In the beginning, bloggers often struggle with focusing on a specific topic or targeting a specific group of people. In fact, I still struggle with this as a blogger.
If you are anything like me, you may feel the desire to write about anything and everything you are working on that could possibly be of help to somebody else. It is a great goal to want to help a lot of people with your blog. BUT you also want people to return to your blog on a regular basis rather than to just stumble upon the one or two articles that may be relevant to that person.
This is why you really need to think about defining your niche market, or target audience.
Building relationships with your readers and giving those readers valuable information each time they visit your site will allow you to help many people.
It is the repeat visitors who will be more likely to share your content and even promote products you may be marketing.
Repeat visitors get to know and trust you as a knowledgeable resource in your niche. That type of relationship with your readers will go a long way toward your blog’s success.
That being said, you may have valuable information to share on multiple topics. However, when all of your posts are not targeting the same group of people, you may lose readers because they are only finding value in a portion of the content you create.
There are A LOT of blogs out there for readers to choose from. If you can be a go-to resource for a select group of people that you understand very well, you are setting your blog up for great success.
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Write for your desired reader, rather than your current reader
When you first start out blogging, your most interactive audience maybe your own family or other bloggers from networking groups you may have joined. Having these people comment on your blog posts and engage with you on social media can be a great way to bring more overall traffic and engagement to your site.
I currently network with several bloggers. That means many of the people reading my blog have been other bloggers helping me out by commenting on my posts and liking and sharing my content on social media.
Since I knew many of my actual readers were bloggers and stay-at-home moms, I wanted to write posts about blogging and working from home because my current readers would relate to those types of posts. This was a mistake!
Those topics do not fit in with the overall theme of my site and those are not necessarily the readers I should be targeting for a healthy living blog. Family members and other bloggers are NOT MY niche market.
After sitting down and thinking about what I want to accomplish with my own blog, I have found that I can relate well to working moms with young children in elementary school and younger who are looking for simple ways to improve the health of their families while also dealing with busy schedules.
You should also do a similar analysis to determine who you should be targeting with each post you write and with each social media update.
4 Blogging Tips for defining your own niche market
If you are struggling to identify who you should be targeting with your blog posts and social media updates, here are four things to think about to help you define your niche market.
- Think about things you are passionate about. If you are passionate about a topic, that passion will show in your writing. Your passion will enhance the service you are able to provide to your readers.
- Think about things you have accomplished. There is a good chance you have accomplished something that others would love to accomplish too. What can your readers learn from your experiences?
- Think about what you can teach others. This could relate to your accomplishments identified above or this could be experience and training you have in specific areas.
- Think about what makes you different from bloggers that write about similar topics. What solutions can you provide that may not be adequately fulfilled by existing blogs in this area.
After answering these questions, you should be able to start to see what type of reader you can help most. Think about the age, gender, and season of life of this reader. What are this reader’s needs and how can you meet those needs?
Many blogging experts suggest naming your target reader. When you direct your content to a specific person, you stand the best chance of providing value to everyone who fits the description of that target reader.
Once you have defined your niche market, the next step is to target that niche market with everything you share.
Do you struggle with identifying and targeting your own niche market? Please share your thoughts below.