Know your niche

It may sound a little odd to say “Know what it is you’re writing about”, but understanding your niche goes much, much further than that.

Your niche goes well beyond the subject matter of your blog. It’s the landscape that surrounds it. It’s encompasses other blogs and bloggers who talk about the same things, readers of those blogs - and advertisers on those blogs.

Your niche is your virtual local neighbourhood, and if you want to get the most out of it, you need to get involved with the community.

So where do you start?

1. Research
Spend half a day on sites like Technorati, Google Blog Search and MyBlogLog and make a list of all the sites you can find blogging about similar topics to you.

Look at what they’re talking about, how their blogs are laid out, how many readers they have and how many comments they’re getting. Who is successful and what can you learn from them? Which other bloggers are those bloggers talking about? Make sure they’re on your list too!

2. Participate
Once you’ve made a list of other blogs in your niche, subscribe to the ones that you think have something to offer. Then comes the important bit - get involved!

Comments are the lifeblood of blogs. Leave appropriate and relevant comments on other blogs - and make sure your blog address is there in the URL field of the comments… but never be tempted to spam other people’s blogs. That will just get you banned forever.

Keep your comments on topic. Get involved with discussion on other people’s sites, but treat those sites as if they were your own. For some sites, you might consider subscribing to the RSS feed for comments (if available), so you can keep up to speed on the discussion.

3. Build relationships
Getting involved in discussions on other people’s blogs is a great way to start building a relationship - both with bloggers and their readers - but it’s worth taking that further.

Once you’ve built up a good understanding of your niche, it’s worth getting to know other bloggers in your field better. Drop them an email, introduce yourself and get to know them. Discuss ideas, and see if there’s anything you can do together that will increase value for all your readers.

It’s tempting to see other bloggers as “the competition”, but in the vast majority of cases, they’re really not. Those other blogs can help boost your readership, keep you informed, inspire and teach you.

Finally, it’s worth saying that this is an ongoing process. The blogosphere and your niche are constantly evolving, so you need to keep going back to that list of blogs, updating and editing it, subscribing and unsubscribing. It’s an ever changing landscape, but with a bit of effort, there’s no reason why your blog can’t be at the top of everyone’s list!

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