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How Broad or Narrow Should Your Blog’s Niche Be? - DailyBlogTips

How Broad or Narrow Should Your Blog’s Niche Be? - DailyBlogTips

How Broad or Narrow Should Your Blog’s Niche Be?

Posted: 18 Oct 2013 05:34 AM PDT

One of the questions that's come up a few times in the DailyBlogTips survey is how to select a niche, or how to fix problems with one. Usually, problems crop up because a niche is too broad or too narrow.

When I started out in blogging six years ago, the conventional advice was to choose a very specific niche.

Over the past few years, though, I've seen thinking on this shift. Most bloggers now suggest a slightly broader niche, as this makes it much easier to build a real business around your blog. Going too broad, however, is also a mistake.

Is Your Niche Too Broad?

Here's an example of too broad a niche … in fact, this blog doesn't really have a niche at all:

My blog covers travel, health, personal development, Twitter, and watercolour painting.

While you might personally have a very wide range of interests, it's not a good idea to combine these into one blog. Even if you have no intention of making money, you presumably want readers – and they'll want a blog with a focus.

Fix it:

  • Choose a core topic (or two or three closely related topics) to focus on. For instance, it might make sense to combine health and personal development.
  • Write down what your blog is really about. You might find it’s useful to use bullet points here. Imagine you’re explaining your blog to a friend or a potential new reader.
  • Use different outlets for your other interests. If you have a blog on personal development, with a slant towards health, there's nothing stopping you writing guest posts about watercolour painting.

Is Your Niche Too Narrow?

A very narrow niche might sound like a good idea, but in practice, it can be very tough to get traffic and readers. A too-narrow niche is also a common cause of burnout: you simply run out of things to say, or lose interest.

It might look like this:

Best brushes for watercolour painting.

While that could make a great blog post or even a great series, it's not going to be an easy topic for a whole blog.

In my experience, bloggers often choose a too-narrow niche not because they're passionately interested in it but because they hope it'll make money. The truth is that a slightly broader niche will usually serve you better.

Fix it:

  • Move one step up from your current topic. From best brushes for watercolour painting, you might choose to blog about painting tools (brushes, canvases, etc) or you might blog about watercolour painting.
  • Consider buying a new domain. Perhaps your current domain name restricts your topics too much, and it's time to find a new one.
  • Rethink how your blog makes money. Very niche sites are often monetised with affiliate marketing or ads. There's nothing wrong with that, but you might find a broader niche is easier to monetise in other ways (e.g. by selling products or services).

What's your blog's niche? Do you think it's too narrow or too broad? Let us know in the comments!

Don't forget the DailyBlogTips survey, which you can find here on SurveyMonkey. We'll be closing this early next week, so please get your answers in now! Remember, everyone who completes the survey has a chance to win a free place on our upcoming course.

 

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ProBlogger: Behind the Scenes – My Low Tech Editorial Schedule

ProBlogger: Behind the Scenes – My Low Tech Editorial Schedule

Link to @ProBlogger

Behind the Scenes – My Low Tech Editorial Schedule

Posted: 17 Oct 2013 08:37 AM PDT

How do you organise and plan your posts? Do you have an editorial calendar?

I like to keep things fairly informal but do use a spreadsheet to help me keep more organised than I used to. Here’s how it looks for dPS:

Editorial calendar

The left two columns are my blog posts. I publish two posts per day – one scheduled for the US audience in the morning and one for the afternoon. I’m usually scheduling these 2-3 days in advance (but up to a week or two in advance if I’m taking a trip).

The 5 columns on the right are my Facebook posts on the dPS Facebook Page which I plug in a day or two in advance also. The times at the top are Aussie time zone times but they tend to go up more during the US morning through to evening – every 4-5 hours.

The Facebook updates are a combination of:

  • New posts on the blog (2 per day)
  • Highlighting old posts in the archives (1-2 per day)
  • Discussion Questions (1 every day or two)
  • Links to hot threads in our forum area (1 per day)

Note: Much of what I do I posted about last week in my post on increasing Facebook Engagement by 200-300%.

I do move them around a bit depending upon what is happening on the blog on any given day. If something hot is happening on a post or forum I’ll push that into the schedule faster for example.

The green colour signifies that the posts are scheduled. If they are white they are just penciled in but not set to go live yet.

That’s how I roll – what about you? Do you schedule posts far in advance? Do you use a system or tool to help you do it?

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger
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Behind the Scenes – My Low Tech Editorial Schedule
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