Going Against the Grain: Why Creating Content Outside Your Niche Might be The Smartest Thing You’ve Ever Done
Today, bloggers are told that there’s one golden rule to blogging success: find a niche and dominate it.
While it’s true that understanding your niche and how you fit into it can be an invaluable blogging tool, especially when you’re just starting out, thought leaders like Larry Kim have recently come out to say that the concept of a “niche” may actually be holding bloggers back.
Today, going against the grain and creating content outside your niche is exactly what bloggers need to do to get noticed. In that sense, going “off-topic” be the smartest move you’ve ever made as a blogger.
Why You Should Create Content Outside Your Niche: 6 Essential Reasons
For some people, venturing outside their niche feels scary, and it is! But the fact that it’s unknown territory isn’t enough of a reason not to do it.
With that in mind, here are six essential reasons to take the leap into content outside your niche:
1. Writing About New Topics In New Ways Will Allow You To Connect With New People
If you’ve gotten the feeling that your audience and readership are dropping off, it might be because your content has gone stale. Over time, even the best writers start to play out their audience and topics.
For example, you can only cover the subject of search engine optimization or pay-per-click advertising so many times before people get tired of hearing your take on it. While these topics are important, crafting content outside your established niches can be the perfect way to revitalize your audience and earn new readers.
For best results, start writing about topics that are related to but slightly outside of your area of expertise. For example, if you run a small digital marketing business and typically write about content creation and SEO, you could start writing about entrepreneurship, as well. Going off-topic will give your readers something fresh to connect with and help you gain new audiences.
2. You’ll Position Yourself As An Authority In Different Arenas
When people come to your blog, not all of them have heard of you before. They want to get to know you and writing about a broader selection of topics is a great way to position yourself as an authority for a larger selection of people When you provide a vast assortment of information for readers, you’re better able to influence their opinion of you before they start moving through your funnel. This expands your brand appeal and makes your blog more relevant for more people.
3. You’ll Expand Your Writing Skills
Learning to write about new topics forces you to improve your writing and research skills. By learning about things slightly outside your niche and then crafting content on those topics that’s relevant and valuable to other audiences, you can become a stronger writer and researcher.
This, in turn, will benefit your entire blogging strategy and make your content more appealing to your new and existing readers.
4. You’ll Earn More Social Media Views
Expanding the topics you cover can help you appeal to a wider social audience by increasing your appeal to publishers and outlets that specialize in topics outside your niche.
If you write valuable posts about entrepreneurship, for example, and a site like Entrepreneur takes notice and shares your content with its readers, you stand to gain a massive influx of social views, shares, and engagement.
5. You’ll Be Able To Build Your Voice
When you’re a blogger who writes specifically about one thing, it’s easy to lose track of your voice, over time. Today, publishing off-topic material allows bloggers who traditionally occupy a certain niche to express themselves more thoroughly. This, in turn, can make it easier to earn readers and expand your brand, both now and in the future.
6. You’ll Enjoy Blogging More
No matter how much you love blogging, it can get tiring after a while, and creating content that’s slightly off-topic is an excellent way to keep writing, editing, and publishing fresh.
For best results, do your research before you expand your horizons and ensure that you’re writing about a new topic because you’re interested, not just because it’s there. This will help ensure you continue to create quality content and that you expand into niches you’ll be happy pursuing for the foreseeable future.
Swimming Upstream: The Secret to Successful Blogging
While dominating a niche can help you find your voice and build your digital presence, being willing to step outside that niche is critical for growth.
When you go “off-topic” with your content, you give yourself the tools to become a better blogger, while also providing your readers with more interesting, unique, original content to connect with. In this way, creating content outside your niche is a win-win for everyone.
About the author
David Molnar graduated from Rider University, where he obtained an Entrepreneurial Studies degree. After graduation, he went on to start his own computer repair business, Dave’s Computers Inc. Today, they work with thousands of customers in and around Somerset County, New Jersey. Find them on Facebook to learn more.
Source: https://www.bloggersentral.com/2017/02/creating-content-outside-your-niche_5.html
