AP 0473: How Do I Build an Audience in My Niche?

AskPat 473 Episode Transcript

Pat Flynn: Hey, what's up, everybody? Pat Flynn here, and welcome to Episode 473 of AskPat. Thank you so much for joining me today. As always, I'm here to help you by answering your online business questions five days a week.

We have a great question today from Jourdan, but before we get to Jourdan's question I do want to thank today's sponsor, which is AWeber.com, an email service provider that you can use to help you build your email list. It was what I used to start out with and they helped grow my email list to over 120,000 people. It allows me to send broadcast emails, use autoresponders, so that you can set up emails to be sent out ahead of time. So, when people subscribe, for example, you can have emails be sent out every seven days, or however many days apart you want. You set those emails up beforehand and you can keep in constant contact with your audience so that when you send out these broadcast emails, pitches, promotions, the news that you send out, new anything, your audience is more likely to open those emails, take action with them, and from my experience building a relationship with your audience via email is one of the best ways to do it. So, check it out, AWeber. You can check it out for 30 days for free by going to AWeber.com/askpat.

All right, and here's today's question from Jourdan.

Jourdan: Hey, Pat. My name is Jourdan Bul-lalayao. My website is JourdanB.com. I have a question. I currently have a blog, and I'm looking to have my niche in the personal growth and gaming topics. I also have a Medium publication that's supposed to supplement that content, and also I have my own blog. I have content, but my question is with this blog and with this Medium.com publication, how can I get my content in front of the gaming audience? I really think this content would be useful because it also includes some personal growth stories, since I'm a gamer myself. Basically my question is how can I build an audience using my blog and this medium.com publication? All right, thanks Pat. Have a good day.

Pat Flynn: Hey, Jourdan. What's up? Thank you so much for the question today. It's really cool you have a blog set up, and I love the idea of including gaming and personal development together. There's a lot of people who could benefit from this type of content. So I think it's great. It's a cool niche and it makes it very easy for me to answer this question. It doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to be easy to implement, but it's very easy to answer this question because when you niche down like that, it's just much easier to find where your audience is and when you find groups of where these people hang out, it becomes your home. It can become a place where people can begin to talk about and share your stuff and you can become an authority on those other platforms too, where other people who would benefit from your content, all congregate. Because gamers, more than any other community, are always hanging out, always chatting, always sharing things. So my answer for you would be to really put yourself out there and share your content and become authoritative and provide value, not just by sending links, and you actually don't want to send links to your blog necessarily right away.

What I'm talking about is these forums. I know a lot of gamers who use forums because they all share information with each other, they share screenshots, they share tips and tricks and hacks and Easter eggs and all those sorts of things with the games that they play. It would be cool to go into forums and provide value to people. Share your own experiences and have people want to learn more about you. In which case they would come to your blog and see all else you have to offer. A lot of these forums too, you're able to leave a little signature at the bottom, a link to your website too, and a lot of people are going to visit you that way. Once you start to become well known, it's going to take some time, but people are going to start talking about you. They're going to start referencing you in their own threads. They're going to start talking about you offline to other gamers. Again, like I said, these gamers, they congregate together everywhere.

Another platform you can also utilize is YouTube. I don't know if you have any YouTube videos up on your site, but I think if you were to combine, for example, walk-throughs, which are essentially screen recordings of you playing these video games and I know you can do that with PS4 and Xbox and also your computer games for PC and Mac as well. It'll make it really cool for you if you were able to kind of integrate your personal development stuff into that while sharing some cool stuff related to those video games. I think that would be a hit. I know there are many video games out there, when I was into Halo, for example, a first-person shooter game, I was watching videos on YouTube on Halo all the time. I was looking at interesting ways people were shooting and all this cool stuff and really cool moves and hacks and Easter eggs and all those sorts of things. I got to know a lot of people who shot those videos and who were doing and serving that audience. It was a really cool thing to do. I think you could come in this way, and I think if you were to provide a personal development spin on it, it could help you position yourself too. I know there's a lot of people out there … that's the one thing about the gaming niche is that it's very big for a niche. So, you'll have to niche down. I don't know if that means you also have to get into forms related to specific games that you talk about in play, but I think this would be a great way to connect with the gaming community in a way that just a traditional personal development blog with some videos and how-to's wouldn't be able to connect with them. That's how I would get in front of the gaming community is to become a part of that community and have them understand who you are and what you have to offer. I think it could be really fun and exciting for you too.

This is exactly what I did to become popular in the LEED exam space, because there was a forum out there when I was first starting out that I became pretty well known for. I wasn't pitching my book, I wasn't even sharing that I had a website, but I had become well known as an authority because I was answering everyone's questions. I was commenting and actually helping people out as much as I could and I became known as the expert on that forum. When I came out and started talking about my website, when I came out with my product, people started sharing it for me. It just kind of took off from there.

Now, I think it's also really cool that you're also posting on Medium, because Medium is a great place where people from all different niches are able to come together and read information. I think that's going to be a great place to cross-promote your blog, and your blog having people come to Medium too. It's going to be shareable; people can start to communicate on that too. I don't think that Medium is going to be a huge factor here for you, but I think you should continue to write on it because it's a great platform. It also shows expertise and authority, but again, getting in front of your gaming community on places where they're at, forums, on YouTube, I think that's going to be huge, and that's where I would recommend you go check out and explore how you can fit in and what position you would take there.

So Jourdan, I appreciate you asking this question. For that, we're going to send you an AskPat t-shirt. As always, for those of you who are listening, if you have a question you would like potentially featured here on the show, just head on over to AskPat.com, and you can ask right there on that page. Thank you so much for all the recordings. This show wouldn't exist without your questions because this is AskPat. I answer your questions, so thank you again for the questions.

I also want to thank today's sponsor, who is AWeber.com. They make it super easy for all of us who are just getting started with our websites to also build our email lists. I think it's a very smart thing to do and something I wish I had only done sooner. I made the mistake twice, both on GreenExamAcademy.com and on SmartPassiveIncome.com. I didn't start my email list right away and I'm always kicking myself for that. If you want to get started now, check out AWeber. It's a great resource for those of you who are just starting out. Very, very economical prices and also they connect with a lot of third party services out there to help you grow your list even faster. Places like Leadpages and other third party companies to help you enhance the opt-in experience and conversions on your website too. If you want to check it out for 30 days for free, go to AWeber.com/askpat, and it'll be awesome. Check it out. Thanks so much for listening in, I appreciate it, and here's a quote to finish off the day by Charles Atlas. He says, “Step by step, and the thing is done.” Totally right. Cheers. Take care, and I'll see you in the next episode of AskPat. Thanks everyone.