Success Attributes
In an earlier post I looked at some personal attributes required for success.
With the release of the Fast Traffic Blueprint, I explained the technical requirements of success in a step-by-step blueprint for getting free traffic based on a personal 12-month case study.
When you think about Internet success strategies more deeply, it’s easy to see that what’s required to get tons of free traffic, leads and sales can be summed up in a simple phrase… “niche leadership“.
What Is Niche Leadership?
Niche leadership means staying up-to-date with events in a niche, sorting the “wheat from the chaff” and informing your readership about any important new information. A leader aggregates news within a niche and sifts it to find the valuable information, then adds their own thoughts, usually cross-referencing information from other sources and stories.
In this age of inter-connectedness it also means offering that information in whatever format your reachership chooses to receive it, from videos on Youtube, tweets on Twitter, updates on Facebook, blog posts for people who visit your blog or subscribe to your RSS feed, podcasts for people who like to download and listen to a commentary, email mailouts to subscribers and so on.
Bye Bye Content Farms
It’s no longer enough to just be publishing on auto-pilot using either duplicate content from article directories, regurgitated press releases or “spun” content injected into your blog. Those types of blogs offer nothing useful to the reader and are of no value. Google recently slapped “content farms” for just that reason. It’s also no longer enough to just be offering content one way. People can consume your content in a myriad of ways, so you need to be there for them, on whichever device they choose.
Why Be A Niche Leader?
When you accept the mantle of a niche leader, you start acting in a way that leads to natural links, natural search engine rankings, natural “follows”, “optins”, “retweets” and “likes”. You naturally build that elusive quality that Google calls “authority” as well as leverage “freshness” and “trust”. The biggest benefit, for a business, is that people BUY from people whose recommendations they trust.
Yes, it’s hard work being a niche leader, but that’s where the bar is set nowadays. As “old school” SEO merges with “Web 2.0″ social interactivity, the winners are the people extracting the signal from the noise, adding pertinent commentary and rebroadcasting it for others because they’re the ones adding value.
What do you think? Add a comment below. I’ll leave comments open for a short time.
Not only do you have to be a niche leader, you also have to be able to post verifiable information. By that I mean, information a reader can verify using other sources, much like a print reporter is supposed to do. There is so much misleading information throughout the internet these days, you have to be able to know that what you post is true so that your readers can trust you as a knowledgeable source.
Agree wholeheartedly Neil, There’s an awful lot of “junk” out there and the SE’s need to supply valuable information to stay ahead of the game. Have a good day:)
Hmmmm…
So the trick is to be a sort of ‘filter’ or a ‘gate keeper’ of news and information about the niche you’re in?
Is this similar to content ‘curation’? And is the best way forward to set up portal sites with selected relevant content?
I’m still not quite getting it!
Frank
Hi Frank. Yes, I think it is similar to content curation although to my mind “curation” sounds like something you do to preserve foods!
Think of it this way… you’re leader in a niche and you put your quality content out where people elect to receive it… blog, Youtube, Facebook, Twitter etc.
You can see those sites as “portal sites” although they don’t have to be portals TO anywhere, just places where you connect with your audience. Maybe “distribution nodes” would be a better description…?
Hi Neil,
Love the preserving foods analogy!
So as I see it, it would be best to set up my main niche site to be the ‘go to’ site on my particular topic, where I post good content and news etc.
Then use the other channels like Youtube, Facebook, Twitter etc. to drive readers back to my main site for list building.
Apologies if I’m coming across as not quite the sharpest tool in the box!
Frank
When you mention Niche Leadership I believe you are separating those who are in love with the idea of creating an Internet Business but don’t want to do the work, from those who have the drive to succeed.
I strongly agree with you when you state “sorting the “wheat from the chaff” and informing your readership about any important new information.” I practice that philosophy every day. It’s taking the high road in a world of valleys and it appears you get it. Bravo!
Thanks for a good post. I’m adding you to my list of must read authors.
Best of luck
Norm
Makes sense if you only have 1 site to update! I use original content on my sites most of the time and spun content for backlinks. You can be a skilled spinner and actually create articles that read well. No difference in doing that than submitting 1 article to a bunch of directories IMHO.
Thanks for the post
Wendy
Being a niche leader is very important in all industries for the very reasons you stated. As technology and online marketing methods advance, procuring and sharing information to your readership is continually getting easier. It’s a great idea to include a sharing tool in each article, blog post and other up to date information posted on your website. This way your readership can e-mail, link or post the information provided by you on their favorite social network. This is a great way to increase readership, spread word about your expertise and to keep readers coming back for more.
I agree with your post, personally content farms have never attracted me… expensive twaddle… no matter how they are dressed up, but systems and utilising modern techology like video conferencing gets a big thumbs up. Since it is all about communicating with your audience for want of a better word.
Niel, I think to build any sort of success online, being a “Niche Leader” is just as important today as it has ALWAYS been. Yes, there are zillions of niche sites filled with low quality outsourced material, PLR content, duplicate content, spun content, etc – but these sites are never created with the express mandate of addressing the best needs of a prospective visitor. They don’t provide any value; no unique perspectives, no personal insights, and so on.
The webmasters of these sites target 1,000 of long tail keywords, throw up dirt cheap & generic pages to attract SE traffic and monetize a small percentage of their disgruntled visitors through Adsense, related affiliate programs and so on. In other words, they’ve never really been about *the visitor”, which is exactly why Google kicked them to the curb (sending visitors to crummy sites threatens their business model).
A “Niche Leader” by its very definition denotes a personal commitment to the topic in question, which can only benefit your visitors. The content you create will provide great benefit to your visitor, and value to Google’s index.
@Hale; I couldn’t agree more – I’ve been using clinical references on my UltimateFatBurner.com site since its inception, so people know we’re not just “making it all up.”
Funny story; EzineArticles.com apparently got hammered by the Google algo revamp, and I’ve always been infuriated by the nonsense they allow to be publish, especially in the sports/fitness/weight loss nutrition area. Can you believe I had an argument with an editor who didn’t want clinical references included in an article? I eventually won, insisting that “qualified” articles added HUGE value to their database, and without citations, I could simply be pulling the information out of my “you know what.”
Sheesh.
Neil,
“Niche leadership” and “authoritative website building” are not the same concepts?
One is leading in a niche, via multiple media, one is building a website… so I’d say they were different concepts.
It’s all about being an expert in one field, not hundreds. What are you actually an expert in? Take that expertise and share it with others. So much of IM has been centered around faking it and creating hundreds of junk sites. It’s time to get real and build real businesses. Create a real following. Neil and Linda, this is what I’ve seen you do from day one.
Thanks for the insight on being a niche leader. Its one of my goals to be in the top three so I try to provide fresh content as much as possible!
Cheers!
Couldn’t agree more Neil. I am out in the back of beyond and only have dial up. The number of marketers who only use video, webinars etc without any PDF is astounding. So, I can’t always access their ideas or news and I find it very frustrating. Left a comment on the Warrior forum regarding this and many felt that people like me fall into the too hard category and if I can’t access it, too bad. Mmmm lots of money left on the table there.