How to Write What Your Readers Want

… if you know your niche inside out - and even more important, if you know who your visitors are and what they want.

To come up with content for your site, the best place to start is with your visitor.

If you’re aiming to provide content that will keep your visitors interested and get them coming back for more, then you need to know who they are.

Think about who your typical reader is likely to be, and what they're looking for:

• Are they male or female predominantly?
  

• Is there a specific age range for your niche?
  

• Where are they likely to be located – is your audience global, American, UK-based? Does the niche extend across cultural boundaries or is it firmly located in one culture, one country?
  

• What background – economic or social are they likely to come from?
  

• Is it a family-orientated niche or primarily aimed at singletons or young couples?
  

• Is the emphasis on working time or leisure time or is there a cross over?
  

• What aspirations are they likely to have? What motivates them?
  

• Can you draw any conclusions about other niches they may be interested in?
  

• What are they looking for from your content? For example: is the emphasis likely to be on: tried and tested practical advice, theory and ideas, reassurance and support, motivation to succeed, controversy and argument, up to the minute breaking news, product advice or reviews?
  

• Where else are they likely to go for information – on and off the web?
  

Go and do some more research in your niche to give yourself as full a picture as possible of the visitors you hope to attract.

• Once you have a clear picture of who you aim to attract to your site you can get into news research in earnest.

• You need to be in constant contact with what’s going on in your niche. However you do this will vary from niche to niche but you may want to consider some of the following:

• Bookmark your top niche content sites and visit them regularly
  

• Set up rss feeds wherever possible to deliver news to your desktop
  

• Visit forums in the best sites and note what people are searching for
  

• Look at Google Answers regularly
  

• Subscribe to hard copy publications in your niche
  

• Subscribe to online newsletters and ezines in your niche
  

• Join professional organizations in your niche
  

• Go to relevant product sites in your niche to see what’s selling
  

• Visit Amazon to see what books are selling in the niche
  

• Join local clubs or amateur organizations in the niche
  

• Keep a notebook in your car or near you as you go about your work and write down ideas for hot topics that occur to you
  

• Use the main TV news channels and think laterally about how an apparently random piece of news could impact your market
  

• Use market research sites to get free views on trends and forecasts
  

In short, you need to stay in research mode but be highly targeted and automate as much as possible. If you haven’t done enough to set up your own news stream – take time to do it now.

It will pay dividends later.

You need to filter the information that comes to you through these channels listed above, and use it to find topics to write about on a regular basis.

The best content of all is breaking news – no matter what niche you are in.

TIP: Write about hot topics just as the news breaks. With the WPM “post and rank” system working for you, you're likely to get a considerable amount of traffic. These topics don’t have to be specific to your niche, but with a bit of imagination you can bend them to fit.

For example, say you have a body building or fitness site. You could use the hype surrounding a new James Bond movie to create a post about Daniel Craig’s personal fitness routine for the part.

Make the post at just the right time, use the right keywords, a good photo and a great headline, and you'll do very well in the search engines.

Find a hot topic that can be made to fit your niche, and write a high-impact post about it NOW.

Schedule the post for maximum impact and publish.