You task today in the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog challenge is to spend some time on a successful blog in your niche.
The purpose of this task is not to promote yourself on the blog – but rather to spend time watching, listening and observing how the blog operates with the goal of letting what you learn help shape your own blogging strategy.
There is a lot that a blogger can learn about spending time on other blogs (particularly those who are doing well). You can pick up all manner of ideas, strategies and tips both things that they do well that you might like to emulate but also things that they’re missing that could help you to differentiate yourself.
Here’s how I suggest you go about today’s task:
1. Identify a successful blog in your niche
You might already know of these sorts of blogs or you might need to do a little research.
If you’re not sure which one to choose head to Technorati’s top 100 blogs or Google Blog search and attempt to find a blog that is doing well on your topic. If you can’t find one that is exactly on your topic don’t stress too much – choosing a blog on a related topic will work too.
2. Take 15 minutes to do some analysis of the blog in some of the following areas
Content:
- What topics are they covering?
- What topics are they ignoring?
- What voice/style do they post in?
- How often are they posting?
- What level are they pitching their posts at (beginners, advanced etc)
Reader Engagement:
- What topics generate most conversation?
- What styles of posts seem to connect with readers best?
- What questions are readers asking in comments?
- What complaints do you see readers making in comments?
- What tools/mediums is the site using (eg: are they using Twitter, forums etc)
Design:
- What first impression does their design give?
- What have they done well? What have they done poorly?
- What Options do they give readers to subscribe?
Monetization:
if you’re attempting to make money from your blog this will be relevant as it will give you hints as to how you might make money:
- what advertisers are targeting this blog?
- what type of affiliate programs are they promoting?
Traffic:
You might also like to head to a site like Alexa or Compete to do some analysis of the blogs traffic levels. Is it growing, plateauing or shrinking. Alexa also gives some stats (not always accurate) on page views, time on site, sites linking in, bounce rate, where the audience is from (geographically), where people go on the site etc.
SEO:
If you have some competence in SEO you might like to check out how they’re doing in some of these areas:
- Who is linking to this blog? (use the link:www.blogurl.com command in Google to find out)
- What does their source code reveal about how they’ve set up their site
- If they have an open or unlocked stats package what can you learn from their stats? What pages are popular? Where does their incoming traffic come from?
Really the numbers of questions you could be asking is limitless but what you’re attempting to do with this exercise is to identify what is working well on the other site and what opportunities there might be to position your blog in ‘gaps’ that the blog is leaving.
When you do this type of analysis with a number of blogs in your niche you should begin to see some patterns emerging. Things that consistently work on blogs in your niche and things that perhaps you could do that nobody else is doing.
Two quick words of warning:
1. Don’t become Obsessed with what other Bloggers are Doing
A trap some bloggers fall into is spending so much time watching their ‘competitors’ that they spend less time actually building something of value of their own. This analysis is useful to do every now and again – but don’t let it become something that you do at the expense of other core activities on your own blog.
2. Don’t Copy – Be Unique
Another trap I see some bloggers doing is virtually replicating every aspect of another blog. While there’s a lot we can learn from others and lessons we can take from what others are doing – if you simply copy everything another blog does you don’t differentiate yourself and give potential readers no real reason to read you instead of others.
How did you go with your Analysis?
As usual – feel free to share what you learned from this task in comments below.
Join the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Challenge
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Update – You can also share, discuss, and explore this Daily Task over at the forum: Day 4 – Analyze a Top Blog in your Niche
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Great post Darren.
Good advice. We can all learn from those who have been in the blogging business for a while. As well as those who are clued up in a particular niche.
I enjoy your blog, and often browse through your blog to pick up ideas, get advice etc. So analysing your blog has been one of my habits.
I am in the technical, programming, web development arena. I do frequent a few blogs in this regard, but perhaps we could get a list going here.
I thought that perhaps those involved in web development and programming can muster together a blog list to analyse. We could all benefit from the help.
What do you guys think?
Roy, I suggest http://www.naturalbias.com :)
I keep trying to figure out what is the X factor that makes some blogs stick in this ever-increasing sea of bloggers. I start from the assumption that excellent content is a MUST… but a good number of bloggers have that.
So what makes one “great content” blog succeed, when most of them fail?
I guess today’s analysis of the pros is a good way to find out.
Thanks, Darren!
What is “an affiliate program”?
Analysis of ReadWriteWeb
This is where I confess that I don’t really have a niche yet. But one of my favorite blogs is ReadWriteWeb.
I plan to do a more in-depth study on this blog later. But here are some initial gut-level findings (remember, folks, your gut is right 88% of the time, unless you’re Jobba the Hut):
ReadWriteWeb does a masterful job of keeping their design simple and using design to get readers to do desirable things.
Desirable things ReadWriteWEb gets readers to do:
Subscribe: This blog makes it super easy to subscribe through a variety of channels: RSS, Twitter, Friend Feed, E-mail. And they pretty much shove those subscription options in your face. Take a look at their homepage, you’ll see what I mean: http://www.readwriteweb.com/. Brilliantly designed!
Read: One of the most prominent features on their homepage is Popular Posts. That’s an easy gimmick to use to promote your best stuff. And ReadWriteWeb does it as effectively as anyone I’ve seen.
For these two reasons, I hope to emulate ReadWriteWeb.
Let’s keep it simple, folks. I’d love to hear what you think.
What does their source code reveal about how they’ve set up their site
I do that every time i find a blog with nice triting style and formating. this has helped me to decorate my blog and make it more reader friednly.
One thing easy to understand from niche blogs is understand how they are posting articles,on what topics they are concentrating and how they gettign traffic from various sites.Analyzing them and do posts in your own way.
I’ve learned a lot more than I can digest. I will have to ponder these things all day. This was a helpful exercise. It is a good thing to have a coach to steer you through the common sense things that we know to do, but fail to do. Thanks for accepting me into this challenge.
I love doing analytics on other related blogs and see how they performed.
By doing this, I’ll get motivated to achieve what they have achieved and I will try to replicate what they are doing…
Great task Darren !
This was interesting…I went to Google Blog Search and put in my key search words “book promotion” to find another blog in my niche and one of my own blogs popped up number one. This particular blog doesn’t get the hits most of my other blogs gets. So in conclusion, if this blog is coming in at # 1 for the same set of search words I use for my other blogs that get many more hits, what’s the point of this one being number one? Sure, I’ve learned how to use my search words wisely enough to get a blog that doesn’t get as many hits as other blogs in the # 1 position (that’s what I do for my business anyway…build on those key search words so they will rank higher in google…guess it’s been working, lol) but yet wouldn’t that be misleading to anyone stopping off at Google blog search looking for the # 1 blog for “book promotion”? Crazy.
I’m not sure if there are really any successful blogs in my niche. In fact, I’m not even sure there are any other blogs in my niche.
I’ll keep an eye open, but I think I’m just going to analyze some of the top blogs in general.
And another thing…and this is one thing I try to tell my authors don’t worry about is niche blogs (see my comment above). Niche blogs can be deceiving. Say someone wanted to promote their book at the blog that came up at # 1 in google blog search (again see my comment above) for the simple reason that it did come up as # 1 and surely must be getting hits out the yooza, but yet the blog doesn’t get nearly half the hits my other blogs who aren’t ending up at # 1 in google blog search for the same key search words, wouldn’t that be deceiving them?
Great idea Darren!
Can someone recommend a great blog about: Thoughts to change humanity’s “rendez-vous” with destiny?
or a great blog about: Making the world work for 100% of humanity, Livingry (as opposed to weaponry) & Bucky Fuller?
(you can leave a comment here addressed to Fred, or post it @fredinchina on twitter, whichever is most convenience to you)
Thanks a million!
I’m already doing that in my daily routine but now I’ll look at that more closely keeping all the above points in mind. Still finding it difficult to find a close competitor for a jobs and employment blog. Can anyone suggest any blog other than About.com
Blogging Guy (Jacob) above, take the words that are in your categories and see if that comes up with something.
Three of us are together on the Dames of Dialogue blog. One problem, we have not yet generated any sales of our novels from the blog. I’ve looked at other mystery writer blogs for ideas but haven’t been able to pinpoint what we are doing wrong. Any suggestions?
I guess I was reading your mind Darren because this was my task last night. While I always spend time observing other blogs, I took the time last night to dig deep while analyzing my favorite blogs.
My niche is Women’s Issues. I blog about the issues that many women face while trying to balance marriage, motherhood, careers, and social lives. The biggest difference between my blog and others that are more successful is the design. I have a standard Blogger design, whereas the other ladies have custom designed blogs (not an option for me at the moment due to financial constraints).
The downfall that I have found in these blogs is too many personal posts. While all of my posts are written from a personal perspective, I find it important to base my posts on something that I’m sure others can relate to.
Good Advice – but what if YOU ARE the top blog in your niche… I’ve already learned as much as I can from my fellow blogs in my niche.
I think I’ll poke around and see if I can find blogs that may be slightly related to my niche. Worth a shot.
The one thing this exercise has taught me is that I am going to have to refocus my Web 2 blog. There are some blogs like Dion Hinchcliffe’s that read like an existential analysis of Web 2 concepts for the enterprise and are great for the theory and heavy, in depth prognosis for IT chiefs in the large blue chips. Another, Adam Moss’s is targeting the same audience but is rarely updated.
So, lesson’s learnt include refocus to SMEs and self-employed who just want quick tips and pointers to useful tools and just get on with it, update at least two or three times a week minimum to keep momentum going and, thanks Lara, look at hosting my blog on my own website for greater control and possibvle monetisation.
http://kevincumbria.wordpress.com
I also have difficulties in finding blogs related to privacy and anonymity. Do you know any?
Darren,
Good exercise and a very important one. I have two main competitors in my niche, but we seem to have very different audiences who want/like very different things when it comes to a blog for mom entrepreneurs. I’m sure we have some subscriber overlap but for the most part, we’re different.
Thanks again for a great post! This is really fun!
Heather
WebMD and the Wall Street Journals have health and disease related blogs…I’m guessing with some pretty major readership.
Here are the links:
http://www.thehealthcareblog.com/
http://www.webmd.com/community/
All the best…
Wow, this is huge! In technorati’s top 100, I’m seeing Treehugger as the site that is covering the nearest topics to mine and I have no idea how to begin ‘competing’ with a huge corporation like that!
I feel quite defeated, to be honest – They have a TEAM of writers and on my two sites, it’s just me!
As I don’t pull in any income I cannot put any more time into my sites.
Ho hum. I shall keep looking around though and seeing what winning tips I might be able to incorporate easily :)
Thanks for another thought provoking post, Darren
Like Dan Alderson and Lisa, I too have a handle on blogs in/near my niche and have never analysed them. I have kind of admired from afar as a pleb through the beaded curtain.
Today I looked deep into one of my favourites – http://ideasinfood.com – and recognised that I don’t want to emulate Aki & Alex’s incredible creation. Don’t get me wrong; that doesn’t stop it from being an epiphanic inspiration. There is a place for my blog, and it’s not the ‘slapdash effort’ that one commentator labelled it. It’s just me, just different.
I am improving incrementally and happy with where I am at today. Tomorrow is another step up the learning curve.
Thanks for yet another eye-opening learning experience, Darren.
H :)
If it’s not too late to submit my list, here’s mine:
Top Ten Business Podcasts
http://www.talenttraders.com/
This post happens to be just in time for me as I had just setup my site few days and now I can learn how to take it to the right direction with Darren’s fantastic guidance.
One of the issues I’ve realized lately is that I’m following too many clone-blogs–different styles, but same content–and as a result I’ve unconciously narrowed my focus in a direction I didn’t intend. Time to step back, take a deep breath, and refocus.
I’m spend a lot of my “blogging” time interacting, observing and learning from other blogs in my niche. I think it’s all part of being a member of the community which makes blogging so rewarding. Us weight loss/health/fitness bloggers sure love a community!
Great guidelines Darren, thanks yet again.
My niche is the transition from bride to wife. The trick is finding the blogs that talk to the same thing. I’ve been following a great blog who has a fab following (she was a Bee (wedding bee blogger) as a bride so her past followers stayed loyal). She’s the perfect model for me. This whole SEO thing is very new to me so I look forward to improving in this area.
I also have a wedding planning blog, and the major players are HUGE but not local!! Finding local blogs that are interesting is pretty much non-existent, so I will continue to analyze my international blogs while making sure to Canadianize mine.
Thanks Darren!!
I’ve been perusing other bloggers’ sites for a while. The main thing I notice is that they have fun, colorful buttons/ads on the side bars, which always relate to saving money/bargains. Where do people get these from?
I am using a blogger template. Do I need to pay for a template to allow me to manipulate where the text is? Right now, I cant get text on both sides of my posts.
Forgive me if I’m using the terms here, I’m not that well versed in this stuff, BUT – I’m learning!!!
Not the most difficult task (does anyone NOT read other blogs in their niche with regularity?), but it was interesting to give a more analytic look at other blogs within the niche.
This is a good thing to do every so often, and can help inspire creative idea of your own.
Congrats to Thomas with the Soccer blog – 400 unique hits a day is a goal that seems out of sight for me, but it’s a good one to shoot for. Right now I average around 20 for daily posts. Favorite posts get between 40 and 100. Obviously, I have some work to do!
My niche is creativity and innovation, so I checked out four blogs from Technorati and the top five or six blogs on Google Blog Search. I noticed that most of them focus on news and technology, and they have a lot of advertising. I found the advertising distracting, but there was one blog in particular that I liked called Creativity Machine. The content is thoughtful, well-researched, and relevant. The layout and images are also appealing. However, I was surprised to see that they post very inconsistently and have few comments, which are counterintuitive to the standards for a successful blog. I’m not sure how to use analytics on someone else’s blog, so I can’t say for sure how much traffic they are getting. Still, I’m confused. The creativity/innovation blogs with a lot of comments are news-based. I don’t feel that I have the resources to keep up in that arena, but I will do some research today to see how I can improve that feature on my blog.
Hey guys,
I’m on TwiTip today!
Anatomy of a Successful Tweet
Check it out:
http://tinyurl.com/clcpxj
My niche (learning English as a second language) is another one where there are no truly successful blogs, at least that I know of, and I have spent a lot of time looking. I am an ESL teacher with a fairly successful website at http://www.teacherjoe.us and a potentially much more successful site just starting at http://www.laughandlearnenglish.com. My attempts at blogging have gone nowhere though, as students of English simply never comment, other than a few hardy souls who usually don’t need what I have to offer.
I just checked out an ESL blog that claims to have over 1500 subscribers. The typical post of that blog gets zero comments though some rare “popular” posts get 5 to 10 comments. About half of the total comments I saw were by the author of the blog, an ESL teacher from Canada. Most of the other comments were from three very prolific students. In other words, there is no engagement at all with the majority of subscribers.
I doubt the author makes much money from his blog. There were five adsense ads along the right side of the page. He seems to be targetting adult learners from South America. Two of the five ads were in Chinese, one was aimed at children. The author may make money from other sources, but nothing that is obvious to me.
These lessons have been useful for me so far, especially lesson 1 on developing and elevator pitch. However, I am seeing mostly a lot of confirmation that blogging will never be more than a hobby in the ESL world and that I am better off sticking with building static websites.
I’ve looked at a couple blogs, but am not sure what I’m looking for…could anyone give me some ideas? I think it’s hard because I’m using a free blogging service and the blogs I’m finding are definitely not!!
http://wintheweddinggame.wordpress.com
— for this one I looked at junebugweddings.com
http://justcallmemsfrizzle.wordpress.com
— I checked out Steve Spangler’s blog
Great information! I’ve been checking out other blogs in my niche to see what others are doing and I want to take a different spin on things.
I have a second blog, http://www.evelynpather.com in the same niche (raw foods, living naturally) and want to take a whole new spin on that blog. I’ve been slack in posting, but you have pumped me up to go for what is on my mind with the other blog.
My first blog is about my journey to raw foods and I try to do things differently (eves-journey.blogspot.com) and I am always checking out other blogs too. I posted an inspirational quote on yesterday and received some good feedback. I’m taking it all in as to what readers are looking for in my niche.
The content as well as the design captures my attention. If the posts are too long, I will not read unless they grab my attention.
Again, good assignment! You’re keeping us on our toes!
Thanks,
Evelyn
Hi Darren,
before launching my blog I have investigated and read a lot of articles on problogger.net. I’d like to learn from the absolute #1!
Keep up the fantastic work.
Yours sincerely,
Steven Hanks
I follow several bloggers in my area but, none in the same “niche”. I tend to blog about random topics… Some PC support issues (hardware, viruses etc) and I post things that I find funny or interesting.
That may be the problem, I don’t have a solid focus. So finding another site as messed up as mine is hard. Boy this series is turning out to be harder than I thought. Any suggestions would be appreciated. http://www.owenwebs.com
Well, I can mark this off without actually doing anything today. I have a list of about 5 fave blogs in my niche, but one clearly stands out and I watch them often. Fortunately we’re not really competitors, so I can gain a lot without feeling the need to compete with them. They have a good community of readers and commenters too, which is something I haven’t yet achieved, so it’s great to keep an eye on that while I build readership.
Don’t forget that one of the most common characteristics of successful blogs is that they have existed for a long time. It’s hard to be the best blog after a month. Problogger has been around for many years.
People don’t realize how hard it is to keep going that long. Something like 99% of all blogs don’t last beyond 6 months.
Every post you make is another drop in the bucket, individually they might not be a lot, but over time they become significant.
Perfect Guide for me.
My favorite blog is Jacab Cass’s http://justcreativedesign.com I am so much inspired by his blog, his achievements, hi work.
Whenever I feel depressed I just go to Jacab’s Blog and read out the About page.
I always try be like him like to build portfolio like him, post the articles like him and much more….
Of course This article will help me to this in proper and desired way….
Teacher Joe – It looks like you have a great opportunity on your hands! If you can find a way to engage people (either teachers of ESL or learners) and have conversations with each other, you’ll dominate your part of the internet.
Have you considered putting a Google translate box on your page, for people who need help with a word or two? Maybe a dictionary java applet as well?
Of course, a blog doesn’t have to be the answer, but it can serve as a starting point for conversations.
Hi Darren,
I am at Day#4 task, i.e. to analyse top listed blog with similar niche.
My niche keyword is “swot analsyis”, when I made a search with blogsearch.google.com, many of fellow blogger’s blog appreared. But I could not find my blog. I can’t even find my own url i.e. “perform-swot.analysis.blogspot.com”
Is it because my blog is new (only 2 days )?
Great challenge for the day, Darren. I regularly analyze other top blogs in my niche and I’ve found a lot of areas where the top blogs have ‘wholes’ that I would love to ‘fill’ in my blog. I’ve got a lot of plans for my progress, but I have a hard time knowing how to manage the additions to my blog that I want to make.
My blog is still relatively new, so I don’t want to make too many changes and content additions too fast. I feel like I need to establish my online presence first at a steady pace. Am I thinking on the wrong page?
Jenn
http://helloveggie.org
@helloveggie
I’m noticing on Compete that many of the sites I’m reviewing in my niche are listed as ‘trusted sites’ while I am ‘unknown’. Compete seems to use 3rd party data from GeoTrust and CastleCops.
How do I make my site ‘trusted’? Does this help with getting better indexing in search engines?
Thanks!
Allen
Excellent thoughts Darren. Learning from other blogs in your niche is surely sound advice, as it inspires creativity and fresh ideas for your own blog.
As you say though – use the blogs for inspiration, not copying. It’s important not to blur the lines.
Thank you,
Christian
I learned a lot about blogging recently by checking out other blogs in my subject. I have also made some great connections that I otherwise would have missed.
Great advices. And these are the basic one step on should follow if he/she wants to get in to pro blogging.
by the way i call you pro-fessor blogger isn’t that right term for you :-}
I routinely do this with every site I visit. Sometimes you’ll find unique items in off-niche blogs that can be incorporated too.
I have no clue who blog similarly to myself. I focus on helping bloggers with technical stuff, and mostly those on the Blogger system, since WordPress users are pretty well covered. Blogger users are ignored, even by Google (the help is horrible is what I mean there…).
I’m going to have to spend some time on this….
As always Darren, thank you very much for this.
After doing the elevator pitch assignment, I’ve started to think of my site as “literary magazine meets blog,” so I’m observing other literary blogs, writers’ blogs and the like. Unfortunately, I think most established writers are not that tech savvy, so there aren’t that many truly good lit. blogs. The ones that are good in my opinion have minimalistic designs, lots of white space, judicious use of photos (not just clip art), and provide thought-provoking content. They don’t do as good a job of self-promotion as I think they could, considering that even the best have relatively low readerships. Another part of the challenge is that lit mags typically come out quarterly, but quarterly web sites have a hard time attracting repeat readers (I know because for the longest time, I would forget to visit those sites b/b it took so long for them to update). So, I think a strong site requires pretty regular updates, if not every day then at least on a somewhat predictable schedule.
Other sites I adore are what I’d call lifestyle blogs, like galadarling.com. What makes her so successful? Well, I think she tailors her image. She doesn’t expect her readers to slog through long sad posts about job hunting, money woes or dating issues. I think she plays a role on her blog that people are very attracted to and she seems to choose not to expose people to her more personal issues. So, while she has a really conversational, relaxed tone, it’s still not just a journal because she definitely edits to maintain a tone and an image. It’s subtle, but quite effective.