My presentation for Blog World Expo 2009 looking at using niche social media to build a reader base for your blog.

1. Get Rich With The Niche: How to leverage niche communities for maximum blog growth By Kevin Palmer @kevinpalmer kevin@socialmediaanswers.com

2. Goal of Presentation To teach you how to understand your niche To teach you how to target within your niche To teach how to apply strategy when building your audience To explain how this fits into a larger strategy

3. I’m just going to join Facebook and push my posts on Digg

4. Why Not Just Use Major Social Media?? Blasting to people that might not care about your message Takes a little longer to build a reader base when you have niche content Once you have a subscriber/reader base you can leverage traditional social media tools

5. Evaluating Your Audience Who are they? What demographics do they fit into? What describes them? Where do they participate? How are they using the internet? What content would they be interested in? Resource: Know your niche before you pitch: http://bit.ly/3n9ZAZ

6. Begin To Listen Set Up Monitoring Tools Around Keywords Know where the conversations are happening Gain competitive intelligence Set Up Monitoring Tools About Yourself Know what is being said about you and your brand Resource: How to set up social media monitoring tools: http://bit.ly/4tf7ur

7. Examine Other Bloggers Where are they connecting? What tools are they using? Tip- Examine their sidebar Look for social media buttons, look for links to niche social networks, take their Twitter username and drop it into Google for other usernames registered.

8. What is Niche Social Networking?? Over 3000 niche social networking sites Not including sites on Ning.com These sites cover niche topics from wine to knitting to vampirism Resource: List of over 400 niche social networking sites: http://bit.ly/4yhj3

10. Why Niche Social Networking? Audience that is interested in your content Smaller community but you have a larger voice These are potential readers, not just page views. More likely to become a “regular” Resource: Use Niche Social Networking Sites to Gain Readers: http://bit.ly/tlMTq

11. Niche Social News Subjects diverse: automotive, sports, pick up artists Strong content without a push will do well Create a steady flow of traffic Leverage this traffic for other social news voting

13. Niche Social Groups/Message Boards Established community that might predate social networks This is where you can begin to use major social networks (look for groups on these sites) Great source for topics, guest bloggers, interview subjects

14. Not All Networks Are Created Equal Look for active discussion/participation Be mindful of the overall membership Examine profile setup Some sites will pass on page rank with links You may be able to import RSS feeds or have other ways to automatically share you content within the site

15. Ease Your Way Into The Community Listen Understand the rules Engage within the rules Don’t go and broadcast your message Completely fill out your profile and have a profile picture

16. How Does This Fit Into a Larger Strategy? Builds a reader base that you can leverage Social media voting Content sharing Social media profile growth Gives the blogger a level of credibility SEO benefits It is a launching pad for growth

17. Thanks for your time Kevin Palmer SocialMediaAnswers.com @kevinpalmer kevin@socialmediaanswers.com