How Well Do You Know Your Niche?

Posted: 13 Jul 2012 12:54 PM PDT

All of us bloggers claim to know our niche perfectly well. To the extent we feel proud of it, even slightly offended if someone tells us what to try in order to familiarize with it better.

Sure, who wouldn't? I mean after all it is kinda our job; to know the readers, to recognize their needs, to understand the lingo, to master the technique of copywriting and content creating within the frame of our own niche.

I never gave it a second thought on this subject before, and to be quite frank, always avoided reading about things related to this matter.

I know my own niche better than anyone out there. – That's what I've thought. And this mindset only hindered with my growth in blogging, but I was ignorant to notice it.

Now thinking about it, I came up with 5 things which ensure that you know your niche perfectly well, as well as help you furthermore in establishing yourself as an authority within it.

1. The guest blogging demand

I guess you never thought about this one the way I'm about to reveal it to you. Here you indeed have a great opportunity to make sure that you are the master of your niche, just by asking yourself couple of questions.

Like for starters, do you know even without performing a Google search, which are the sites within your own niche that accept guest posts?

Or try this one:

Can you honestly say that you can go writing a post without asking for some guidelines from the site's owner, without looking at the site's most popular articles in order to see in which way they were tailored, without having to send your idea for review first? You think you can get that guest blogging gig without any of this?

Well, if not, then you still have much to learn about your niche.

2. Keywords – the most used word in the blogging world.

It's better to go the easy way right? Buy some keyword generator software out there, spent a minute, or even a minute and a half, get an idea of all the keywords you can put into a post.

I mean, why not? Many others are doing it. Why should you have to do things the hard way?

Tell you what I think – forget about keyword generator software.

If you want to be able to stay in your niche as one of the top dogs, then better start acting like you mean it.

Why not learn what keywords are used the most? Why not analyze the long tail of some of the most popular keywords in order to benefit from it? Why not read materials within the frame of your own niche just to get a grasp of all the phrase variations, all the lingo? Why not?

The thing is, if you become good in this, you can go writing faster and even master the keyword SEO aspect when writing some filler material. You will also be able to write guest posts way faster, and they will look way more appealing.

It's a no-brainer really.

3. Know the need, and recognize it everywhere. Know the readers too.

Don't be afraid to ask questions to your readers, as to know them better. After all, you write for them and for them only. If you don't know their need, how on Earth will you be able to answer it?

Ask yourself what they love reading about; what kind of article structure makes them scroll down till the end of the page. Should you go with a list post, maybe bigger paragraphs, pictures, then what kind of pictures…

This will help you a lot.

Knowing the need is also knowing the trends, the stuff that trill them, the stuff that make them laugh. In fact it's knowing the visitor's profile if you ask me.

Understanding who might be your reader, will give you a better understanding of his needs, his personality, and mood in general.

If you are thinking about succeeding in blogging then you better start learning about your visitors, your potential visitors too.

That way you will know that you are an expert within your own niche.

4. Keep a close eye on your tone.

If you ask me, every blogger out there must have a slightly different style and approach. I aim towards being unique in order to distance myself from the crowd and make a recognizable face when people start reading my content. So far I hope I'm succeeding.

Anyway, despite trying to be one of a kind, you must know the tone in which most bloggers in your niche write to their readers. At least that's how I developed my own style of writing.

Why I say that you must pay a lot of attention?

It's simple actually. Readers in the make money blogging niche may have different expectations from you than let's say readers in the personal development niche.

If you would check my site where I write about how to develop a healthy lifestyle, you will see that my tone there is quite different.

That is due to the different mindset in which I try to be while thinking about the things I write, as well as due to the different reading material I passed in order to develop my tone.

Similar to this, you will notice that my articles here are slightly more direct, not leaving any space for interpretation.

You will notice this for yourself too, if you haven't already.

Follow my example and limit yourself to reading only people that you want to sound like, without copying their tone.

To develop my tone in writing about blogging I read constantly, Daniel, Glen Allsopp, Darren Rowse, etc.

In contrast to that I was reading Leo Babauta, Ali Luke, and other bloggers, who are writing for a slightly different audience. (Except that Ali is like a chameleon – she can transform her writing in order to suit any niche out there, so you can learn a great deal from her regarding this one)

Know the style, and you will know the niche. That simple.

5. Who is who?

You cannot expect to know your niche if you don't know the key players, the godfathers of the niche, the teams that already made friends and are close to each other.

You cannot know your niche well enough if you are biased and fail to recognize who is who. You should know where your potential readers are gathering, and you can achieve this only by knowing the top dogs in the field.

Failing to see them, you will be unable to see who else is within your niche, unable to hang around and learn from the comment sections there, unable to build those strong connections, as well as notice and scout the startups that are promising and likely to stay. Knowing this, you can go a long way when trying to establish yourself as an authority.

So after reading this text, are you still 100% sure that you know your niche well enough? Or you have to learn a lot more anyway. There is no shame in admitting- I myself admit it. I still have a lot to learn, and plan to. So if you are the same like me, then you better start by making sure you can give a positive answer to all of the questions above.

Being master within your own niche is realizing that you still have a lot to learn.

Slavko Desik is an editor an writer at Lifestyle Updated where he try to combine the knowledge for blogging and internet marketing with his passion for living a healthy lifestyle.

Original Post: How Well Do You Know Your Niche?

Targeting a sub-niche

Professional blogging is a pretty big niche—and it’s growing all the time. It’s also a reasonably mature niche.

While that means there are more opportunities popping up each day, it also means that those opportunities are becoming more and more fragmented—or targeted—over time. Building authority in a niche like this isn’t just a matter of talking about generic pro-blogging techniques any more. It’s about digging deep into the specific needs of the topic’s many sub-niches.

The food blogging niche is flourishing, particularly here in Melbourne. But many food blogs are global brands now, and I want to know what makes pro- and would-be-pro-food bloggers tick.

So why not host an event for this sub-niche? The idea wasn’t exactly out of left-field for me, since my friend Shane is a restauranteur and a fantastic chef. The event will help to build his profile, but of course it also helps me build my profile at a grass-roots level, with a target segment I want to know better and help out. It’s a win-win-win!

Are there connections in your network who could help put you in touch with a sub-segement of your target audience? Perhaps it’s time you started asking around…

One of many

These days, more and more of my time is spent engaging with sub-segments of my main target audience. Recently, I’ve engaged through online and offline events and discussions in the DIY niche, the mommy bloggers niche, the social media niche, and the travel blogging niche, among others.

Each of those opportunities has let me connect deeply with a sub-niche of the blogosphere, and individuals who operate in that space. And each one has been informative and fun. I know that it’s easy for digitally focused people like bloggers to ignore offline promotional tactics like the Food and Wine Event, but I find them invaluable for actually getting to know readers from important sub-niches.

It’s commonly accepted that bloggers should write with a particular reader in mind. What better way to do that when you’re writing for a sub-niche than to think of someone you’ve met personally, who blogs in that space?

If you’ve talked with them face to face, you’ll know how they feel about key issues, the language they used, what interested them, and so on. That’s a great foundation for writing relevant content, and creating relevant products and services once you feel your authority with that sub-niche is strong enough.

I’ll keep getting involved in small- and medium-scale events and gatherings in the sub-niches within blogging, so that I can get to know as well as possible how those bloggers operate, what they hope for, and what they need.

Have you ever held and event—online or off—to target a sub-niche of your blog’s main topic? What was it, and what did you learn? We’d love to hear you stories in the comments.

Sample text

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Slide the ON/OFF switch to turn-on thekube, Music will
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3 buttons interface is a simple & ingenios way to control
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- Previous track & Volume Down
A short press on the I<< button will advance playback to
the next track. Hold down the I>> button to decrease the
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- Next track & volume up
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the next track. Hold down the I>> button to increase the
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Thekube can be toggled to play in both sequence or shuffle
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playback is paused.

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Slide the ON/OFF switch to turn-off thekube. When
thekube is turned-on again, it will resume playback of the
soundtrack where it is last turned-off.

- Charging thekube
Connect thekube to any USB powered port. Red light
indicates it is charging. Red light shut-off once charging
is complete. Full charge will take an hour.
It will increase the charging time while operating at the
same time.

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