The other week I woke up around 4am because I passed out at 9pm. I had played tennis the night before and ate a big meal afterward. Food coma hit me instantly.
Given there’s nobody to talk to at 4am, I decided to finally write a long and detailed post about venture debt on Financial Samurai. It’s a new investment category I’ve allocated a good chunk of change towards, and I wanted to make sure I fully understood what I was investing in and share the investment with my community.
The post is 2,300 words long and took about 2.5 hours to write. It has four charts as well. After editing the post I scheduled it for the next day and that was that.
Several days later I Googled “venture debt” to see if my article appears in the search results, and it does. BUT, the article is on page 5 of Google, which means nobody is ever going to read it. As I looked around the other articles about venture debt, I realized that I was competing with a investment fellowship organization and several other venture debt funds. That’s steep competition because those guys are experts in venture debt, whereas I’m simply an investor in a venture debt fund.
The quality of articles I’ve read on venture debt now that I’ve published my articles is very high, much higher than your typical blog post about investing, paying off debt, or what to buy your kids for the holidays. Lesson learned, if you are going to tackle a complicated topic, it’s probably best to do some research on what’s out there first.
That said, I do very little competitive research before I write about anything. The reason being that I don’t want to let competition stop me from writing what I want. Blogging is supposed to fun and free-flowing. Doing competitive analysis to try and figure out the likelihood of ranking for XYZ term is very soul-killing.
ASK YOURSELF THIS ONE QUESTION BEFORE YOU BEGIN WRITING
There is an endless amount of content out there. The good thing is that a large majority of content is written by people who don’t have the actual experience in what they are writing about. Therefore, you should be able to to dominate at least 70% of the competition if you actually write from experience.
The next step is to obviously work on the depth of your content. We all know that meatier content will tend to rank better and be shared more on the web.
The final step is to simply ask yourself this one question: Are you the only one, or one of only a few who can write this post?
If the answer is “no,” then you probably want to move on because nobody will care about the 1,000th version of how to invest in dividend stocks.
But you can still proceed if the answer is “no” because there are plenty of people out there who have the expertise, but who don’t have the time to write. Let’s use Hilary Clinton, for example. She has foreign affairs expertise as former US Secretary Of The State. But she’s not frequently writing articles about peace in the Middle East. So, if you’re a third year diplomat who loves to write about diplomacy, you probably have a great shot at gaining an audience if you stay consistent in your publishing.
If you can see yourself and no more than a handful of other people writing the article, then absolutely proceed.
Let’s say you don’t have expertise in the topic you are writing about. In other words, you are more like a reporter who gathers sources to write a story e.g. the life of a retiree by a 28 year old reporter who isn’t retired. That’s fine too. Just get the best darn sources possible and make your article sing. Professional journalists with huge platforms have the upper hand, but you try and compete if you want.
Let’s say you don’t have any sources or resources at your disposable. That’s OK too if you can tell your personal story. Since nobody else can share your personal story, only you can write the post.
UNIQUE, AUTHORITATIVE CONTENT WITH A STORY
We can blame spammers, low quality freelancer writers, owners of very thin content sites, and ourselves for allowing for so much crap on the web. I firmly believe that all anybody wants to read beyond the news are unique, authoritative articles with a personal story. If we can inject these three components into every single one of our articles, we will undoubtedly create Whale Posts that will reach an audience for greater than we have ever imagined.
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Updated for 2017 and beyond.
I don’t write for the views. I write because the subject that I am writing about is something that crosses my mind and is something I want to share. If it gets views or ranking, that’s great, but if it doesn’t, then my hope is that the people who do see it enjoy it and get something out of it.
Writing for happiness is a good thing too MB!
Sam, Good integration of “personal content” with information. We all like a good story, and if there’s something to be learned as well, all the better.
Great article! I have always written about what I wanted to write about. Once in a while I will look at the competition or most searched keywords, but usually I just write. I figure even if it doesn’t rank, my audience will enjoy it and I can use that information to link back to in new or old articles that will make my site better for my readers.
Yeah, if you start obsessing over your competition, you might never write. And that would be a shame.
I enjoyed the post Sam; trying to be more focused and productive with my posts now as the time I have is bit more limited. Over the past couple of months, I’ve been trying to see what gaps I can help when discussing couples and finances both on the site and the podcast. I’m trying to incorporate more stories to illustrate and drive home certain points. I want to help couples have realistic expectations of some of the road bumps they may encounter and how they can overcome it together. Sometimes that gets glossed on over on some of the other personal finance posts on the list.
I wonder how we are going to really measure the impact of podcasting on our community. How do we measure its efficacy.
I try to stay away from “5 ways to save money on X” posts since they are overdone, but the question I’d rather ask is “would I want to read that”. And yes, talking from experience to a small niche (I talk about relocating to Guatemala for example) can bring better traffic than a broad post about something you don’t know much about.
Big fish in a small pond as they say!
This is great advice. I try to write from a very personal perspective, but I am looking forward to touching some other topics (e.g. politics, national economy, etc) based upon my own experience other than personal finance items. I do have a side question that I hope someone can help me with. I signed up for Alexa, have the Yakezie badge on my blog, but I can’t register on this site to introduce myself in the public forum. Am I missing something? If anybody has an answer for me I would greatly appreciate it.
I do ask myself that all the time, Sam. This is why I used to write about money management (which I exoerimented with and came up with the ERR system), paying off debt (which I paid off in three years) and the ways in which money nurtures life. Now I write about making money and investing as well. The question I ask is who am I making happy with my post (‘happy’ in a very broad sense). If the answer is that the post will improve the lives of a group of people in some way, I write it.
That’s a good attitude Maria!
I tend to write about what’s on my mind that week and try to inject as much personal opinion and experience in my posts as possible. I’ve definitely written about topics that are largely covered already, but try not to let what’s already out there deter me if I feel I have something to add. I’ve also gotten used to writing longer posts now, so that’s good at least.
From a business point of view I agree it’s a good habit to think about what’s already out there before jumping into writing a new article. And also looking to inject personal stories and experiences as much as possible.
We should all realize that everything has already been covered already. Just got to put our own spin on things.
yeah that’s so true. There’s a post out there already on every topic, but none that have our own personal touches and experiences. So that’s where we can really differentiate!
There is a tendency (at least in personal finance anyway) to feel like you have to cover every topic to be seen as legitimate. But I don’t like writing about PF topics I don’t know much about. I’m finding myself gravitating towards everyday stuff (like budgeting, savings, spending habits, etc.) plus things I have experience in, like real estate and basic investing.
Writing about stuff you don’t know much about is a sure fire way to blog failure imo. Do people do that anymore though?
I’ve chosen to write about topics I know well and they do tend to focus on mindset/awareness. I don’t do much research in terms of competition but alas a different reason for the blog posts I do. I’ve learned everything too has been covered in one way or another with unique twists with every other blogger that jumps on board. What I do see in the near future is a glut of content and a potential filter for blog sites to help determine personal finance blogger content from brand content from authoritative sources.