determining the relevance of a niche. Other than using Google’s keyword planner, they provide insight into using Google Trends to find out what topics are being discussed.
When you find a trending topic you can connect with your product, write an article about it and craft a title that specifically references the trending topic.
Niche-specific content marketing makes both search engines and visitors happy. Focusing on niches (or even micro-niches) will give you more ideas, and will keep you in the ranks of blogs that produce high-quality content.