Creating a Niche for Your Blog

I was asked by at least a dozen people to consider submitting a presentation for this years Blog Indiana Conference.

I declined.

Simply because I cannot commit myself to being available those 2 days in August.

Perhaps next year.

In 2010 I watched from afar as some of my friends were presenting, and then last year I was there for the first day but had to bow out of the second day due to my stepdaughter getting married.

Several folks from Fort Wayne made the trip in 2011 and more will attend this year.

One of the topics I would have submitted would be under the working title, Creating  Your Niche.

I have stumbled along for several years in this internet world of websites and blogs along with Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Tumblr and a few others.

I have no absolute reason why over 3000 people have signed up to follow me on Twitter.

I am also surprised at the following I have gathered due to my updates on my website/blogs over the years.

(By the way, it’s time to stop distinguishing between a blog and a website as if a website is more legit than a blog.  Often the opposite is true according to  Google which is always looking for the best current content which is what a blog format excels at.)

I began with a couple of blogs using Google’s blogger platform, one was personal stuff and the other was focused on marketing, media, advertising and sales stuff.

That second one was the first Niche I created because I created a focus and limited the content to fit that focus.  Eventually I started other blogs, each with their own focus and Niche.

Then came the process of tying them together and that was via renaming each of them to include the ScLoHo identity, such as ScLoHo’s Collective Wisdom and provide links from each blog site to the others.

Eventually I followed the advice of my friend and former co-worker, Kevin Mullett and bought domains for each of those blog sites, which lead to the next incarnation which took a couple months of planning and preparation.

That was to move from the Google Blogger platform to my own hosted site and another domain, ScottHoward.me.  The dot com and dot net versions of my name were taken and so the dot me domain was selected.

This new website (which is what you are on right now) started as a central site to post and host 5 former blogs.  For the first 6 months I was adding between 20 and 35 updates every week.  I did redirects on all of the domains I owned to point to this website.  And it worked.

The readers of Collective Wisdom became exposed to the other content I was writing every week.  Those who were reading about the personal, funny or silly stuff were now also seeing the other passions I had in my life that were work related.

But this was a process.  There was no master plan when I started.  It evolved.

In April of this year I made another drastic change both online and offline as I switched careers back to the radio world after a year off working for a website development company.

This change required me to spend more face to face time with people every day and limit my online activity.  I decided to design my website one more time and change the updates from 3 or 4 per day, to 1 a day.

I know very few people who post 365 updates on their website every year by themselves.  But that is part of my niche.  And the other part is simply being myself.

See, you are your own niche. You are your own personal brand as I sometimes call it.

If you have the heart and desire to take the time to write a little something on a regular basis, you can create a niche for your blog too.

Your comments are always welcome and I’ll continue this tomorrow.