How To Write Off-Topic Without Losing Readers

Have you ever run across a subject you were dying to write about but was off the topic of your blog?  Your subscribers signed up to read about your niche and straying from the subject could cause them to check back less frequently or stop coming altogether.  Do you run that risk and write about what you want or stay true to your readers?

Write What You Want and Keep Your Readers
The good news is you can do both.  Simply create your article as a page rather than a post and your writing won’t show up on the front page of your site.  If you’re using WordPress use the “Write Page” menu and you can publish your thoughts on the web without clogging your reader’s inbox or feedreader with irrelevant content.  Some themes automatically show new pages in a menu or list using something like wp_list_pages but you can always exclude any page you don’t want to appear using the syntax wp_list_pages(‘…&exclude=510,620&…’).

Who Will Read Your Content?
If the article doesn’t show up on the front page who will see it?  If you are using a sitemap generator and Google likes you then it may get indexed.  Of course pages with more incoming links do better in the search engine so how do you get people to link up if they don’t know it’s there?  Try sending an email to other bloggers who might enjoy the article, submit it to a contest or group writing project, or just submit it to a social media site.

Why Take The Time To Write Off-Topic?
If you’re only writing for yourself and not your readers, why bother publishing on the web? 

Google Juice
I’m always excited about getting links from Problogger.

Share Your Knowledge
Just because it’s out of your niche doesn’t mean you don’t have something valuable to contribute to the topic.

Take a Break
Sometimes writing off topic can get your creative juices flowing again and get you out of a blogging slump.

Add Readers
If your article is totally off-topic you’re not likely to gain any more subscribers, however, if you submit it to a semi-related site you might pick up one or two.  For example, if you get a link from a site about making money from blogs their readers might want to know how to manage that money so they might subscribe to a personal finance site. 

Don’t Overdue It
Of course if you spend too much time and energy writing off-topic your core content might suffer and the readers might wander.  If you really are that interested in writing about another subject, you might consider starting another blog.

Well, it’s time for me to stop writing about blogging and get back on topic to posting about money.  If you’re interested in learning about keeping and growing the money you make from blogging be sure to subscribe to my feed for lots of personal finance tips.