Being a new blogger is almost always frustrating because what you have to do is rarely as simple as you initially think. This includes doing market research. Doing market research as a new blogger is difficult, especially in the event that you do not have related experience.
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Things get even more complicated when taking into account the fact that the research method that is perfect for you and for your industry is not necessarily the best one for another industry and another person. However, there are always some things that can help you out. You can definitely improve your market research as a new blogger when you take into account the following things.
Find Your Niche
When you are new in the blogging industry, the first thing to do is find your niche. Even before you start to do some research you have to know what to look out for.
Remember that when you are a beginner blogger you will not make much money. Cash is simply not a motivation that works. You need to be consistent so you should do something that you have passion for.
Make sure that you know exactly what your niche is. Do you like writing about food and share recipes? Do you like writing about dogs? Find your niche so you can easily make it easier for you to actually do research in the future.
Build Your Marketing Persona
At first glance, many believe that marketing personas (also known as customer personas) do not matter for research purposes but this is completely incorrect. The marketing persona practically represents the ideal blog audience. It will help you to discover the audience’s demographics, what they like, need and want.
Creating a marketing persona is not at all easy to do. However, everything relies on doing manual work. You want to create a spreadsheet so you can collect as much data as you can. The data has to be grouped based on demographic attributes, challenges, goals, interests, hobbies, fears, needs and values.
Capturing data starts with an online research. Use the resources that you can find, like Google Trends. Then, move to social media networks like Twitter and Facebook.
After compiling the data in a spreadsheet, your content can easily be tailored in order to meet marketing personas identified. This will help you with your content and advertising.
Analyze The Competition
It is practically impossible to start a blog and not have competition. This is true for absolutely every single niche out there. Use this to your advantage. So much can be learned from the competition, ranging from blogging ideas to keywords.
When you analyze other blogs that are identified as competition, start by reading some blog posts. This allows you to identify voice and tone used. You can see how often content is posted and see how long the articles are. Is there a method utilized to capture email addresses?
After you look at the posts, check the comment section. This allows you to see what readers say, what they like and what they do not like. Most newbie bloggers do not read comments on other blogs. Do not make this mistake since it offers so much information that can help you find new topics to write and more.
Perform Keyword Research
When most people start a blog, the big mistake is that they just write about random topics. Even if you do all the things mentioned above, you cannot succeed if you just choose random topics of discussion. Keyword research will always help you to find topics that people actually look for.
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As you perform keyword research, you can verify how credible your ideas are. There is always the possibility that you will be disappointed. Some of the ideas are not going to be in demand and others might be way too competitive for you to actually cover.
Content ideas can be refined with keyword research. You get to see what people want to read and you can write content that is both SEO-friendly and in-demand.
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Finding great keywords does not mean that you should force them into the content you write. You have to focus on your passion and personal interests. The value that is offered through the content earns traffic. Keywords help you out a lot but should not be seen as the only thing to focus on.
Use Website Analytics
Do not start your blogging adventure without having Google Website Analytics on it. This is because it offers a lot of information about the audience you have. The dashboard helps see how visitors find your site, how much time they spend on an article and so much more.
An important part of the data that you get from Google Analytics is a list of the pages that have the most traffic. This shows you what type of topics you should cover more in the future. Then, you see other valuable data, like geolocation, daily visitors, demographics and more.
Use Direct Feedback
At the end of the day, you are interested in creating content that resonates with your target audience. This is why you conduct research in the first place. Make sure that you start a social media profile for the blog. This helps you to receive direct feedback that helps you to find topics that actually resonate with the target audience.
Direct feedback allows you to quickly get information and your audience will help you by identifying mistakes and great things that they really like. Try to build a community and your market research will help you to constantly grow blog traffic, which is exactly what you want.
