Without a niche you might as well be shooting a single fish in the ocean. You can not grow a following on any platform without one. Over the last ten years of blogging I made this mistake and especially in the beginning. Writing about whatever came to mind is not a good approach. One day its technology, the next its politics, and the next it is cooking.
There is nothing wrong with branching out but we still need consistency. When someone follows you they do so based on what they read. This is often not solely about the quality of your writing but the content. After reading a post the person may head over to your page to see what other posts you created.
This becomes a big discouragement to follow when no theme is present. I have not followed people all across the internet because the creator did not narrow in on a niche or even a few niches. When someone likes your cooking content, there is always the chance they couldn't care less about your fashion posts. They may not follow if the the cooking content is rare and sporadic.
Your niche is the ethereal spirit of your blog and while there may be tangents the theme still holds true. This does not keep your blog alive but gives it meaning and purpose. Everything done on you blog must filter through this spirit. If the niche changes with each post it will seem like a young teen trying to find their voice. It will show inconsistency and will not look professional.
Do As I Say Not As I Do!
I am a poor example of this since I write these types of posts two days a week, technology content three days a week, and threw in a poem or two. This is not optimal for growing my blog but I am fine with that.
If I only posted the technology content, it would be much easier to grow. The reason I dabble in three different niches started when a saw the need for someone with a decade of blogging experience sharing what they learned. We all want Steem to be the best platform for content creation and this is how I can give back.
I still do the technology content since that is my passion. It is the true niche of my blog and will always be at the forefront. Poetry is something I have been in love with since I was a young lad, maybe fourteen years old. The original idea was to drop it from Steem when I began to take the platform seriously. Then I met the good people of "The Writer's Block" and that changed.
So I don't have a niche or do I? We see three niches and some people will follow for the technology, some for this content, and others for the poetry. It is best to find one niche and stick to it. You will grow much faster as stated above than if you don't. However, there is nothing wrong with having more than one niche as long as you pick and stick to a schedule.
Mine is as follows:
Monday, Wednesday, and Friday are technology posts. Tuesday and Thursday I create these to help the fine people of Steem. My poetry was scattered within but that is now changing. Even though I may create a poem every day, I will only post them on Saturday and Sunday. A strict schedule is the only way to have multiple niches. This way when someone follows for one topic they know when to expect that content.
How To Find Your Niche
You may think you have too many interests to nail it down to one. There is nothing wrong with that and in fact it is good to be eclectic. The way I found my main niche after years of blogging was to look back on my life.
To see what was the one topic I always found myself back in. Not to mean my posts but the activities I loved to partake in, the books I read, or the classes I took. Our entire past screams a main interest and is often so loud our family and friends can hear it.
As an example, I was always into computers and technology growing up. No matter what my focus was at any given time I kept ending up back into technology. My college life is a glaring example of this. I went to university for a computer science degree and changed to political science. Pushing computers out as only a tool, I focused the next three years on understanding politics. Guess what, computers and technology crept their way back into my life.
This is why the majority of my blog is about super nerdy technology that is the most interesting to me. This will never change because tech is the one topic in my life that always comes back no matter what I am doing. Your's might be cooking, or farming, or painting. Whatever it is, you need to peak back and find it. That way you can focus your blog on something that will never get old to you.
Steem Is Merciful
As we talked about above, there is nothing wrong with having a few niches to write in as long as you keep a schedule. I think Steem is a unique place where we as creators can get away with it. Traditional blogging on a site you control needs to have one niche and only one niche. Thankfully, if we find more than one passion, the other Steemians are flexible enough to let us share them.
If you stick to the one you found after looking back on your life you will grow faster. But while growth is nice to see do not make any milestone a goal as we discussed in an earlier post. Find your passion and stick to it with the goal of making the best post you ever wrote.
When choosing to blog on more than one theme there is still a limit. For me three is manageable and allows me to have a main niche that is obvious when browsing my profile. The most anyone should try is seven or one niche for each day and I don't recommend this approach. It will wear you thin and there will be at least one topic that suffers. My advice would be to keep the number of niches to three at most and one being the best.
Thanks For Reading!
Other Posts In The Series:
HTML & Markdown: Formatting In The Flow
How To Set Goals For Enormous Success
How To Be A More Fulfilled Blogger
Formatting: Tested Ways To Improve Your Content
Jealousy: How to tame the green-eyed monster.