Should you focus on just 1 niche?
If you’re asking this question, it’s probably too early for you to do so…
A reader wrote this to me:
"My passion / dream is to help people lead a happy life. My focus is on helping people achieve fulfillment in 3 important areas of their lives…RELATIONSHIP, FINANCES, and CAREER. So these are the things I intend to talk about on my blog.
As I’ve read and researched, I see that many experts recommend tailoring down to a niche, and focusing on specific issues; thereby warning against taking a wide range of topics.
I perfectly understand that these 3 areas (Relationship, Money, and Career) are SO WIDE. In fact, each of them has countless sub-topics.
But what I’m trying to do is link the 3 of them together because I believe that they are the core factors that affect people’s happiness and overall well-being. If people do well in these areas, they’re more likely to excel in other things."
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I imagine some of you reading this are wondering the same thing — having a variety of passions, or being multi-talented, how can you restrict yourself to just one thing?
Most marketing experts will answer:
Niche down to ONE of those 3 areas. In fact, it’s even better to emphasize a specialty within one of those mega-topics. For example, “Dating for Urban Millennials” or “Financial Planning for Mid-Life Entrepreneurs” or “Christian Career Coaching.”
I used to offer this advice as well.
Over the past few years my thoughts have shifted on this, as I’ve seen many people try to constrain themselves into one area, and getting bored or otherwise regretting the narrow focus.
I now believe that it’s not alway right to niche down, but rather, to ask yourself these questions:
* What area(s) am I likely to be able to sustain consistent content creation?
* What area(s) have products/services that I’d be proud to promote, whether it’s from others, or what I could create myself?
Integrating multiple areas into one?
It’s fine, as long as you are able to sustain a consistent rhythm of content, and if you can find (or create) products/services you want to promote regarding that integration.
When it comes to your offerings, in fact, you can still niche down, even if you keep your content broad.
Continuing with our example, you might find a online course about relationships that you would be happy to promote. Since your audience knows you in part for relationship advice, it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to promote that product.
Be open to audience feedback, niching down (or up) as needed.
Over time, you might naturally decide you want to niche more specifically, or make it more broad, depending on your audience’s feedback about what topics of content you’re best at creating.
Be open to it, but don’t force yourself to choose before you’re ready.
For example, when I started creating consistent content a few years ago, I focused on 3 areas:
Authentic Marketing
Joyful Productivity
Healthy Money
And indeed, I created a lot of content for each topic. Over time, though, I noticed that my audience was overwhelmingly in favor of my content about Authentic Marketing.
It seemed like I that was where I could excel the most.
So that’s the one topic for which I now feel inspired to create the most content.
Sometimes, however, I still integrate my other interests (joyful productivity, and healthy money) into my marketing content. That’s fine, because it does make my content more unique.
Ultimately it’s about developing excellence and credibility.
Whatever topic(s) you choose, the goal is to become excellent at it, and therefore, truly credible.
The benefit of a focused niche is that it’s easier to become excellent and credible sooner, due to consistent practice in one focused area.
Spreading your energy into multiple topics means that it’ll take you longer to get great at any one thing.
But it’s a tradeoff.
If you really enjoy / are passionate about creating content in multiple topics at once, and doing so allows you the energy to stay consistent in your content, then that’s what I would recommend for you.
The bottom line is that you need to have a consistent rhythm of practicing content creation to get excellent at it… whatever the topics may be, and however you integrate them.
