Writing For a Niche Site Audience
Every so often, people will send me examples of their copy and ask my opinion of it. Sometimes people do this with their niche sites. I try and give everyone an accurate assessment of what I’d do in their shoes as well as stuff that I think is pretty good.
Now, some people get a lot right, some people need a little more work but overall everyone does quite well and most niche site problems are pretty easy to fix. Think about on-site SEO and the like, it’s a case of ticking boxes and shuffling words.
But there’s one thing that crops up relatively often so I’ll talk about it today.
Every Niche Has Its Own Language
A lot of guys – and I’m guilty of this as well – see an opportunity and jump right in. They’ll see low competition and high item prices and think “GREAT MY LUCK IS IN!”
Now, whenever you see an opportunity, you should assess it and if it still looks good, by all means go for it.
But a big mistake a lot of people make is that they start working on their website, they’ll write a few sales letters and then they might even get some traffic coming in, but sales don’t appear.
While that’s a complex problem with many possible issues, a big one is that the language is wrong. It’s quite difficult to explain but it’s immediately apparent when an article “feels wrong.” Think about all the SEO articles you’ve read or whatever and you just know that they’ve been created by some guy looking to score backlinks or direct you to his SEO course.
All the words fit into the sentence, but there’s something not there.
This is essentially what happens when you write in a new niche and you don’t have the phrasing or terms down yet.
Here’s An Example
Let’s say I start a site about personal finance and read a couple of blogs and then write this:
“Product X is great because it tells you how to maximise your personal investment portfolio for just $90 a month. For just the price of three cups of coffee a day, you can live your dream life and retire at an age of at least forty five years old!”
Now, all of the elements are there. The keywords, the buzzwords and the general phrasing could be ripped out of a personal finance blog down to the fact they all assume we can shave ninety cups of coffee out of our daily budget.
But you can tell that that’s not written by a personal finance expert because it isn’t natural. Over the course of 1000+ words, you’d clearly understand that the writer has no idea what they’re talking about and they are just pushing you towards a sale.
Like I said, it’s hard to describe but it’s an instant give away. Things like writing in a niche for girls when you’re a guy, or writing for baby boomer investors when you’re a millennial with $5 to their name are difficult and you can’t just improvise and expect it to work.
Here’s How To Fix This
There’s no real quick fix to this. The answer is to read in your niche and read a lot. The goal is to never have a Hillary Clinton “Pokemon Go to The Polls” moment where you make it blindingly obvious that you’re not a human being in the niche.
Here’s the best way to do this. It’s not a hack and it’s not a quick fix, but it’ll work.
Find your niche on Reddit and spend a few days reading the top discussions. Then start participating – not for gain – but just to take part. When you can answer questions and people generally accept the answers, then you probably know enough (as a guideline.)
If your niche isn’t on Reddit (rare) then find forums or Facebook groups. If your niche is outside of Facebook, Reddit and all other online communities, then I’m stuck… but it’s probably something you don’t want to build a niche website around anyway.
Now, you can do linguistic analyses of this sort of thing, but that’s nerd territory and total overkill.
A final tip: Avoid the most obnoxious memes of your niche. They will exist and there the place people give themselves away easiest.
A good example is when big sporting companies try and hop on bandwagons that have started on Twitter or the Bodybuilding forums. Some media intern will search out fitness hashtags and before you know it, Adidas or your local gym are tweeting pictures of Harambe with a #miringains and everyone knows that something has gone terribly wrong.
Talk like a natural consumer of your niche. Memes don’t make money anyway. You shouldn’t ever feel like you’re winking at the audience and saying, “Hey guys… I’m an insider” because actual insiders don’t do that.
Final Thoughts
Sometimes you’ll write in a niche and you’ll have a nagging feeling that you’re an imposter or that you don’t know enough about the subject to write about it. Whilst the long term answer to that problem is always “learn more” you should be able to use the above process to get a lot better in the short term.
I’ll cut it short there so I can go out but if you have any questions, comments or additions, as always, feel free to add them below!