Why Find a Niche

The logic of niching down your business or content does make sense. When you are starting out, you need to get traction. You need an audience. In an ocean of information, you will never be found by your audience or customers, if you are too generic. Finding a niche, means that you target a specific set of people with a specific problem or an specific audience who are looking for specific information. The key word is ‘specific’.

For instance, if your industry is weight loss, your competition will be too great. You will not be noticed. However, if you target 50-year-old males, who want to lose ten pounds, without going to the gym, this will narrow down your target audience. The key part of this is that those people who fit these criteria, will more easily find you.

Niching down is therefore sound advice and here are some of the ways I’ve discovered, to think about my potential niche.

Your niche should be a blend of:

• What you are passionate about?
• What will be financially viable?
• Where do your skills lie?

Your Passion as a Niche

What is your passion and what are you interested in? The premise here is that, as with any new business, it takes a lot of time and energy to get it off the ground. There will be times when nothing seems to happen and you want to give up. It is at these moments that your passion will carry you through because you will feel like you are just doing it because you love it, not for the results.

Money

Counter to the passion argument is, what will be the most commercially viable niche? Follow the money.

I would say that focussing on just the money will result in you becoming disillusioned. You are more likely to follow through if you are enthusiastic about what you are doing. Yes, sure, the venture needs to be financially viable, or it is just a hobby. The focus on just money shouldn’t however be to the detriment of what you are passionate about. That said, there is wisdom in saying don’t just follow your passion. Your venture should be something that has a balance of something you are at least interested in and is commercially viable.

Skills

What if you can’t find something you are passionate about, or what if what you are passionate about, isn’t commercially viable? In that case you should consider what your skills are. What are you good at? Any business relies on providing value to the customer or they will not pay for your services. In the realm of content creation, the consumer needs to receive value, either as entertainment or useful information. You don’t need to be the best, or the most expert in your field, but you should be confident in your abilities and knowledge to provide value to your customers or audience.
Usually, your passion in the subject will grow as you become more skilled and knowledgeable.

Can’t find a niche?

What if you just can’t find a niche? Then invent your own niche. Be unique and it will resonate with someone.

Be authentic

Most of all be authentic. This means being real and true to who you are as a person. Fakery comes across. We can all tell when someone is trying to be someone they are not. In the same way, you will not resonate with your audience if you are not being you.

A word about AI

Artificial intelligence (AI) has been around for longer than you think. Think about predictive text on your mobile phones. Content creation by AI is in its infancy and I believe you can tell. This will change in the future, but people want to deal with people they know, like and trust. I don’t believe this will ever change. Humans can intuitively tell when something is authentic or not. It does come with experience but we all have this faculty.
I would resist using AI to create content, firstly because I like writing. Why would I outsource something I love to do, to someone or something else.? Secondly, though, I also believe my audience would be able to tell.

People are crying out for authenticity

In an age were content is, sadly, mass produced by AI, people are craving authenticity. Our politicians bend with the wind, to get your vote. I just wish some of them would stay true to their principles, even if I disagree with them. At least they would get my respect.

Just start now – see where you get to

If you are struggling with finding a niche, I would say the best advice I can give you is start anyway. Start finding your own voice. The worst thing you can do is wait to find the perfect niche. Your niche will develop as you develop. People will be attracted to your authentic message.
Then if you are consistent and persistent, you will look back and discover you have created your own unique niche.

If you are an aspiring blogger, then you might be interested in my post on how to write a weekly blog post. In this post I show you my weekly routine to get regular posts out, on time.

The post Be Your Own Niche appeared first on Mike Holden Sales.

What does lead content vehicle mean?

The lead content vehicle is simply the one you start with, which all your other content flows from. It should be the one you are most comfortable with, which usually means the one you are most adept at. This means you will be most likely to persevere with your efforts, especially at the start before you get any followers.
It should also be the one vehicle that you create yourself. This is important because your personality will come across as more authentic.

Why blogging is my chosen lead content vehicle.

Blogging is my chosen lead content vehicle because I am most comfortable with writing. It is the skill I am most proficient at; my only grade A at O-level was English Language. Although I have authored several books, the shorter format of blogs means I can explore and create around many different ideas. I can also turnover more articles in a shorter space of time, allowing me to react quicker to trends. For longer form content, I will continue to draft books. This long form content will be led by what my audience wants to read about. I will get to know about this from my audience interactions and Google Analytics.

What to do afterwards

Once you have your lead vehicle established, you can start to branch out into other vehicles. This means that you are creating daily content and you have at least some traffic/audience. I would recommend repurposing your lead content, rather than creating fresh content.
The purpose of adding additional content vehicles should be to find more traffic to send to your lead content vehicle. As you add more vehicles, this will act like the spokes of a wheel, all pointing to the hub content.

Outsourcing

As you get more successful, you can outsource some of the functions on your lead content creation system, such as editing. Remember, though, that the creation should be done by you.
You can also outsource some or all of the repurposing. For instance, you can get videos transcribed into written pieces for blogs. You can also hire a social media executive to look after those tweets and blog posts etc.

The post What’s My Lead Content Vehicle appeared first on Mike Holden Sales.

Repurposing content is an efficient way to increase your reach and potential audience. Its efficient because, instead of creating new pieces of content for each platform you use, you take then one lead piece of content and repurpose this into multiple platforms. Here’s how I am attempting to do this. 

How I repurpose content 

My lead content type is writing. It is what is natural for me, I’ve always written and it was what I excelled at, at school. I’m not a natural presenter, although I have worked at this during my career in sales. I’m laid back as well, as you will see from my YouTube channel. 

My first step is the concept. I first get an idea of what to write about. At this stage I don’t know how long the piece will be. I will produce an outline using a mind map and then transform this into a linear outline, with section headings and subheadings.  

I will then start writing in free form around this outline. At the end of this process, I will then decide what the format will be. If the piece is over 10,000 words, it will become a book. Anything below this and it will be a series of blog posts or single posts. 

This is an honest approach and gives the reader more value. If the piece is not long enough to be a book, why bother padding it out? Just give the reader the essentials. 

Books

Once I’ve decided that the piece will be a book, I then go through a different process as to that which I go through for blogs.  

First the book needs a title and subtitle. I will produce about ten titles and then whittle this down to the best one. Next, I then find a great cover. I now use Fiverr for this. You can get a professionally looking cover for a few quid. I’m not a graphic designer, so I’m not serving myself by toiling over this chore. 

My editing process is different for books compared to blogs. I will edit each chapter as it is done and then if changes are made, they are re-edited at the end. I will also make sure that each chapter flows into the next. 

Blog posts 

Books can be split down into blog series. Each blog post should already flow to the next, but it is also important to make sure that each blog post can stand alone as a separate message. The reader can then decide whether to explore the rest of the series. 

Single blog posts are easier to manage. There is one message in the text, that I need to keep in mind. The single blog post, whether standalone or part of a series, then becomes the basis of my repurposing. 

YouTube 

The single blog post, if around 700 words, is an ideal length to be repurposed into a short video of around 5 minutes. I will record myself reading out the blog post on my phone and then use Camtasia to edit this video. Camtasia also allows you to add incidental background music, annotations and splice in other video and photos.  

I go through a multi-step editing process to get these videos out. 

What I plan to do 

I’m aware that there is much more I can do around repurposing, for instance I am planning to breakdown these shortform videos into even shorter forms that can be uploaded to twitter/X or Facebook. Camtasia will allow me to do just that.  

With the text itself, this can also be repurposed. I am planning to set up a Facebook page and dedicated twitter/X account, so that individual blogs can be split into shorter soundbites and pieces. Other platforms that I use such as LinkedIn are also opportunities for me to expand my reach. 

The one thing I am clear on, however, is that I will concentrate on maximising one platform at a time before I add a new one. There is too much to learn, to start trying to do everything at once. That is why I am concentrating on building up this blog first. 

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