Hi all, Just to be honest, im not good at marketing at all. I'm a software developer and although my blog has pretty good activity (around 600/800 uniques/average) I want to target the general audience such as people that like to draw, watch anime, and things like that. Recently I've been blogging about other subjects such as my drawings and hobbies instead of blogging about my own software and it's been doing ok but how do i make it so that I get more visitors from people that are NOT interested in my software blogposts? How do you market your site to the general public? site: www.engineeringserver.com Thanks. //edit added screenshot of my stats
A better way of thinking about it would be to say you want to market to more niches, not "the general public." If you want to expand to writing about anime and drawing, for instance, then think about where you could reach people who like anime, and where you could reach people who like drawing. Attract them by informing them how their interests will be reflected in what you write about. However, be careful. If you dilute your message (which sounds like it is strictly about programming now), each member of your audience will get a lower proportion of material they care about. They might think it's not worth listening to you if they only care about programming, but you also write about other topics. A better strategy might be to launch additional blogs. Have a separate blog for each of your interests. Interlink them and cross-promote, but make your content very specific to your niche and packed with valuable reading for your readers. Hope this helps.
Thanks for your input, I categorize my blogposts into many categories so that people that like programming could go to the programming category etc. I understand what you are trying to say but isn't a blog with a lot of content better off than multiple blogs with not a lot of content?
An established blog with a huge following might be better than a few pretty established blogs with decent followings. However, that might be putting the cart before the horse. To gain popularity, and to retain readership, it will be very difficult if you are not laser-focused in your topics. If a reader sees 100% of your posts as useful, he will be more likely to subscribe than if he only sees 30% of your topics as useful. If I was interested in programming, but not anime, this is how I might feel. On the other hand, even if you are talking only about established blogs with existing readership, it is easier to monetize a topic-specific blog. Anime advertisements wouldn't perform as well on a mixed blog, so they would make less money (and pay you less money). It is also good for SEO, as you will have cross links, and will be able to leverage your multi-domain network. This is a very deep and complex topic, so I highly recommend doing further research. Some good blogs on this sort of topic are: problogger.net skelliewag.org A final thought: If you are not sure what to do -- ask your readers! They'll let you know what they think.