In my quest to garner success in the realm of creating content online and building a strong community, I have been reading about and listening to the journey of successful bloggers, YouTubers and writers. And, almost all of them point towards finding a niche as one of the secret sauces of success in building a loyal following.
What is a niche?
The commercial definition of niche is, ‘a specialised segment of the market for a particular kind of product or service’. The term, ‘specialised segment’ is important here, as it represents a very specific and sometimes small section of the population. A good way to think about niche products is to think about luxury cars, like the Lamborghins or the Porsches of the world. Since a small segment of the total market can afford to buy these luxury cars, they fall into a ‘niche’ market segment.
In the context of content creation, a niche usually refers to finding a ‘segment’ of netizens who share your passions and developing a connection with this ‘segment’. A more corporate term for this would be creating content-market fit, or creating a personal monopoly. You basically want to become a thought leader of a topic on the internet. A good example is James Clear, who through his articles about habit formation, became the thought leader on habits on the internet and later wrote a best-selling book, Atomic Habits, as a result of developing this ‘niche’ following.
Why is finding a niche so important for content creation?
By creating content with a well-defined niche, people are more likely to come across your content and think, “great! this is exactly what I was looking for!”. And the audience within this niche will engage with your content, rally behind your message and become loyal followers or subscribers.
How do you find your niche?
There are two main ways we can think about finding our niche: the architect and the archaeologist approach.
An architect has to ensure that a good plan is in place before laying the first brick within their project. And within this plan, there are clear directions regarding how the project needs to progress, what are the materials and resources required to get the final result. There’s also a defined project deadline. So, one way of finding your niche is to carefully chalk out what exactly makes you a though leader within a topic, look for ways to create an unfair advantage, either through gear acquisition or by putting in time (more than anyone else can or would) for deliberate practice, all before even writing your first blogpost or creating your first YouTube video. This approach helps to put you ahead of other beginners online and gives you a clear and defined path to follow to develop a genuine connection with your audience.
An archeologist, on the other hand, does not have a concrete plan on what they are going to find. Their focus is to keep on digging and hope to find something interesting. Yes, they do know the site at which they need to keep digging, but they’re unaware of the surprises that await them. Similarly, if you don’t currently know what you’re a thought leader in, you can use this approach of digging in the right place to discover the hidden gems. You can write a book summary or you could review a product you use and the key here is to ensure that this article or video adds value to the reader or the viewer. And after posting content week after week, your niche will develop over time.
The general advice given to content creators, specially if they are beginners, is to adopt the archeologist approach to finding a niche.
The key is to put your work out into the world and overtime you will develop your niche. Once the niche is clearly visible, then it becomes easier to strategise content creation around building a loyal following online.
How could one keep ‘digging’ strategically?
A great way to think about strategic digging or digging in the right place is by taking pen and paper, and jotting down the number of things that you’re interested in. Basically a list of things that you’re passionate about. The topics can be as broad as painting, hiking, baking, scuba diving and so on. And once these broad topics are identified, you can then zero down on a topic which you really care about or a good way to think about it is if you can hold an hour long conversation about it without deflating at the end. This is key to ensuring that you can keep writing or keep creating videos about this topic for a long period of time. For instance, if you’re someone who enjoys baking, it’s a good place to start thinking about how you developed a passion for baking, what are some of the basics or 101s of baking, within baking, do you enjoy making savoury or sweet baked items, to name a few ideas.
My current niche
I’ve always enjoyed watching tech reviews on YouTube. Specifically reviews of tech accessories. At the start, I would watch reviews to keep myself up to date with the latest and greatest in phones, tablets, laptops. And I always saw myself creating content about tech myself. So when the time came for me to finally go all in on YouTube, I knew I wanted to talk about tech. Specifically, phones and its peripherals. It’s very early days to YouTube right now with just 70 subscribers, but I do hope to find a nugget of content which establishes me within the YouTube space as the ‘expert’ in that topic. And this will only happen if I focus on my input goal of consistently producing content on a weekly basis.
The key is to start, if you haven’t already! Just make that first video, post that first photo, publish that first artcile and then keep doing it again and again and let your niche develop over time.