For example – my Digital Camera site is one of my bigger blogs – yet in comparison to some of the biggest digicam website our there it’s very small. This doesn’t mean I can’t occasionally beat the big sites at their own game though. Today is an example of this.
This afternoon I had an email from a reader with ‘connections’ who gave me information on a digital camera (the Nikon D200) which has been rumored to be coming out for 12 months now. It’s a camera that everyone has hypothesized about but which there have been few firm details on. So when I got a picture and specifications (still unconfirmed but looking pretty solid) as well as a few other facts that indicate the information is reliable I posted about it on a Nikon D200 page.
The cool thing about this is that because I’m a smaller site and am not seen as a major player by the major digital camera manufacturers I do not have any of the non disclosure agreements with them that most of the other bigger sites have. I know that most of these sites will have information on this new camera days before it’s announced – but that legally they are bound not to mention it on their sites until the official release date (rumored to be 1 September).
This means I have a scoop of sorts and am reaping the rewards of something that is somewhat exclusive (there are other sites posting it – but they are mainly smaller than mine). One of the benefits is that other significant sites are linking to mine (example 1, example 2 and example 3). It also gives me a few days head start to get indexed by Google and other search engines. As a result on the day of the official release I’ll be well positioned to receive significant traffic and hopefully will be established at the top of the search engines for the term for some time. (update: we’re already #3 in Google on it – with a few more links we could hit #1 – feel free to link up!).
This is part of the fun of blogging for me – the thrill of chasing down a story and the satisfaction of a plan coming together nicely.
My blog will never compete at the very top of this niche on all related keywords – there is just too much competition – but I’m happy to buzz around the edges and take a little ground where I can.
I guess the take home tip is to keep your eye open for the scoop and be ready to mobilize and act fast to take advantage of things when they fall into your lap.
