If you have looked into blogging even just a few times, the word “niche” is thrown around everywhere. The advice is to find a niche, or to “niche down”. What does this even mean? What is a blog niche?
What’s a niche?
If you look in the dictionary, “niche” is defined as “denoting or relating to products, services, or interests that appeal to a small, specialized section of the population”. (Well, when used as an adjective.)
In the blogging world, the idea is to find that specialized section of the population that you are writing to.
How do I even choose a niche?
What are you passionate about? What topic do you think you could talk about day in and day out? What do you talk to your friends about? What gets your juices flowing?
You will also need to think about your audience. Who are you wanting to read your blog? There’s also a term for this in the blogosphere.
It’s called an avatar. An avatar is an ideal person you are wanting to reach out to or your ideal customer. You can ask yourself some questions to figure out your avatar. What age are they? Gender? Are they other moms, are they other knitters, or maybe they are pet enthusiasts? What would they want to read about? What are they struggling with? Make your avatar as real as possible.
When you are writing your blog posts, you are going to want to focus on your avatar. What are their frustrations, and how can you help them? Or maybe just how can you connect to them?
For myself, I wanted to talk to other moms who were like me – in their late 20s-40s, working moms, moms who are trying to juggle everything and still live their best life. My avatar is truly one of my best friends. When I blog, I honestly picture her in my mind’s eye. I’m blogging about everything we talk about. I pretend I’m talking to her. (And she reads my blog, and then we carry on further conversations about my posts!)
Do I really need to niche down?
That’s controversial, and honestly, just a matter of opinion. It depends.
Maybe you want to talk about Kentucky coin silver, for example. That’s a pretty specific topic. However, maybe you start writing, and you find that perhaps it is TOO specific. It may be hard to produce a lot of content for just that. If that is the case, you might want to expand into just coin silver in general. To be even more general, you could discuss any silver – coin silver, sterling silver, etc. As you can see, you can be very specific, or more general. It depends on how much content you could produce, what your target audience is, and your end goal is.
For myself, I did not want to niche down. I like to talk about many things that fit into my life. (I’m also a rebel that way. I don’t really care much for rules.)
Now, that being said – if you plan to blog for profit, you will want to create content that can be profitable. You don’t have to make every single post profitable, but the majority should be. (Again, only if monetization is your end goal, it’s fine if you don’t want to!) You can still do storytelling, but you want to position it in a way that helps your readers.
What if I don’t like the niche I choose?
This is the good thing about blogging, and even about life. You can change your mind! It’s ok to quit or change directions. When you start blogging, you’ll eventually find your writing voice, and you are naturally going to find what you gravitate to writing to the most. For me, I love to write about my favorite kitchen tips and tricks, parenting, and family travel. This is what really sparks my fire.
Once you’ve thought about your niche and your avatar, I think you are ready. It’s time to start that blog you’ve been daydreaming about. (And even if you feel a little uncertain about what to write, just start writing. Write like you are talking to your best friend. It takes time to get your writing to feel natural and easy. It will come.)
To sum up the great niche debate, I’m going to give you the advice I give to my 8-year-old, and it’s our mantra:
BOOGEY TO YOUR OWN MUSIC!
For the next step, you can go HERE to my step by step guide on getting a domain name and site hosting.
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What I’ve Learned in a Month of Blogging
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