If you’ve hit a rut with your blogging – or you’re just not seeing the blog growth that you would like – the first thing I would recommend taking a look at is your blog’s niche.
One of the biggest errors I see bloggers making in their niche choices is they choose a niche that is too broad. The blogs that experience the most success, are ones that are laser focused in their topic. They’ve written to a specific audience with the goal of helping them to solve a problem. As counter-intuitive as it may sound – a narrower focus can actually help you grow your audience much faster than a broad focus that tries to reach everyone.
Is Your Niche Too Broad?
If you are having trouble developing a presence in your marketplace, you may be going too wide. By trying to attract everyone, you appeal to no one. It is much more profitable, and easier to be a success online, when you focus on one type of individual in a smaller market, rather than a huge marketplace.
How can you tell if your niche is too broad?
Take a look at your blog or website. Are you writing about several topics? If an absolute stranger were to end up on your Internet doorstep for the first time, would they quickly understand the topic or market being covered? If you answered no, then it’s time to narrow that niche!
How Many Words Define Your Niche?
What is the focus of your niche? If you had to put a name on your niche, what is it? Often times, if your market can be described in 1 or 2 words, you are trying to please too many people. This is not true in every case. However, if your market is “shoes” rather than “designer shoes for millennial men” then your market is probably much too large.
Refer to Your Most Popular Blog Posts
Try this. Check out your analytics and take a look at your most popular blog posts. Are they all on the same topic or subject? Is there a very tight, focused approach to the same subject on all of those posts? If not, if your top posts drawing the most traffic are all talking about different things, you may be marketing too wide.
How Much Traffic Are You Getting?
Are you having a problem attracting web traffic? In many cases, this is because Google and the other search engines don’t really know what your site or blog is about. Your focus is on so many different things, the spiders that crawl the web can’t tell their respective search engines what your true focus is.
This is a classic sign that you are marketing to too large of an audience.
Tighten your focus. Choose one topic instead of several. Build a blog about “organic nutrition tips to help you recover from a heart attack” instead of “nutrition tips”. You may think micro-niches with a tight focus attract very little traffic. However, you may actually find your traffic improving with a laser targeted approach, especially if you are currently trying to be everything to everyone.
How to Turn a Broad Niche Into a Profitable Sub-Niche
You probably know now that you should focus on a smaller niche rather than a large one. It is easier to be profitable, you can develop an authority reputation quickly, and your prospects are passionate about what you have to say. If you have created a web presence that is simply too broad or too inclusive, practice the following steps to narrow your focus for a much better chance at profitability.
Go Book Shopping
Your local bookstore can help you niche down. So can the magazine rack at Walmart, and online bookstores like Amazon and Barnes & Noble. In all of those cases, you can get a “sneak peek” at chapter titles and other relevant information in just about any book or magazine. All you need to do at a physical bookstore is open a book and look at the chapter titles.
If your current niche is firearms, take a look at the most recent Guns and Ammo magazine. Jot down chapter headings that offer sub-niche or micro-niche possibilities. Online, the biggest virtual bookstores will allow you to preview the Table of Contents of the book before you buy it, revealing the same information.
Ask Your Audience
If you have already started off in a broad market, you have developed some type of traffic. Why not ask them what specific, laser-targeted issues they have? Ask your market what niche problems they have not been able to solve, create a solution, and you guarantee traffic and sales in this smaller sub-niche.
Check Out MeetUp.com
This tip works well for local and global sub-niche selection. MeetUp.com is a virtual meeting place. It focuses on grouping people of similar likes and interests. Type your broad niche name into the search engine there, and you will see all kinds of physical and virtual meeting places relating to that keyword or phrase. In addition, smaller micro-niche markets are revealed.
Let Facebook Help
Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and the other social media kingpins are treasure troves of niche information. Let’s say you began a business in the massive weight loss marketplace. Head over to your favorite social media site and search for “weight loss”. Browse the results and you will see dozens, if not hundreds, of potential sub-niches. This also provides a built-in marketplace.
You can see which groups and pages have the most members in a micro-niche. Facebook’s advertising platform has an excellent demographic targeting feature. So not only does this help you identify a popular sub-niche in a broader market, but it also provides a ready-made group of hungry prospects.
It can be nerve-wracking to narrow down your niche. You’re worried you might never see the traffic you want, but trust us! Narrowing and really zero’ing in one specific niche is the way to go. You’ll begin see genuine interest in your content, and the people that visit will turn into raving fans.
Is your niche narrow and specific? Or, are you still struggling to pin down exactly what you want to write about?
Please share in the comments below!
from Blogelina http://ift.tt/2qilMRd
via IFTTT
No comments:
Post a Comment