If you have a blog, you should know very well what your blogging niche is. Preferably before you actually start blogging, but it can also be corrected along the way fortunately.
A blogging niche can be defined as the topic or topics on which you are going to write about. But for many bloggers, the problem is that they haven’t defined their blogging niche all that well. The result is that they don’t do well and don’t manage to stand out from the crowd.
There are three mistakes that are often made when it comes to defining a blogging niche:
1. They pick multiple niches
A mistake bloggers often make is to choose a niche that is too varied. They blog for instance on leadership in the church, preaching, life hacking and blogging. The problem with this is that you may have readers who are interested in one of these four topics, but that there’s only a select group that will be interested in all four. It’s not actually a niche, it’s multiple niches.
While there are bloggers who manage to get away with this, most can’t build a successful blog in multiple niches at the same time. If you have several interests you want to blog about, either start separate blogs or simply guest blog on certain topics on other blogs. That last strategy works well for me for instance, I get to write about a lot of stuff here on ChurchMag that I won’t blog about on my own blog because it’s not within my niche.
Now some niches can be combined well. Usually pastors are interested in preaching, discipleship and leadership for instance, so a blog combining those three could work well. But maybe that’s because they all fall under the same niche of ‘things a pastor is interested in’ 🙂
Do you have one defined niche or are you actually trying to combine multiple niches?
If you’re not sure, list your topics into broad categories.
How many are there and could they all go under one ‘übertopic’?
If not, what are the chances that people will be interested in all of them?
2. Their niche is too broad
Take for instance leadership. There are hundreds, thousands of blogs on leadership. If you would define your blogging niche as ‘leadership’, it would be way too broad. Most people aren’t interested in leadership in general, they want to know more about leadership in the church, leadership in non-profits, ethical leadership, etc.
Also, by specializing on certain aspects, you also avoid competition in niches where there are big competitors already. I decided to not blog ideas for games for instance on my youth ministry blog, because there are very popular sites who do that already. In doing so, I narrowed down my niche.
How broad is your niche right now?
Have you just picked a topic or have you narrowed it down within a broad topic to get a well-defined niche?
3. Their niche is too small
On the other side of the spectrum we have a niche that is too narrow and small. An example would be leadership lessons for worship leaders for instance or time management for church secretaries. You’ll not only quickly run out of things to blog about, you’ll also stay very small because you’re simply too specialized to draw many readers.
Do some research:
How big is your potential readership?
If you are focusing on church secretaries for instance, how many are there, how many read blogs and how many of those would be interested in time management?
That will give you an idea of your potential growth.
After reading this, how do you think about your blogging niche?
Do you need to make some changes or have you defined your blogging niche well?
[Editor’s Note: Be sure to read more awesome tips and tactics in the Focused Blogging series!]
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