It is a common issue among bloggers whether to focus their content only on those in their immediate industry, or whether to try to appeal to a wider audience. Programming blogs are notorious for having only geek-oriented content that no normal human being would want to even look at. There are other blogs that do a little of everything. I believe that a blogging strategy or blog management strategy should be to have a very well thought out mix of articles.
Be industry specific
If your blog focuses only on your immediate industry, the readership will be very limited and you won’t get enough traffic to boost your SEO significantly. You need a healthy percentage of your content to be very industry specific to appeal to your core readers who might be very loyal to you, especially if you publish knowledgeable and useful content regularly. You really need to establish yourself as a reliable source of information.
Appeal to a somewhat wider “related” audience too
My directory is about outsourcing. I could write about outsourcing all day long, but there are relatively few people interested in the topic or involved in it. However, there are industries that are related to outsourcing such as call center, social media, programming, and general business which constitute my related audience, which is not always my primary audience. Going too wide and blogging about Justin Beiber might be a mistake, unless I can tie him in to outsourcing his legal services for all the trouble he’s in.
Appeal to the layperson interested in your business
Don’t write only for the benefit of service providers. Write articles that inform the layperson who is interested in your industry. Tone down the technical language and explain how the customer could find the best service provider or have a good experience by using the right techniques to conduct their business.
Stories & humor
Our most popular blog entries on our notary site don’t employ any particular writing skills. They just have some type of industry specific information or tips that people really want to know. But, there is a limited amount of industry information that I can publish in a month without “running out.” So, I publish stories and humorous articles as well. My team of writers wrote episodes of sitcoms where notaries were featured. Charlie Sheen got notarized in the blog entry: two and a half notaries. We had a Seinfeld episode about a notarization as well as a Cheers episode where Sammy needed to have a notarized name change. Although our humorous blogs never get the same traffic as our hot industry specific content, the crowd loves these articles and it provides a huge boost to our traffic and makes the blog fun for me as well as for them!
Summary
In short, a well balanced blog should cater to many audiences if you want to get some good traffic. Blogs should be formatted in a way that is easy to read and blog entries need to be promoted heavily on social media and newsletters to get exposure. Play your cards right, and you will have a successful blog!