My Grade 12 Economics teacher will forever be in my mind for telling us about the “Pop” wars.” He was a total geek before being a geek was popular. Mr. Sims was short, pudgy, and wore horn rimmed glasses on his balding forehead that he constantly misplaced. He had the obligatory white plastic pocket protector that is the trade mark of all geeks. But he could explain complicated information in terms that we understood, and that’s why we loved him.
He explained how only two large companies can have the lions share of any market, with the third getting by with much less, using Coke, Pepsi, and 7up as examples.
He taught us that any market share will be dominated by only two opposing companies, and a smaller portion is left over is for the third largest in the market. Pepsi, and Coke battle it out, 7up gets a smaller share. Anything not taken up by those companies is left over for the smaller companies.
Blogging is similar, there are the power bloggers, those who jockey for position, and have the majority of followers. There are usually a couple of top bloggers who compete with each other in their niche for the majority of the market share.
Then there are the smaller naked niche bloggers like us. We blog about what interests us, from our families, to DIY’s projects, tablescapes, and gardening. We have our followers, our faithful's, our long time readers, we love, and cherish them.
This is great, and if you are contented with what you have, it’s all good, like I said, it’s a big village, and there is lots of room for everyone, no matter what you want.
If that’s you, feel free to skip to the bottom part of this post.
If you want to discuss more about this then read on.
I’ve been exploring what’s out there in blog land, and it’s a interesting buffet of ideas. Take it, or ignore it, as you choose… but there are predictions that the blogging world is changing, evolving, and the reason that many of the seasoned bloggers have a following is because they have been around a long time. Julie DeNeen in her Fabulous Blogging post calls them “Firsties” those that started blogging when it first started. She says those bloggers have a distinct advantage because they were around when it was all fun, new and they have a loyal following.
There’s also a lot of talk that business’ are taking over the blogging world, content marketing is over, and it’s never going to be the same again.
But my favourite is the longer post, shorter post debate which is now being run over by the comments on, or comments off debacle.
Yes, some wild and crazy bloggers have decided to turn off comments to their posts.
Now before you think that might happen here, those bloggers are the big guns, the top dogs, the power bloggers. They can afford to do that, we can’t.
We are the naked niche bloggers, the ones who write about a menagerie of many things.
The Naked Niche bloggers are all about villages, friendships, and building relationships together. Some of us would like a bit more exposure, maybe a few more clicks, and more revenue on our ad’s, some are happy with what they have now. What ever you choose is fine.
That’s not the issue.
You can start reading here if you skipped the above part:
The issue is how can bloggers who would like to see new faces in their villages, and expand their reach do it without trying to squish themselves into a tight little niche, but still manage to keep our current audience? How do newbie bloggers find and join in a village in order to start populating their own village?
I had a well written post all planned on this topic, it had all of the items the experts said it needed to be successful, the pinnable first image, the bullet points, and the short paragraphs for those hard of attention, it even had the captions on each paragraph.
But it just didn’t ring true to me, it wasn’t my voice.
That’s not to say that I am ignoring what is being written and posted about blogging out there, I will always find it fascinating, and might try a few new things myself. That’s just me.
So here is what I am proposing.
How about every Monday, I mention a blogger who is struggling, trying to find their audience, hoping for some more villagers, or maybe even thinking of giving up blogging. You could nominate someone, emailing me by Friday, [my email is on the sidebar] and I will write about them on Monday. I’ve a few in mind, but need more.
If you partake in social media platforms, Facebook, Pinterest, Google +, then maybe you could take a minute to “like” or “+1” or even link to that blogger if they are on those platforms. Share the love so to speak.
And if you know someone who has the same interests as they do… could you introduce them around? Hey, have you seen “so and so’s” blog, you might be interested in reading it.
Even though we all have our own individual villages, and some of the villagers overlap, together we are a enormous company, that rivals any of the big power bloggers.
Lets pay it forward, this is really a nice thing to do for each other, and we are all nice bloggers, that’s our niche. This is our strength.
There is one other easy peasy thing I would like to ask you to do also.
If you think that a blogger has written a great post, worked hard, made a effort… please spread the word, click “like”, + 1 them, mention them to other bloggers. It only takes a minute and it’s worth doing. Maybe they will return the favour one day.
We are a huge group, those of us who blog naked… lol… not “naked, naked,” you know what I am talking about.
We are nicheless… and as Elaine commented on my previous post, that makes us a niche now doesn’t it.
The Emperor does have some beautiful clothes after all.
We are a village, and it takes a village to write a blog, so let’s get to it.