If you went through our summary of the Thirty Day Challenge then you should have a good idea what a niche is. If you didn’t, then don’t worry all is about to be explained…

A “niche” is a marketing term that describes a segment of a market. You will find that often a larger niche can be broken down into smaller niches and sometimes they can be even be broken down into microniches. So for example you may have a market of people who are interested in crafting, a large section of them will be interested in knitting, a smaller section will be interested in knitting for babies and an even smaller section will be interested in knitting socks for babies.

You’ll find that the more targeted your blog is (up to a point), the easier it is get readers in the beginning. You need to find a sweet spot where there are enough people interested in your topic but not too many so that there are already plenty of established blogs dominating that niche. You need to be careful though not to drill down so far that there is barely any market there (if you want to find out how you can find out how measure potential traffic, the keyword tasks in the Thirty Day Challenge are a great start).

However, if you are passionate about starting a blog in a very popular area there are still ways of doing it. One way is to see what you can offer that no one else is – it would mean differentiating yourself through creating absolutely brilliant content and marketing it a way and with an energy that is unique. The other way is looking for a twist or an angle off your popular area that may be its own niche. For example, there were a lot of marketers when Itty Biz started out but few people dedicated to small business so marketing for small businesses became the focus. Likewise, you might be interested in doing a blog on household decorating – you could narrow your focus to household decorating on a set budget. Once you build up enough audience in your smaller niche, you then could extend your blog to the broader market because you are building on a strong foundation.

To go back to our craft example above, there are so many craft blogs that it is difficult (but of course, not impossible) to differentiate a new blog. There are plenty of knitting blogs, but not so many that concentrate on knitting babies’ clothes even though there are plenty of people who are interested in it. If you built up a strong readership in knitting babies clothes, you’re likely to attract a lot of those readers to another blog on more general knitting.

You may already have a profession or company that defines your niche, in which case you would need to know what is unique about your company and emphasise that in your blog. If you are a locally based business, realise that your location is also your niche.

If you’re selling a product, you could actually appeal to several different markets. For example, if you were selling business planning software, you would be targeting people who were wanting to create a business plan. However, you would also be appealing to people trying to start up a company, people running hair salons and wanting to start up a line of hair products, people owning a furniture store and wanting to expand to another store and so on.

Even if you don’t plan or need to compete in your niche via your blog, for example if you are using your blog for individual networking purposes or to provide after sales support, you still need to understand which niche you’re in and understand the niche itself.

The more you understand your niche, the better you’ll understand your competitors and the better you’ll understand your audience – both of these things will mean that you’re in a better position to deliver an outstanding blog.

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Next time, we’ll be looking at knowing who your competition and potential allies are.

We try to keep any Sunday posts dedicated to the other stuff that supports our business lives but that which often gets ignored – Goal Setting, Productivity, Motivation, Review, Health (we’ve categorised these under “Constant Progress”) and Higher Purpose (giving back to the community and feeding your soul). This will continue during the How to Blog series – only we will be focusing on how this is related blogging.

This is part of our super series on How to Blog. Subscribe to our Newsletter for some special surprise How to Blog stuff over the course of the lessons.

It may seem like everyone has a blog these days (and indeed many do!) and they will tell you that you need one too. But it will give you a tremendous head start if you know the purpose of your blog and understand what that means for its development. 

Just think about it – if you want to start a blog to build your long term reputation in a particular professional field you are going to develop your blog very differently to if you wanted to build a blog to get some traffic and then sell a niche product. This might sound obvious but often people create their blogs with out thinking about their goals for their blog and often either miss opportunities or do things that are inappropriate or even damaging for the purpose of their blog. For example, the placement of Google ads on a your blog is fine if your aim to make an income via advertising and affiliate promotions but can you imagine Google ads on a lawyer’s blog? In most cases, the ads would only be advertising other lawyers. 

So ask yourself: why do I want to blog? what benefits do I want to get out of it? 

Here are some possible reasons for blogging:

• create expert status in your field or a field you’re interested in
• public relations for your company (make them look friendly, disseminate information)
• attract new clients for services
• engage with current clients
• create a launch pad for your own products
• income through reviewing affiliate products
• income through advertising
• personal creativity reasons
• a way to network and meet with people in your field

You might find that you have multiple reasons why you’d like to blog – if that is the case, list them in order of your priority. So you may want to earn income through reviewing affiliate products but you also want to create expert status in your field – if you see expert status as more important then you will have to take extreme care to hand select any affiliate products you do promote to ensure that they enhance your brand and make sure you are not overselling to your audience.

Be clear on your blog’s main purpose and be honest about what implications that has for how you implement your blog.

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Next time, we’ll be looking at knowing what your niche is.

We try to keep any Sunday posts dedicated to the other stuff that supports our business lives but that which often gets ignored – Goal Setting, Productivity, Motivation, Review, Health (we’ve categorised these under “Constant Progress”) and Higher Purpose (giving back to the community and feeding your soul). This will continue during the How to Blog series – only we will be focusing on how this is related blogging.

This is part of our super series on How to Blog. Subscribe to our Newsletter for some special surprise How to Blog stuff over the course of the lessons.

It’s important to have vision with what you’re doing with your blog, but before you start thinking about goals for your blog – it’s worth having a honest look at yourself so that you can create the blog that is best fitted to your personality and abilities as well as your needs. 

First, find a journal or a notebook that you can carry around with you. You’ll want to make sure that you always have access to pen and paper so that if you get an idea for your blog, you can note it down. If you keep it in a journal or a notebook, it’s less likely to get lost. 

You can use this to brainstorm ideas and plans for your blog. Today, it’s worth writing down the answers to these questions in this book. Above all be honest with yourself in this exercise.

Do you enjoy writing? 

Most blogs involve a lot of writing and if you enjoy it then you’ll have fun.

If you don’t enjoy writing, it may be worth having a try to see because blogging is a little different from the sort of writing tasks that many of us do (and probably don’t want to do) for school and work. Later in the series, we’ll be going over some techniques to make creating content easier. Consider doing a practice blog that you don’t publicise, just to try it out – you may discover a new side to yourself.

If you do try and writing isn’t for you – then there are other ways to create a blog. Depending on the purpose and subject matter of your blog, you may be able to do a photo blog. There are blogs where each post is a small cartoon. If you have a video camera, you could do a video blog or you could do an audio podcast blog.

There’s also the option of delegating the writing to someone else in your company or outsourcing the work to a keen writer.

How much time can you commit on a regular basis to create blog posts?

It’s best if you can blog everyday but you need to be realistic about your time. If you can’t commit much time, it’s better to blog once a week consistently than have a flurry of daily posts then not write anything for several weeks. You build an expectation in your audience and irregular blog posting is one of the fastest ways to kill your traffic. Remember that you can pre-write blog posts and have them publish automatically with most blogging services so you may be able to write your posts for the week on the weekend.

What are your strengths? Are you a creator? Are you a teacher? Are you a news gatherer or an analyser? 

There are many different types of blogs out there, all with their place in the world. Maybe you’re good at coming up with completely new ideas, maybe you prefer analysing existing ideas, maybe you like gathering information so it’s all in one place. Maybe you like teaching people so your blog could have regular tutorials.

Have a look at your interests, have a look at your skills and expertise. Can you bring these to your blog?

The key is to know what you like doing and what you’re good at doing and do just that. Don’t try to be something else – go with your strengths.

What are your weaknesses?

Also be realistic and honest about things you are not so great at – if you know you are not good at consistency then plan a less frequent blog posting schedule (eg weekly) and set aside time to create a number of posts in advance or get someone else to help blog. If you lack some expertise in a particular area then maybe you can consider getting a co-blogger or making it a group blog.

Know your limitations and plan around them.

What’s your technological comfort zone/abilities?

First realise that often things seem harder than they are actually are. Because blogging software has made things so easy, a small bit of HTML or Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) knowledge goes a long way. There are plenty of free courses online: try this one on HTML and then this one on CSS. 

If you are really uncomfortable with anything vaguely techy then it’s a good idea to find someone you can rely on to give you support – this might be one of your children, a relative or friend, someone at work or you can consider outsourcing this role. Places like Odesk, RentAcoder and Guru have very reasonably priced tech people you can hire by the hour. 

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Next time, we’ll be looking at determining the purpose of your blog.

We try to keep any Sunday posts dedicated to the other stuff that supports our business lives but that which often gets ignored – Goal Setting, Productivity, Motivation, Review, Health (we’ve categorised these under “Constant Progress”) and Higher Purpose (giving back to the community and feeding your soul). This will continue during the How to Blog series – only we will be focusing on how this is related blogging.

This is part of our super series on How to Blog. Subscribe to our Newsletter for some special surprise How to Blog stuff over the course of the lessons.

We try to keep Sundays dedicated to the other stuff that supports our business lives but that which often gets ignored – Goal Setting, Productivity, Motivation, Review, Health (we’ve categorised these under “Constant Progress”) and Higher Purpose (giving back to the community and feeding your soul).

‘Modelling’ doesn’t just refer to super gorgeous people walking down a catwalk, it also means finding people successful at something you want want to be successful at, identifying what makes them successful and replicating it yourself. 

Anthony Robbins is a big champion of modelling, saying that the quickest way to be successful is to model someone who is already was. He credits much of his initial success from modelling successful mentors.

It may not be possible to have say Donald Trump or Warren Buffett mentor you personally, but there are no shortage of biographies and tomes of advice written by or about these and other very successful people.

I’ve just finished reading Cathie Black’s Basic Black billed as “the Essential Guide for Getting Ahead at Work (and in Life)” – Black is the head of Hearst Magazines (think O – the Oprah Magazine, Cosmopolitan, Good Housekeeping, Harper’s Bazaar) and one of the most powerful women in publishing. In the book, she goes into detail about th life, work and people skills that got her there. 

While she speaks mainly from the perspective of having worked up the corporate ladder (and thus always having a boss) – there’s plenty to take from the book for those in their own business. In particular, her mindset of professionalism and confidence. 

I do think the intended audience is primarily female, and it really is essential reading for any women in her own business. Confidence is one area where I believe more women struggle than men – we’re not socially conditioned to be in people’s faces – but it’s one of the important factors in success. Black says at the end that if she were to identify one common factor that all the successful people she’s known have had, it would be confidence in themselves. And Black herself has plenty of it, not in an egregious way – but in a wonderfully infecting way that by at least half way into the book, I felt confident too. You understand the source of her confidence – while she’s obviously talented and full of good sense, she’s not freakishly so – it’s her drive, passion and courage that are abundantly clear.

She has plenty of tips on how to reframe situations to put you back in control, and it’s hard to choose a favourite. You may see her being quoted in a few more posts in the future. 

For now, I’ll quote her last piece of advice – print it out and stick it where you can see it every day:

“Opportunities will come – they always do. Trust yourself enough to jump at them. Never be afraid to go for it. And remember, you deserve to have the best life, and the best career, that you can have.”

We try to keep Sundays dedicated to the other stuff that supports our business lives but that which often gets ignored – Goal Setting, Productivity, Motivation, Review, Health (we’ve categorised these under “Constant Progress”) and Higher Purpose (giving back to the community and feeding your soul).

My previous choice of computer wallpaper was cute but hardly inspiring. Then saw this amazing picture of a sunset on someone’s desktop (if you like his set up - there are instructions but do need some geek skills). As soon as I saw the image, it made me feel both rested and excited at the same time.

I realised that because I had so much clutter on my computer’s desktop, I was just plain avoiding it because every time I saw it, I just had this awful sinking feeling. Because I couldn’t always avoid it, I was guaranteed to feel defeated several times a day even if this was all happening subconsciously. It’s obvious to see the problems mess on our real life desks can create but I think we can easily forget the effect virtual clutter has on our productivity.

So I decided to give my computer’s desktop a spring clean to get rid of the clutter and I also wanted to see if changing the desktop image would have an effect.

I got rid of all my non essential program icons and I cleared the backlog of downloaded files and documents that had covered almost all of my desktop. I made sure that I only had links to documents that are current key priorities and a few everyday folders that I need quick access to.

I tell you what, it makes a huge difference. To paraphrase an old saying: Clean Desktop, Clean Mind. 

I’ve put reviewing and clearing my computer’s desktop clutter as part of my weekly review. And you know, because I love the image, I’m motivated to regularly clear the clutter that builds up.

I now no longer avoid going to my desktop and when I see it, it instantly fills me with energy rather than draining me of it. 

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If you like the sunset image, you can download it for your own wallpaper. Once you’ve downloaded it, open it up in Window Explorer and on PCs right click and choose “Set as Desktop Background” to make it your new wallpaper. Mac users need to go to their System Preferences and then Desktop & Screen Saver (here are some more instructions).

Click on the image below to go to the Flickr page where you can download it in a size that best suits your monitor:

(Source: wvs)