Do You Ever Step Outside Your Niche?
In this world of blogs, where there are so many ways you can please your readers (including your extremely suspicious ones), a world in which even 12 years old bloggers give pertinent advice on how to turn your visitors into loyal readers, a world in which you never know how your readers are going to write about your articles, have you ever thought of expanding your reader pool outside the niche you are currently in?
Some people would say that stepping outside the niche is a waste of time, be it in writing, or in commenting on other blogs. They want to stay focused, so commenting on a blog post which doesn’t bring in any marketing benefits is a waste and it should not happen. Not to mention writing about something which is more or less off topic, which consumes you a lot of time, only to see your readers accusing you of divagations (think only how many of John Chow’s readers accused him in the comments because he writes about food or because he takes paid reviews).
Some other people would encourage you to write posts that are outside your niche, but publish them somewhere else: like on other blogs you may own, or via guestblogging on other people’s blogs.
What do you think? Is writing outside your niche beneficial for your blog, or does it offend your readers?
Andrew says...
I hope it’s good as I’m doing that at the moment. I found that web design wasn’t really interesting me much at the moment so I am trying to write about things that enter my mind. Reading about politics and philosophy is helping.
Bes says...
I am starting to realize that people who focus only on their niche are doing it for popularity and money, and not the message itself. The very idea of having a niche starts with the sole purpose of getting an audience and a specialty, and not the message or the cause or the topic or the feeling or getting the message across.
That is one of the only reasons personal blogs have been blacklisted by so many commercial blogs; real personal bloggers can venture in any direction, even if they earn money while others focus on niches in order to gain some market in a small audience market and thus have no competition. For me, the reason for everything is extremely important, and always critical.
To answer your last question from my own perspective: this entire universe and everything else is my niche, so I write about everything that I feel or think about, and if I can get it into writing perfectly or as efficiently as possible. We are not running a business, and blogging should not be just another business, so I try my best to keep the stereotypical approaches and values of businesses, like having a niche or talking only about certain things to get some audience and to start respecting only that audience and no one else, and to ignore the cause itself, away from the concept of blogging and the blog world.
Simonne says...
Andrew, I believe it’s better to write about what interests you at the moment, rather then try to come up with articles on a theme you don’t feel too important now. I’m still thinking what to answer to the latest question on your blog. It’s quite a dilemma.
Hey Bes, it would be really difficult to step out of such a niche. We would have to use imagination a lot
I share your point of view, and maybe this is why we didn’t experience that fabulous growth some blogs record immediately after launch.