This post follows on from a post that I wrote last week called Social media is not free and expands on part of a list post that I wrote back in June called Social Media for My Business: 16 Lessons Learnt so Far, where I talked about some of the things that I had learnt on my blogging and social media journey over the last few months.

Going over the rest of the lessons, I noticed that some of them naturally bunch together so today I want to talk about three of the lessons that are about finding your niche, finding it and what I have learnt.

The lessons that I want to expand on today are:

• Find the niche forums for your interest or business – forums are places where people with niche interests gather. Find one that applies to you and get involved answering and posting questions.
• Get to know and learn from the players in your niche – this is all about leverage. If you can get to know them that’s great and they can be a great help. But, realise they are busy people too and always be respectful. Reading and commenting on their stuff is a great start.
• Pick and keep refining your niche – Your niche will not always be what you think it is so keep think about your target market and refine your content accordingly. Alternatively, listen to your readers/customers and let them tell you what your niche is or is becoming.

What has these meant for me over the last few months?

• I’ve been involved in the area of business growth for some time but what I have learned is that it is not really a niche. It’s too big. As a result of writing this blog and thinking about business growth I’ve been able to discover, refine and pick my niche.
• My niche now (predominantly) is about building better and more valuable relationships with your customers and how to do that.
• It will get refined further over time. I have no doubt.
• As my niche has developed, I have found forums and other areas (both online and offline) that players from my niche hang out or are places that. Places like MyCustomer.com , CustomerThink , SocialMediaToday and LinkedIn Groups etc.
• These forums have allowed me to get to know, connect with and learn from the other players in and around my niche.

So, that’s a quick summary of what I have learned about finding your niche using social media. Have you found your niche? Has social media helped?

Thanks to digitalemu for the image.