Wednesday’s marketing and promoting tip for authors

In an age of niches and specialization, it makes more and more sense for blogs and websites to make it easy for visitors to qualify themselves to access the content that most appeals to them.

Dan Schawbel, Me 2.0 author, whose Personal Branding Blog is one of the top 25 AdAge Marketing Blogs, recently started a second blog, a Student Branding Blog. Dan’s new blog contains an excellent example of well-executed market segmentation.

Taking market segmentation even further

As shown above, Dan’s Student Branding blog contains graphic links on its home page that permit visitors to qualify the type of student they are:

• High school student
  
• College student
  
• Graduate Student

As always, Dan goes First Class. The execution of the links, placed against a green background, is especially well done. The 3 photographs reflect a similar style, yet are sufficiently different to make it easy for visitors to select the link they identify with.

Does it make sense for you to adopt a visitor qualification strategy for your blog or website?

Avoid thinking in terms of a one-size fits all content mentality. Look for ways to make your blog and website content as relevant as possible for the major categories of visitors you want to build lasting relationships with.

The starting point to making it easy for blog and web visitors to select the right content is to ask yourself questions like: How can I learn more about who’s visiting my blog or website? Or, How can I make it easy for visitors to pre-qualify themselves in order to go quickly to the articles and features most likely to apeal to them? In addition, How can I make the visitor pre-qualification process as visually engaging as possible? Once visitors make a selection, they should be taken to an appropriate landing page with content and incentives tailored to their interests and needs. Does this visitor strategy make sense for you? If you’re already doing this, tell me about it, as a comment, below. Or, if you don’t think it will work for you, share your reasons why it wouldn’t work for you.