What can we learn from pyramids about improving communication and writing proposals?
September 3, 2010What can modern business learn from the Little Black Dress?
September 7, 2010This 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.
3 Comments
Has social media helped you find your niche? http://bit.ly/c416Eo
RT @adrianswinscoe Has social media helped you find your niche? http://bit.ly/c416Eo