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Most of you must be aware that having a niche for your social media account is really important. But do you really know how to narrow down to the winning idea for the right kind of niche – a niche that’s going to get you good results in terms of views, shares and tons of followers?

Today, let’s talk about some actionable steps that you can take to find a niche that not only you like, but one that can really gain traction for your account, whether it’s on Medium, Instagram, Facebook, Youtube, or your very own publication site.

But before we do that, let’s take a step back and discuss why exactly having a niche is so important, especially if you’re just starting out as a content creator, a publication owner or even a full-fledged business owner.


Be known for something

The first reason it’s crucial to niche down your content is that you want to be known for something. Take my example. On my publication site, I am currently posting articles about work life, parenting, education, business and cryptocurrency, all at the same time.

For you or any other person as the viewer of Opinined, it’s going to be very confusing to choose whether to stay or not to stay to browse through all the categories. Not only this, it’s also going to be very challenging for you to recommend my publication to other people. Since I publish posts on random topics every single day, it’s going to be very hard for you when your friends come up and ask, “Hey, why should I follow Sana?” You wouldn’t know what to say.

Now, I’ll come back to why I haven’t narrowed down my own blog to a specific niche in a bit. But first, let’s get back to the point I was making. You need to make it easier for your audience for them to pinpoint what you do, so that they can recommend you and refer you to their friends by being able to tell them exactly what you do. In this way, you’ll be able to build a tribe and audience a lot faster.


Build up your authority

The second reason why it’s important to niche down, especially when you’re a beginner, is that when you’re focused on a specific subject, you’re going to be able to accelerate your authority in that particular field. When you actually go in depth on a particular subject, people will begin to identify you as the ultimate go-to whenever they’re looking for information related to that subject. This will lead to a higher conversion rate in terms of subscribers or followers to your account. At the end of the day, people follow accounts for a specific reason.


Boost up your profitability

To drill it down even more why a niche is a strategic move, let me tell you that having a niche is a lot more profitable. If you don’t believe me, let me give you a real life example. Who do you think gets paid more, a general practitioner in health who knows a little bit of everything, or a specialized neurosurgeon? Probably, the specialized neurosurgeon! The reason is that when you really double down on a particular area of expertise and become a specialist in it, you then become an expert. By being an expert, you can demand higher prices when you start charging for your services.


So these were some ways for you to have a leg up as a beginner and accelerate your growth.

Now, can you be a journalist? Absolutely! Eventually as you grow and build a sustainable audience, you can absolutely start branching out and doing different topics.

For instance, let’s talk about my publication. If you notice, I keep experimenting with different topics on Opinined all the time. I like to write about a variety of stuff, such as entrepreneurship, small business marketing ideas, career tips and parenting experiences. But that’s because I have secured the audience for each. So if you’re reading this and you are just starting out, I highly recommend starting with a narrow focus first, and then start to expand as you grow.

What you can also do, if you’re a beginner, is select a niche from one of the categories on Opinined, and submit articles on your selected subject to my Medium publication, which is also called Opinined. This is a good way to start your career as a content developer. You will not only get 100% author attribution for your articles on Opinined, but also benefit from my readership to get additional views. As a bonus, you’ll be allowed to backlink to your own website, blog or social media account within the text of all your submissions.

The easiest way to request to be added as a writer on Opinined is by dropping in a response or a private note on this post.

Now you might be thinking to yourself, “Okay Sana, we get it. Having a niche is important. So what do I do next? How do I actually narrow down to that winning idea?”


Content brainstorming

My first advice to you, especially if you’re someone with too many different ideas, is to do a content brainstorm. Write down all the niche ideas that you have. It could simply be fashion versus fitness versus business versus food versus anything! Then underneath each category, do a brain dump of all the content ideas that you can think of per category.

While you do this exercise, you’ll notice that a couple of niches will come out to be a lot more effortless for you. In other words, it will be a lot easier for you to write down the content and ideas for a couple of niches versus others. Those niches are basically within your zone of genius. This means it’s going to be a lot easier for you to maintain those niches for a long period of time. The reason why this is important is that you really want to choose a niche that’s not just something you’re interested in, but also something that you can be consistent in as well. If you select a subject that you’re only interested in, but have very little creativity about, you won’t be successful in creating content for it. You’ll get burned out pretty fast. It’s better to choose a subject for which you can come up with a couple of ideas within a single setting, rather than one for which you can just think of a single topic to write on.


Check out Opinined

If you’re someone who’s struggling with this exercise, and want a little boost to come up with good content ideas, make sure you check out my publication where I have created several different categories for you to read about. From there, you can come up with your own ideas to expand the topics for each category.


Niche within a niche

Once you are able to identify one specific niche that’s within your zone of genius, you now need to niche down even more. Ideally, you should niche it down at least three levels deep.

Let’s say you settled that fitness is the niche you want to pursue. But fitness alone is not a niche enough. It is fitness for who? Maybe you want to write about fitness for moms? Yes? Okay, what type of moms? Is it fitness for working moms? Okay, great!

Now, what problem are these moms looking to solve with fitness? Maybe you could write about fitness for working moms who just had a baby. Wow, there you go!

Isn’t that a lot more specific on what you offer? Instead of just saying fitness, you can now say, “I teach fitness for working moms who just had a baby!” This is not only a lot more specific, but also a lot clearer on what exactly you offer to your audience. This is how you get to be laser-focused on your niche.


Validate your niche

The last step to take is to validate the demand for your niche. Surprisingly, this is something a lot of people skip, and that’s the biggest pitfall. If you are creating content that people aren’t really searching for, then you’re not going to be found. You are going to waste a lot of time creating content that’s not gaining any traction. That’s why it is important to validate if there’s a demand for your selected niche. You can do this by conducting keyword research, using open source SEO tools, looking into Google stats and seeking advice from SEM experts.


Take an extra step

Now let’s say you follow all the steps mentioned above, and create your own website or social media accounts in a carefully selected niche. Would you like to go an extra mile and push your content to the top of Google search results to add to your profitability?

If yes, check out the Magic Submitter that will send qualified traffic to your content on autopilot. What the Magic Submitter will do for you is really magical. It will submit your content (articles, videos, blog posts, press releases or social media posts) to more than 500 websites, and automatically get you more than 1,000 backlinks. You can get it by clicking here.