The post was inspired by some of the commentary that followed Jason Calacanis’s keynote speech at Blog Business Summit where he effectively had said that if you were not an A-list blogger (and ideally in the Technorati Top 100) then your blog is rubbish.

In fact, effective business blogs should never even try to achieve so called A-list status – if they do, then the focus of the blog will undoubtedly be too broad to achieve its real business goals. The most successful type of business blogs should be focused on a market sector or niche and designed to attract a specific audience interested in that area. Lose that focus and you lose your audience.

In fact, as I think about it, the title of this post is itself misleading – trying to become an A-list blogger in your niche is also totally pointless.

What you want to do is become the recognised expert in your niche. Now this you can achieve with your business blog – through your posts, you can build credibility and gain both recognition and trust from the market and customers that you work with. Being considered as an A-list blogger in your area may come about as a result of your blog but it shouldnt be its aim.

So are there any special steps to follow to achieve this? Not really. Just follow the key principles of blogging mixed with some business and marketing common sense:

• Know your subject area inside out you probably do already – and communicate that through what you write and how you write it


• Keep up to date with what is happening in your industry (RSS really helps here) and then put it in context on your blog together with your views on it


• Write passionately and intelligently about subjects which will be of interest and of use to your readers within your niche


• Build your credibility and demonstrate your expertise through the information and knowledge that you share in your blog


• Link and reference to others as well as your own work so that you become the key information source for your market – if your readers don’t need to go elsewhere for the information, they won’t


• Promote and market your blog to help people find you – hopefully your posts will then keep them coming back

It’s impossible to be all things to all people. So by picking a subject area or market niche which we can focus on, we have a much better chance to establish a reputation in that area and so attract people to our blog who are really interested in what we do. Exactly the people that we want to talk to and do business with!

(Oh, and in case I forgot to mention, the Search Engines will love you for it too!)

Was this post useful? Then please share it!