Lessons in Expanding Your Niche

You’ve chosen a niche, you have a reputation in your field and you actually know what you’re talking about- now what? Many people get to that stage in their blogging and they wonder where they go from here. They progress to a point where they need more, they need a change, something different.

This is when bloggers start thinking about expanding their niche. Expanding your niche can be very beneficial to your blog. It can bring in new ideas, a different audience, more topics to write about and a larger pool of guest authors. As good as this sounds, if done wrong, you could crash and burn.

Start Small

Expansion can be a great thing. When you cover a lot of topics you appeal to a broader audience. This doesn’t mean that when you are first starting out you should cover every topic under the sun. If you are just starting out you need to choose your niche. Let’s say you picked SEO. You might want to shrink that down a bit. Do you know how big of topic SEO is? It’s like a giant umbrella with hundreds of sub-topics under it.

When you are just starting out, you don’t have the foundation to cover that much information. So tone it down a bit. Pick a few things to focus on at first. When you look as SEO as your niche, you actually have a lot of options: social media, blogging, guest blogging, technology, etc. Don’t try to take it all on because it will all take you down.

Ready to Expand?

Once you have a reputation and a solid foundation that’s when you can look into expanding. Before you get all excited, you need to remember the right and wrong ways to expand. I had a blog that I used to follow. It was all about DIY projects around the house. It taught techniques in painting, carpeting, electrical, etc. It always had great information and tons of followers.

One day I got on to browse and the owner of the blog had introduced a new topic, cake decorating. I didn’t see the connection. But I figured that as long as they kept posting the information I wanted, I would continue following them.

As time went on they were pushing their new niche so hard that everything that had brought me to the blog in the first place was now second rate. I stopped following the blog and so have many of its other followers.

Mistakes

One of the biggest mistakes that blog made was bringing in something new that didn’t appeal to their current audience. It doesn’t matter how much the blog owner likes decorating cakes, it’s not want the readers want to hear. If you don’t care whether or not you have an audience and want to use your blog as a kind of journal, then write whatever you want. If your goal is to gain a following, then take my advice: write what your readers want.

Another mistake that blog made was in their advertising and promoting. They were pushing this new part of their niche so much that they forgot about their other articles. They missed posting days, they had poor substitute/guest authors and it seemed like they were copying ideas from other sites instead of coming up with their own. Their reputation was in their original niche, and unfortunately they put all their time and effort into their new entity.

What you can take from this mistake is not to move up unless you have resources to continue what you were doing before. When you expand your niche you’re not replacing something, you’re adding more. You have to be able to handle the extra workload. If you’re not prepared for the amount of work, you’re not prepared to expand.

You also need to make sure you’re not forgetting why you got your following in the first place. The blog I used to read became less appealing to me because the niche I followed them for became a second priority.

That blog could have done a better job introducing their new niche without decreasing in originality or quality. When you are ready to expand remember these important tips:
• Take baby steps. Don’t jump into a new idea that has your readers wondering, where did that come from?

• Let your readers know what’s coming. Post articles prior to introducing your new niche that explain what you’re doing. Tell your readers you’re expanding and why. Let them know that what they think is important. Ask their opinion and follow up on their comments.

• Stay relevant to your current niche. If your niche is pet care don’t start blogging about vacations in the Ukraine. Expanding your niche means you are just broadening what topics you already cover.

• Don’t expect immediate results. It may take some time for your following to increase. You’ll be excited and apprehensive. Don’t feel put out when nothing changes. Just make sure you’re getting feedback from your current readers.

• Guest post for other blogs and in your bio make note of your new topics. This is a way to spread the word. Some blogs may let you talk about your blog within the article itself; get permission from the blog owner first. Remember that you still need to write a quality article; guest blogging isn’t about advertising.

  Kathryn Mott

About the Author:

Kathryn Mott is writer and editor for Professional Marketing International. She enjoys reading and spending time with her friends and family.