Here's Another Tip That's Kind of Like Mind-Reading...

Hey,

What's up! I hope everything is well with you lately.

If you've got a minute, I've got another great tip I'd like to share with you. It has to do with "mind-reading".

Here's what I mean:

When writing content online, whether it's for your blog, article websites, or whatever, the best thing you can do is talk about a subject that people are just dying to know about. Wouldn't it be cool if you knew exactly what people were complaining about, or needed help on, so you could be the one to give them the answers?

Of course!

Now, you're probably thinking that I'm going to say something like, "Ask your audience what they want to hear", which is definitely something you should do. But, what if you don't have an audience? Or, what if you do, but they're shy or just don't respond very much?

Then asking them won't do any good, will it? Here's my little strategy for finding out exactly what people in your niche want to know about, so when you finally publish your blog post, your articles or whatever, it will be like you're reading their minds. Here's what to do:

1. In whatever niche you're in, look for forums where people in your niche get together. The best way to do this is to go into Google and type:

forum:niche

So for example, for the fly fishing niche, you'd type in:

forum:fly fishing (make sure you type in "forum", and not "forums").

Google will give you a huge list of all the top forums in the niche, usually ordered by popularity.

2. Go into one of the forums, and look for a search tool, or a search field that will let you search for certain terms that people have written in the forum posts. Some forums allow visitors or guests to perform searches without registering, while others require you to register first.

You might as well register anyways, since it's only the place where more of your audience hangs out, right? Rocking it in a forum and becoming an authority there to feed your website is a whole different story. Anyways, I digress...

3. In the search field, type in some the following terms and see what you come up with:

"advice about"
"I hate it when"
"I need help with"
"can anyone help me"
"I'm looking for"
 "really bad"
"desperate for"
"can't find"
"have no clue"
"newbie"
"question about"
There's a number of other terms that you can search for that all fit the same kind of idea, but I think you understand what's going on here.

When you search for these terms (note: you may also have to fill out one of those spam captcha letter verification thingies too), more than likely you're going to get a series of forum threads that have someone in need of something.

...and there's your next blog post. Or, and there's your next eBook. The possibilities are endless of what you can find hidden in these forums, but if you really want to become an authority in your niche, you're going to have to give the masses exactly what they want to see, and this is one way to do it, even before you have a blog running.

When I search through the fly fishing forums, for example, here are some of the things I found:

Threads that were named:
A Newb With Some Questions
Spey / Switch Need Help
Need Advice About Sages (I don't know what sages are)
Rod Sensitivity vs. Long Casting
Questions on Building a Fly Rod
How awesome is that?

And this was just from one of the terms. Some terms may offer no results, while with others you may strike gold.

And here's a bonus tip: If the threads you find were relatively recent, you can write a blog post or article specifically addressing the need or the problem, and then go into the thread itself as a user and give a brief answer/solution, and then link to your article for more information.

That's instant (highly-targeted) traffic.

Sweet!

Well, I hope you've enjoyed this addition of "Another tip from Pat".

Wishing you all the best.

Thanks again, viet! Cheers!

-Pat