The Power Of Niche
Increase Your Visibility and Writing Success
Starting your career as a writer can be a constant uphill battle. There are so many writing styles and industries to choose from that your efforts may produce very little results. Does this sound like you? Without guidance or strategy, it’s very hard to get noticed by the kind of people you want. But how do you “stick out” and get ahead of the pack? You do this by niching down. What is a niche? It is an area or topic of focus that you are very knowledgeable about (or can become).
The power of niche allows you to position yourself as an expert, become much more visible in a crowded market, and use your previous work as leverage into bigger and better contracts.
Standing Out From The Crowd
As a writer, there are many paths you can choose. You can become a copywriter and provide the marketing content for brands and businesses. You can become a content writer and publish articles. Or you can decide to write essays or short stories that inform, persuade, or entertain readers, just to name a few.
But as you can imagine, writers come from all corners of the internet looking to break into these markets and make a career of them. However, only the writers who know how to stick out from the crowd get noticed and gain entry into lucrative writing positions.
You see, if you approach your writing career with the intention of being a generalist, then you keep yourself locked at a particular level along with the majority of writers. The first thing you need to do is stop trying to be everything for everyone.
Now, it may seem like casting a wide net to try and catch as many clients as possible is a good strategy. But it’s not. Why? It’s because this is the strategy of most writers or marketers. Your marketing messages are not focused or consistent and so it is very hard for potential clients to find you.
You don’t stick out!
Develop a “core competency” and be known for being good at 1–2 things (styles of writing). Clients always prefer an “expert” as opposed to someone who is “pretty good” or “decent” at a lot of things. Then, create laser-targeted marketing messages that convey your skills and expertise. The result of doing this will help you cut through the ranks much more quickly.
The Power Of Niche
The other piece to this puzzle is niching down. If you haven’t yet, it may be that you haven’t figured out what you like. Or it may be you like too many topics. But understand that in order to gain traction as a writer you need to niche down.
Do some writing and pay attention to how it makes you feel. Does the topic excite you? Do you feel satisfied and like you’ve done good work? Or does it bore you and the process felt painful? If it’s the former, then you have your niche.
The reason why niching down is helpful is that it does two things for you:
- Allows you to stick out even more from the crowd.
- You can leverage past work into new contracts.
Let’s say, for example, you want to eventually write for big companies in the hospitality space (restaurant, hotel, travel).
You approach their marketing director and say, “ Hey Mr. Director, I’d like to write for your restaurant and hotel. I’ve written for companies x, y, and z (all in hospitality niche) and have produced X results for them. Do you take outside writers? Who can I talk to and ask?”
Do you think your likelihood of being hired is greater than Joe Blow, the general writer?
You bet.
Putting It Together
To be successful as a writer you need to choose a core competency as well as a niche. Developing this can take time but it’s the direction you need to take in order to make progress. Your marketing messages will become clearer and targeted toward the right eyeballs that are already seeking your services.
The power of niche allows you to stick out from the crowd and leverage past work into larger and higher-paying gigs. If you’ve been struggling for months or even years, it’s time to niche down.
