When you are doing advanced blogging it can seem like an un-overcomable challenge to segregate your audiences when you have a multi niche website. At least it seemed that way to me. I have a number of distinct different audiences (Writers, Realtors and Ecommerce or Etsy Sellers) as well as a number of key topics that I talk about like blogging, Pinterest, SEO and Product Photography.
I have been thinking this over for quite a while, ever since a previous coach said I had to niche down to one group only. While I understood the concept, from a practical standpoint that idea made me cringe. While I love my Realtors, I do not want to make my blog a “Realtor only” site. That would stifle my creativity and kill my soul.
Additionally I have polled my audience many times and they really don't notice when I talk about other topics. For example I was talking with a retail store owner client one day and asked her if she minded all the Realtor posts. She actually said, “what Realtor posts”. Functionally she was “blind” to the ones that were not relevant to her. But that is super deliberate on my part.
Because I have chosen to be a multi niche blogger, I have to be the one who is inconvenienced by my choices, not my reader. I need to make the process of using my site and joining my list easy for the people coming to my website.
Note: Please note that there are a couple of affiliate links in this post.
Segregating My Email List
The first thing that I fixed was my email popup box.
I use a Leadpages popup Leadbox. As you can see, it looks very little like a “normal” Leadpages pop up box. I have customized it and also added a way for my readers to choose what list they wan to be included on. They can choose Entrepreneur, Realtor, Writer, or Ecommerce. If they choose nothing then they go on my main house list for entrepreneurs.
Not every one of my signups picks a list, but many of them do!
So what does this look like functionally? At first I was writing an email for each of the lists every week. But quite a few of my readers are like me, multi niche, so they have signed up for as many as three of the lists. With that in mind I now write two newsletters each week. One week I do Entrepreneurs and Etsy and the next week I do Realtors and Writers. I have found that those are the least popular combinations of choices so even if they are subscribed to multiple lists they are not getting inundated with emails.
Segregating my email lists has increased my open rates from about 18% for a generic list to as high as 60% for one of my emails targeted to the particular niche.
Now admittedly this is a much smaller, newer list than my main list, but I am getting open rates that I haven't seen in years! It is a little more work, but not crazy more and it proving to be so effective that I am happy to do it!
Segregating Facebook Posts
Did you know that you can target specific groups of people on Facebook using “lists”. I have added many of my “friends” specific lists like “authors” or “realtors”.
This is done on my personal Facebook profile, not on my business page. That way not everyone that I am connected to is subjected to everything that I am interested in. They can sort of only see the ones that might interest them.
Additionally this helps with the Facebook algorithm since the content is actually something that I know they will be interested in rather just general content.
You can add people to as many lists as you like so you could have one “everyone” list and then the niche specific lists for people you know will like a certain topic.
Segregating My Categories and Sidebars
Last but not least is working directly on my blog to make things nice for my niches. Previously I had very basic category pages and one generic sidebar that I used across my entire site. When I decided to change over my business to more product and affiliate sales using advanced blogging techniques I knew this had to change!
I had been trying to get a little bit of everything in there to make it nice, but at the end of the day it was a case of “if you are talking to everyone you are reaching no one”.
The generic nature of it was such that there was very little chance of someone being excited to see what was going on. Here is a previous category page:
As you can see there was no oomph. Yes, there were great articles listed, but the sidebar was all over the place. There was Etsy and social media links and product photography. I wouldn't be that inspired to look at anything on this page beyond the articles so why would anyone else be jazzed to check out my products or affiliate links in the sidebar?
Here is the new version!
As you can see I have added a bunch of related text over the article titles as well as adding a call to action banner right in the category page itself. I also have ONLY product photography related sidebar ads on the right side. The very first day I did this I started getting more hits to affiliate links and my own products.
All of this is possible because I use the Genesis theme. It allows me to easily change the content on my archive pages without having to be a hard core programmer.
Then I used the Genesis Simple Sidebars plugin to make the custom sidebars for each area of my website. I can do it by category and by each specific page that someone goes to.
Because I have main niche categories (like writers) AND content specific topics (like product photography) I use many different sidebars on all my different kinds of posts.
Showing my readers content and offers that exactly match their interests has really increased the amount of clicks I get to affiliate and my product pages.
One Last Note About Advanced Blogging, Niche Specific Content
Because I have such different kinds of content I get a lot of Google traffic to my posts rather than to my home page. For example, last month I had 19,428 site visitors and only 527 of them went to my home page.
I work with a bunch of different bloggers and I find that this is somewhat normal across the board unless you are a huge site like Buzzfeed or the Huffington Post. My readers find my site by seeing a Google listing or Pinterest pin that they think will help them, not because they have heard of me or my site before.
Because of this, all the work that I do to make the site “niche friendly” for them pays off for me. They don't come in on a blogging post and then get confused when they see an Etsy seller ad in the sidebar. Instead they see that I have blogging “stuff” for them that is relevant to their marketing needs.
If you are going to be a multi niche guy or gal, it might be worth your time to do some of these things that will make your readers more comfortable on your site!
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
- More Advanced Blogging Marketing Articles https://marketingartfully.com/category/blogging/
- Only The Best Free Stock Photos and Mockups Sites! https://marketingartfully.com/2017/04/19/free-stock-photos-sites/
- Check out all my Pinterest Articles! https://marketingartfully.com/category/pinterest-marketing/
- Check out all my Product Photography Articles! https://marketingartfully.com/category/product-photography/
- All the best product photography courses I love! https://marketingartfully.com/best-product-photography-courses-that-i-love/
- All my best worksheets & planners http://marketingartfullyshop.com
