I am always amazed at how sometimes what should appear to be obvious to most is actually a complete unknown and foreign concept to many. Let’s take niche blogging for example.
Niche Blogging Defined
Dictionary.com defines a niche as “a distinct segment of a market.” And over at Wikipedia niche blogging is described as “the act of creating a blog with the intent of using it to market to a particular niche market.”
Nothing to complicated right? We can all understand this even before we’ve had our morning coffee. But the reality is that most bloggers do not.
Niche blogging does not have to only refer to blogs that are trying to push a certain product or service. The concept is well suited to help aspiring writers, wannabe experts and work-from-home entrepreneurs focus their blogs.
One of Millions
There are literally millions of blogs available on the internet. The majority of these blogs never amount to anything. Most actually die on the vine shortly after starting.
There can be a whole host of reasons why blogs fail but for the most part it comes from a lack of focus. Lack of focus with writing consistently. Lack of focus with promoting. (You did know you had to promote your blog right?) Lack of focus with engaging their visitors in a conversation.
The most over looked reason for failure, though, is a basic focus on what your blog is supposed to be about.
Listen, unless you are famous, an existing expert in a given field or a recognized destination blog that covers a larger niche – say sports in general – the decision to cover a wide variety of topics is foolish. Of course if you are only writing for yourself and the four family members that follow you, knock yourself out.
In the early days of your blog you need to be laser focused on your content, the more laser focused the better. By providing focused niche content it gives your blog the opportunity to be recognized be the engines as a site specifically related to that topic. This in turn could lead to higher rankings and more targeted traffic.
Pick a Niche
So here’s the deal, I don’t care what you want to write about. Dog walking, nature photography or the latest trends in marketing, it doesn’t matter – but you need to pick a niche or a micro niche in order to keep you efforts and your blog on target.
If a reader happens to find your blog on dog walking and they also see you are writing about the newest “Slap-Chop” infomercial and about the latest NASCAR race, they are going to wonder if what you have to say about dog walking has any value.
One that thing will happen if you consistently write focused content on your niche is you will start to create a following. The holy grail of blogging. When people see that you content is focused on one topic that is of interest to them they will continue to come back for more or subscribe to your feed. And once you have that loyal audience of readers – then it might be time to consider if broadening the focus of your blog makes sense.
Remember this isn’t intended to be the end all be all solution to building a successful blog. However, by staying focused on what your blog is about will help you stay focused with all the other elements that make a blog valuable.
Focusing your blog will give you the foundation you need to become a successful blogger. So get focused.