Blogging Today, The Niche Blogs, Like Crafts, Rock!
In my various wanderings around Twitter, I found a fellow Tweep linking to this article: “The Blogosphere 2.0” I wish I knew who posted the link, but considering I’ve got over 800 followers and I’m following over 500 myself, being able to back track this sort of thing isn’t so easy. So I apologize if I’m not crediting anyone for pointing me to the article.
The post is written by Laura McKenna, and as someone who has been out and about on the Blogosphere for a good many years, the title made me curious. How has blogging changed over the years? That’s what she talks about. Among things like A-Listers don’t matter that much any more and blog rolls aren’t that important (which I’m not sure I agree on), she also points out that niche is where it’s happening now:
It’s all about niche blogs. If you have a particular expertise and unique perspective, then [sic] you can quickly gain a following. Everyone else is out of luck.
What can I say, but, “Amen sista, and hell yes! People are just now figuring this out?” I have known this for soooo long, and to prove it, you can check out an article I wrote back in 2005 for a very cool blog called problogger.com: Niche Blogging Benefits. I no longer blog as much as I did back then, but I’m still pretty much in the thick of the blogosphere when it comes to my own crafting niche at least.
So for once in my life, I was ahead of the curve on something, and what’s the point of all this? Think about it. If you are a blogger now and you can’t seem to find your voice or direction, more than likely it is because you are trying to be all things to all people. That is really hard, if not impossible to do. If you have been thinking about stepping into the blogosphere pool but haven’t known what the heck you’d talk about, think “niche.” What do you know a lot about? What kind of activities do you do regularly? If you are a crafter, this is a great place to start.
Again to quote from McKenna, Use your blogs to target particular audiences and have a clear mission, and you’ll get a following. Blogging should be the means to another goal — a rough draft for future articles/books, a way to network with professionals, a place to document your life for your children, a way to have fun.
I pulled out the niche nuts for you, but for those interested in how the blogosphere continues to morph, her entire post is worth a read and a thought or two or three.
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Great food for thought… Makes me want to go start another blog! Perhaps I would keep up with posting to a blog better if it was more focused.
Too true. I just celebrated my third blogoversary encompassing over 1000 blog posts. I had a motto about helping other crafters from the start. Because of that, my blog is driven by reader craft questions. In between times, I get to create projects that “light my fire” - creatively.
My point is there are different ways to narrow your blog focus: it doesn’t have to be a narrow craft category; it could be a narrowly defined audience - like home crafters looking for a little help or information.
I totally agree that it doesn’t have to be 1 craft, as you can tell from what I write here. But, I see so many bloggers trying to write about everything, and they have trouble finding a voice (I think) because of this. Voice and audience are really tied together.
[...] often try to urge my fellow crafters into the blogosphere. Blogging is a great way to become part of an on-line crafting community, and for those who are [...]