It can be extremely difficult to find success as a blogger if you haven’t defined your niche. It definitely can be done (The Bloggess is a great example), but it’s hard to simply blog about your life without concentrating on a specific topic.
Unless you’re a celebrity, it’s rare to find people who are interested in what’s going on with your life. So, figuring out your specialty should be priority number one for every blogger.
Choosing a broad niche isn’t enough. Yes, it’s important to distinguish if you’re a food blogger or a political blogger (or whatever), but you really need to determine where exactly you fit in with a general topic.
To do this, I suggest thinking about your readers. Who do you want in your audience? What interests those people? How do you keep them coming back for more?
Let’s look at five ways to better define your audience, which in turn will help you define your specific niche.
- Realize that you are probably not your target reader. If you don’t like your blog, why should other people like it? You have to stand behind and enjoy everything you write. That said, realize that you are probably not your target reader. Of course, this depends on your niche, but if you’re positioning yourself as an expert in the field, your readers are most likely people who don’t know as much about the topic as you do. So, get out of your own head a little. Write for your readers, not for yourself.
- Think about your readers’ skills – and what you are qualified to teach. One of my biggest pet peeves is when someone with little experience in an industry starts an expert blog to teach others about it. This happens all the time in the “make money online” niche. Why should I listen to you tell me how to make money online if you’ve never made money online before? No matter what your niche, though, you need to really think about what you are qualified to teach. Then, find readers with the appropriate skill level. Someone who is at your level or more skilled will be bored on your blog, so stop trying to get them to read it.
- Ask questions. If you’re already blogging, take a moment to find out who your die-hard fans are. Even if you only have a handful, this can be invaluable in learning more about the people attracted to your blog and the information you’re sharing. Poll your readers or even invite a few people who regularly comment on your site to have a quick Skype chat with you. Find out what your biggest fans have in common. Learning more about these fans can help you find more fans like them.
- Create “profiles” for your target audience. Years ago, Darren Rowse from Problogger gave a piece of advice that has stuck with me ever since. Sit down and actually come up with pretend profiles for the types of readers you want on your blog. What do they look like? What do they care about? What are their biggest struggles and fears? What is their family life like? What kind of jobs and education do they have? Then, when you write posts, you have these make-believe people in mind. Make sure you’re always writing for these people, rather than simply writing to please yourself.
- Hang out where your audience hangs out. One of the best ways to learn about your audience and better define them is to hang out where they hang out. When they aren’t reading your blog, what are they reading? What social networks do they belong to? What kinds of things do they do in real life? Learning as much as possible about your readers can really help you figure out exactly what they want most from your blog.
Once you have your audience more clearly defined, you can truly become a leader in your niche. This is, of course, not an overnight process! So above all, cut yourself a little slack and be patient if you don’t have a clear vision for your blog just yet. Paralysis analysis can be deadly, so start writing and as you publish more and more, work on honing in on your place in the market.
About the Author: Allison is the blog features write for the New Media Expo (formerly BlogWorld) blog. If you’re interested in learning more about defining your niche and building your blog, check out our upcoming session from food and travel blogger Patti Londre, “The Art of Becoming a Leader In Your Niche.”
Great article. As a blogger, we really have to exactly know what we want to write about and what really interests us. It is important that we are comfortable with the niche we choose to have.
Sarah Park recently posted..How to Prevent Foreclosure
Glad you liked the post, Sarah. 🙂
Allison recently posted..There’s Gold in Them Thar Hills: Finding Hidden Content Treasures for Your Blog
I totally agree with you. Being a blogger/writer we need to know what to say and stay focused on what interests us. Not just what our readers want to read. Our blogs are basically our identities. Thank you for this Allison, it was very informative.