The first blog I ever followed was a lifestyle blog that talked about fashion, recipes, workouts, etc. The first blog I tried to ever create was a lifestyle blog – I talked about 150 different things, and saw little success. Since I’ve niched down, my success has skyrocketed. But instead of just telling you “you need to do it,” I’m going to tell you why.
Let’s start off with the basic agreement that your blog has the intention of being a business, or helping your business to grow. If you are honestly just blogging because you love writing and what absolutely no money, success, or growth – then disregard this post! Write whatever you want!
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Blogging as Content Marketing
Content marketing is a buzzword today, and you hear people throw it around quite a bit. Basically it is a marketing approach that involves offering content and information, which moves your company into the position of being an ‘expert’ or ‘resource’ in your particular industry. The whole concept of content marketing relies on you having a very well defined target customer for your actual business.
Blogging is a major component to content marketing. What easier way to put out tons of content than having a blog on your website? The thing is, that blog has to work in the same stride as your overall business and marketing plan, to attract an ideal target customer.
If you are writing about random topics, like what you did last weekend or what your favorite restaurant is, you are not working to promote your actual business at all (unless your business is that restaurant, or includes what you did that weekend). Instead of writing about various posts, you need to be niching down and writing about topics that relate to your overall business and appeal to your target customer. That way, they begin to see you as someone worth remembering, an expert in your particular industry, and buy from you in the future
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Blogging Builds SEO
Related to the idea of content marketing, blogging consistently about topics related to your industry will boost your overall SEO, or search engine optimization.
When you begin to throw in many random topics, search engines like Google can get confused. For example, when the robots and crawler from Google go through my site to update how I turn up in searches, it sees ‘branding’ ‘brand’ ‘business ‘blog and ‘entrepreneur’ over and over and over again. What if it randomly started to see ‘puppy’ and ‘grilled cheese’ and ‘fall scarves’? It would dilute my message and my intent, and cause Google to move me down in the search results because it doesn’t know what I am actually offering. When you waste time and energy posting about unrelated topics, you ultimately hurt your overall brand and your business success.
Consistency Creates Loyalty
If I come to your blog, read the best recipe for cookies ever, make it and am a huge success at my holiday party because of it, I’m going to love your blog. I’m going to be like “THIS BLOG IS AMAZING. BEST RECIPES EVER.” But then, when I log in the next day and I see a post about your latest camping trip or what you did last weekend? Eh… sorry but, I don’t care. I came here because I thought you posted amazing recipes. I hate camping; I don’t want to read that.
That is exactly what will happen if you post various topics and are not niched down. Someone will love one post and then be severely disappointed at your next, unrelated post, and you will lose a fan. Rather than think of niching down as excluding viewers, think of is turning viewers into raving and loyal fans.
Your blog can’t be the best recipe blog, the best fashion blog, and the best DIY blog. You will attract too many potential fans and lose them the first time you post about something random. However, you could be the best DIY blog, and post exclusively about DIY and turn viewers into loyalists and grow as the expert in your field. That’s doable. It’s easy to promote your DIY blog in DIY communities – but if you are posting a ton of different topics, you have to be present in all those communities and try to build your readership. That’s too much work for not enough results.
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EXCEPTIONS TO THE RULE
There are exceptions to this rule. There are websites that cover a myriad of topics – but they are set up very different from your normal blog. They have multiple writers and easily navigable categories. It’s apparent from entering the website that we are going to talk about a lot of different topics – and there is still a common thread of “for young millennial women entering the work force” or for “stay at home moms with children under the age of 10.” There’s still a niche, in some capacity.
But, if you are a one-person show, using blogging as way to boost your business – then you are not the exception to this rule. You need a niche to be a successful blog. Gone is 2006, when blogging was this new and crazy idea, and any blog, about any topic, could be successful. It’s 2015 (almost 2016!) and there are enough blogs out there, that without niching down, you will quickly get swept up in the masses. Niching down is the way to building your audience, growing larger, and success.
Ready to learn more about niching down & creating a cohesive brand? Join #1WkBrand my 7-day free email course! You can sign up by clicking here!
