Passion Bias Niche Formatting

Passion Bias Niche Formatting

Passion 

If you are passionate about a topic it shows. People who share that passion do not subscribe to your blog, they subscribe to that passion. And they also share it with others.

Bias

Each of us is brilliant and highly flawed. We are all human. Communities are built around commonly shared ideas and shared points of personal identity. We are more likely to listen to and believe those who tell us things confirming our worldviews than people who challenge them.

Fox News is successful because it turned news into biased entertainment. Many of the most popular blogs are popular because they are biased and entertaining.

It is easy to build a community around negativity, but it is hard to profit from that type of community. People looking to spend money are more interested in stories of hope and success.

Niche

With there already being 1,000’s of SEO blogs, I would not start a new blog focused on SEO in 2008. The only way I would allow myself to do that is if I was focused on SEO for a specific vertical like real estate or if I was focusing on a subset of SEO like link building.

From a publishing standpoint, owning an idea is much more valuable than being a #57 player in a larger market. The top site in any niche gets more media exposure, more self reinforcing exposure, and can charge more for ads than a site which is viewed as an also ran.

Formatting

We thin slice the information we see and make quick judgement calls. We are more likely to trust and subscribe to sites that: 

•       are aesthetically appealing with a unique site design

•        make important content, like top posts and about us pages, easy to find

•       rely on simple words and short sentences, and are thus easy to read and understand

•       are well structured – with headings, subheadings, pictures, videos, and bulleted lists to help break up the content