One of the most essential elements of blogging for success is to know when the trends are changing. By simply keeping an eye on the changing trends, you’ll stay ahead of the competition which is crucial going forward. You are protecting yourself from falling behind and letting your competitors steal your customers. Blogging can be fun, but if you are doing it strictly as a business, then you have to pay attention to the things that matter. You audience is only as loyal as your content and when they find something more up to date, they will jump ship fast. However, you are lucky because you have many tools which will give you a breakdown of the changing trends. This means taking out a bit of time each week to explore niche related trends can go a long way.
Here’s a question: What are you doing to stay ahead of the trends? Let’s look at ways I’m investing in trends for the future.
Research Always
No matter what trends I’m trying to follow everything always starts off with research and I have some cool tools I use to stay ahead of the trends. For example, the MOST obvious is Google Trends which will provide details on your targeted keywords. What’s great is this tool will even provide related keywords which are in “BREAKOUT†mode so you can use them in your content. Since they are breakout they will slowly start picking up momentum and if no one else is targeting them it can be quick traffic for you. Google Trends is a FREE tool to use and always have “target†keywords in mind before proceeding so the tool can generate other related phrases. Next,
You have competitor research which I love to do because it’s so simple. I have a handful of blogs I follow on the regular and pay close attention to the type of content they are publishing. Why? If they did their research correctly, I can generate a lot of trending topics quickly and create something better for my audience. Remember, you’re going to have competition in every niche, but if you do things better, you won’t have a problem outshining them.
After research is complete, it’s time to invest in your writing content which is trending. There are “2†ways you can do this:
Content Writing = Time
When I find a topic which is trending I make it a point to start writing content immediately. Competition can destroy you if you wait and I will invest a lot of time in writing content on these topics. I’ll research as much as I can on the topic and write an introductory post covering all the elements. My post is like a guide introducing people to this new trending topic and this is a strategy I’ve used many times to stay ahead of the game. For example, if “cloud computing†is a trending topic and from the research I can see many related “breakout†terms than I will research every keyword. This will allow me to put something in-depth together for my audience. Next, I will keep heading over to Google Trends to see if any other related keywords I haven’t covered are “breaking out†and will write posts covering those too.
The primary objective is to stay ahead of my competition.
Next,
Freelancer = Experts
If the topic is “cloud computing†then I’ll hire someone who is a specialist on that topic to write content for me. It will be a one-time investment however the results can be staggering. Imagine if I have 10,000 readers a month and introduce cloud computing to them? The return can be enormous in the following ways:
- Social shares
- Comments
- Traffic
- Loyalty
- Email subscribers
- Profits (if I am selling a product)
The only initial investment I will have is hiring an expert to write content, but once the content is published on my blog, the return can be huge. I own the content and it can only increase my awareness. Going forward I can link other related content to this post and keep building on the trend.