Does Your Blog Need A Niche? 3 Things To Consider
If you’re considering starting a blog, or want to get serious about your website, you may be wondering ‘does your blog need a niche?’.
A blog niche, or topic that you create content about, is a great way to stand out from the crowd and become known within a certain industry. However, there are a few things to think about before you decide to commit to a niche.
So, to answer the question ‘does your blog need a niche?’, the answer is it depends…
In this blog post, you’ll discover:
- 3 things to consider when debating about a blog niche
- The pros and cons of having a blog niche
- What to do if you’re unsure about a blog niche
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Does Your Blog Need A Niche: 3 Things to Consider
Before you think about going all in on one niche, ask yourself the following questions.
Are you a business/planning to start a business?
Does your blog need a niche if you’re starting a business?
If you have a business or you’re planning to start a business, then niching down makes sense.
Let’s say you have a business selling cars. By creating a blog around all types of car topics, you get to demonstrate your authority and expertise within this area. Plus, you can attract potential customers through your blog content and push them down your sales funnel.
You can use this approach for both offline and online businesses. For instance, the overall goal of HubSpot’s blog is to nurture and encourage people to sign up for Hubspot CRM. You’ll notice the same with Ahref’s blog too – their content is aimed at their target audience with a goal to get you to sign up for the Ahrefs tool.
If you’re not planning to start a business, then it’s much easier for you to simply write about subjects you’re passionate about. However, many ‘hobby’ blogs still focus on one or two niches as you’re more likely to grow an engaged audience when you create content within one area.
Do you have a specific passion?
Does your blog need a niche if you’re passionate about something?
Is there a topic you’re interested in or that you love talking about? That can be a great place to start writing.
If you love cooking, for example, you could start sharing recipes that you make at home, or you could simply write content about the food you enjoy eating.
Even if you have no plans at present to make money from blogging, it may be something that you may want to do in future – that’s why having one niche is often recommended.
If you don’t have a specific interest or you become bored easily, then writing about different topics may suit you better. You can still niche down in the future, but this gives you more freedom to be creative.
Stuck on what to write about? Here are some profitable blogging niches with low competition.
Do you plan on monetizing your content?
Does your blog need a niche if you plan on monetizing your content?
If you’re desperate to quit your job and make an income online, then choosing one blog niche is the way forward.
It’s much more difficult to make money when you don’t have a niche. The reasons for this are that your content won’t stand out, you won’t become known as a leader within an area, and you won’t have a dedicated audience that keeps coming back for more.
You could choose to present yourself as a brand. However, you’d need to be fairly present on social media platforms and YouTube etc to build up an audience first.
Benefits of Choosing a Blog Niche
Here are just some reasons why you should choose a blog niche:
- It’s easier to market your blog to your audience
- There are many ways to monetize your content
- Google sees you as an expert so it can be easier to rank for keywords
- You become known as a leader or an authority within your niche
- You can build an audience of raving fans
Disadvantages of Having a Blog Niche
As with anything, there can be some downsides to niching down your blog:
- You can become bored easily
- You may run out of things to write about
- If you’re in a competitive niche, it can be difficult to stand out from the crowd
What to Do If You’re Unsure About a Niche
Are you unsure as to what you want to write about, or whether you should concentrate on only one blog niche?
Here are some ideas on how to gain clarity:
Experiment with topics
There’s a famous saying – ‘the world is your oyster’ and that’s exactly how you should see the blogging world.
If you don’t know what to zone in on, try experimenting with different topics to see if you naturally gravitate towards something.
You don’t have to create a professional website to do this. You can use free platforms like Medium to publish your blog posts before creating your own website later down the line.
Focus on creating quality content
If you don’t want to stick to one niche, then you need to write original, high-quality content (obviously, you should be doing this regardless).
When writing about different topics, you can play around with your writing style, test SEO strategies, and play around with blog design and navigation, before you begin to build an audience.
Marketing is a key aspect in building and growing a blog, but by choosing different topics to write about, you can simply focus on writing the very best content first and foremost.
What is great content, I hear you ask! This is something that provides value to your reader. In other words, it should inform, educate, or entertain. Most blog posts can aim to solve a problem that a reader has but it really depends on your content strategy (don’t worry about this if you’re just starting out!).
Think about how you can stand out
The internet is super crowded but you have something that no one else has – your unique perspective.
Consider how you can showcase your personality through your blog to stand out from the crowd. This could be by using creative writing, unique imagery, having a perspective that goes against popular opinions, and so on.
By doing something different, even if it’s only minimal, you’ll have a better chance of standing out and getting noticed by your readers.
To conclude
Having a blog niche isn’t a make-or-break deal if you’re just starting out. However, if you want to make money from your website, it’s a lot easier in the long run if you choose a blog niche to focus on.
