It can be fun to blog about whatever you feel like on any given day, but that’s not a sustainable strategy for blog growth. In fact, blogging about random topics can actually hurt your results in the long run. We’ll dig into some of the reasons why selecting a niche is so important before exploring how to find a niche for your blog.
Why Pick a Niche?
In the long run, selecting a niche for your blog will make your life way easier. By writing about related topics, you’ll build on your existing knowledge base to become an expert in your niche. You’ll also be able to develop better content by growing your expertise on a specific topic.
Outside of your personal benefit, there are a multitude of benefits to zeroing in on a niche.
To build trust.
If you showed up to the dentist only to find the same person who had fixed your kitchen sink last week, you might be a little apprehensive. The same thing goes for blogging. Jumping around to blog about different topics makes it harder to come across as an expert.
Instead, focus on building trust by developing articles that are consistently factual and helpful, surrounding the same niche topic. Perhaps something to do with your specific industry or the product that your business is selling.
To grow a community.
By consistently creating content about the same topic, you’ll be able to retain readers for longer. This is also a great way to build a community around your content by bringing together like-minded individuals. By writing about a bunch of different topics, you may ultimately reach more people, but with smaller and less meaningful interactions.
To establish and further your brand.
It’s easier to begin building a brand when people know what to expect from you. Take our earlier example — if you saw your plumber-dentist out and about, would you immediately think of them as a plumber or as a dentist? You’d probably still be confused by the whole interaction.
Conversely, anywhere someone sees your logo if you’re a business or profile image if you’re a blogger, you want them to be able to immediately remember who you are and what you do. Each time you publish an article about a related topic, you’ll be furthering your brand in your readers’ minds.
To rank on Google.
Blogging and SEO are directly intertwined. Today, Google values the user experience on a site as much as the content on the site itself. For the same reason you may be hurting your reputation with your audience, you may be doing the same with Google. When you post a lot about one topic, Google sees you as an authority on it and will reward you accordingly.
You’ll also have an easier time interlinking all your articles when they’re already related to each other. Including relevant internal links is a key strategy for improving your SEO.
How to Pick a Niche
Now that we’ve covered why picking a niche is so important, let’s dig into how to choose the right niche for your blog.
Identify your personal interests.
What do you already know a lot about? What would you be excited to do more research about for the indefinite future? You want to identify a theme that won’t leave you feeling bored and burnt out after just a few months.
Identify your audience’s interests.
Especially if you’re a business hoping to build a blog, you want to write about topics your target audience cares about. Consider what your audience would naturally want to read about — what magazines do they subscribe to? Do they have a favorite show? Consider their interests when selecting your niche.
Find the overlap and test out your niche.
Once you’ve identified your interests and your audience’s, look at where those overlap. Are there commonalities? If you’re lucky, your overarching theme will be quite obvious to spot. If you’re struggling to find overlap, you may have to re-think your audience.
Once you’ve selected a niche, give it a test run. Try building out a content calendar for the next six months. This doesn’t need to be set in stone, but you want to be able to easily come up with a few months of topics. If you can’t, you might need to broaden your niche or select another.
How to Stick to Your Niche
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We’ve already drilled home the point of writing within your niche, but how can you stick within one topic successfully? Start by covering the basics in your niche, then explore wider topics with confluence. You can easily make an old topic new again by approaching the same concept from a different perspective. As time goes on, revisit your old content and update it with new information or rewrite it with a new angle in mind.
Feel like you’ve run out of topics in your niche? Call on adjacent experts to help you out! Hosting guest bloggers is a great way to provide additional benefit to your audience, and you’ll likely be inspired by the content they share. You can also explore opportunities to interview industry experts, your partners, or your customers to explore their experiences and insights.
Choosing a niche is important. By selecting a theme both you and your audience is interested in, you’ll ensure you’re able to write and attract the attention of readers for years to come. Sticking to your niche will also make it easier to grow your blog over time, contributing to growing your audience, authority, and ranking on search engines.
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