Own Your Niche by Building a Niche CommunityWritten by Steven Van Yoder
In 1997, David Steele was making transition from a professional therapist to relationship coach. Part of his strategy was to become a center of influence and THE Relationship Coach for his community. David decided to launch his own virtual community as a weekly "Friday Night Social" singles gathering. After a one-month pilot program and some market research, he designed a community for singles in his area, unlike any other setting available, that would meet their need to meet other singles in a safe, fun setting. The community also furthered David's mission to provide relationship education and position his firm prominently within his target market. Almost seven years later, his Friday Night Social continues to be a vibrant singles community that supports practices of four coaches who collaborated to make it happen. "It is a lot of fun, and time and effort needed to make it happen is minimal," says David. "We feature a guest speaker each week, a local professional who is usually a good referral source. We've become well-known in our community and have a loyal following of singles who sometimes continue to attend with their partners when no longer single!" From Therapist to Singles Guru of Silicon Valley Slightly Famous entrepreneurs are learning that in today's world, given that most of us have an unmet need for community, one of greatest services you can offer your clients and prospects is simply to get them together. The goodwill, contacts and status David has developed as a leader of a niche community has boosted his business. It has minimized need to aggressively market his services by transforming into a guru and center of influence and trusted advisor to his target market. Why does this work? There is a basic human need for community. We survive and thrive in relationships. We are social beings and cannot be fully successful or happy alone. Ever since we lived in caves our social environment largely determines our fate. In today's world, given that most of us have an unmet need for community, one of greatest services we can offer clients and prospects in our niche is simply to get them together. Think about it. A niche is a group of people that share common situations, needs, and goals. When these people get together, they immediately feel a common bond; they understand each other and can easily provide mutual support. Targeting The Right Niche with Message Like David, you too can establish yourself as a trustworthy resource whose reputation and work is beyond scrutiny. The secret to success is targeting a group of people with specific interests. And that group of people can be your target market! Examples of groups that would be attracted to, and benefit from, participating in a niche community include: Fortune 500 CEO's Real Estate Investors Singles Over 50 Tai Chi Practitioners Small Business Owners Unemployed/Laid Off Tech Workers Ph.D. Candidates Working On Their Dissertation Stay-At-Home Dads Women in Transition New Moms
| | Internet Nielsen RatingsWritten by Bryan Brandenburg
What if you were able to have access to your competitor's web statistics? What if you knew how much traffic they had, average number of page views, what other sites their visitors went to? What if you could tell how successful a campaign was or if their recent press release had any impact? Would that be a strategic advantage?The Nielsen Ratings of Internet There is an incredible marketing research tool called Alexa Toolbar that you can find at Alexa.com. Alexa is owned by Amazon and is essentially Nielsen Ratings for Internet. Relative Traffic Rankings When you install Alexa Toolbar you will be able to see a ranking of every important website on Internet. It's a relative ranking and biased towards US but it's incredibly useful information. A traffic ranking of 10,000 means that there are 9,999 websites more popular and every other website on Internet is less popular. So if your competitor is claiming they are most popular website of their kind on Internet you'll be able to judge for yourself. No Data means that although website may have some visitors, none of them use toolbar or it's not significant enough to measure. Historical Traffic Trends Shown Graphically As a consumer you'll be able to determine how popular a website is and if "they're real". Alexa shows historical trends graphically for top 100,000 websites on Internet so you can see if a website is getting more or less popular. You can even do a graphical comparison between two websites, like you and your competitor, to see how you're doing. The site also details reach per million surfers and average number of page views per visitor in both table form and graphically.
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