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MenuAs an author, if people like what I write, but I'm unable to find a niche, how would I launch my writing?
How do I present myself and my work if I'm unable to clearly target a niche? I love writing spiritual and motivational topics, yet I cannot carve out a niche or topic.
The only thing I know is people like what I write and share it a lot organically on my Facebook. I would love to get more information, especially if you're a successful author or blogger.
Answers
This is a great question! I think I've seen some of your other questions here as well. Let me try to help you out. My name is Humberto Valle, I'm the co-founder of a global marketing agency (www.Unthink.me) we help startups and small businesses with an expertise in non-tangible products and services; like yours for example.
This is great timing because we just wrapped up a slack conversation with the founder of The Hustle, Sam Parr. Their team offers content as a service, so they are a media company providing useful information with a niche focused on humor but their content ranges and is often very very helpful for its readers. It seems to me that you too are in the media business itself but haven't discovered that yet.
They had a strategy from the get go, Sam Parr told us that even though they knew they wanted that humor help niche they had to adjust their deliver as they went. *** This adjustment comes at different times for different people, yours might be now***
You already have a niche - SPIRITUAL MOTIVATION
now your immediate next effort needs to be find your blue ocean within that niche - an area or industry that houses the most people who need this type of content - you can make a list of jobs/life stages such as pregnancy, divorce, coping with death, disability, VA, etc and pick the ones you can relate to or have a lot of interest and or knowledge in...
you could also pick one that is something you want to learn eagerly and your BLUE OCEAN media is motivational content for your own growth and use yourself as a case study - such as blogging about yourself and publishing self help books on that one area.
If you are a funny person try making your blue ocean a funny spiritual motivational author - now that's a blue ocean strategy to follow.
WHAT'S A BLUE OCEAN?
I've dropped this a few times now, so just in case - a Blue Ocean is a strategy methodology discovered by Chan Kim and Renee Maugborne (Corporate Strategists) that showcases how niches aren't good enough and how metrics based off competition aren't good enough for sustainability. A Blue Ocean is not a niche, but a completely newly created market space not previously served. Red Oceans are bloody with competition and noise while Blue Oceans although smaller are much better for ROI and incumbents such as yourself. The key to growth is finding a niche and then the blue ocean of that niche.
OUR BLUE OCEAN
At Unthink our niche was startups and small businesses and our Blue Ocean is leap in value for low budgets - we let our clients negotiate their subscription fee. It affects business processes such as I had to build a team of engineers, graphic artists and marketers that would work with me and work their bones for pennies on the dollar to deliver value to small and struggling companies. We do what we can for that client even if we lose financial ROI that month - on average we increase profit margins month over month.
Finding your niche is not enough, this can often confuse you because you tend to then find competitors and try to mimic their own efforts and even get discouraged by not getting the same results - try finding a niche and then a blue ocean (a twist, oxymoron, reduce industry standard cost, increase standard value, eliminate fluff in typical offerings, and create new offerings - could your content be better in GIFs? or Mobile App or as a Table Game?
ON IMPLEMENTATION
Your content online can be a marketing channel to drive traffic to promote the end product - but you won't find that product unless you have the blue ocean approach first. Otherwise you may find yourself writing content for the sake of writing and that's not cool for business.
Sometimes in order for your content to scale and go viral you just need the right channel - when it comes to inbound marketing (which is what we do) we call this "Content Recycling" - we may write a good article or how to and published it as text and after a few weeks if it gets a decent traction we may create a slide or video out of the original text article - sometimes that will generate even more traction that the original, sometimes the content should be acted or on interview form, specially if your written content is long.
The structure of the content itself is important, headlines for SEO and readability, good relatable non-stocky images are also a factor for increased shares and subscribers.
Facebook is a good channel but it shouldn't be your hub, invest in a good platform to build your community in a controlled space, Facebook is its own ecosystem and is hard to export validation and growth elsewhere from FB to the rest of the global (internet) community.
Once you have your niche, one thing that we do as inbound marketers is create content for our personas. Let's say you write for professionals who work 24/7, have no time for vacations, have lost their families, been divorced, haven grown in years, etc - you may write for each of these phases of their journey - share snippets of your content or article and get them to subscribe to receive the article you wrote, this helps you build a list you can send a next phase article to them... as you grow your list you can get sponsored updates, promos, and sell your own work as well.
I hope this helps a bit, if you can do me a favor please follow me on twitter @HumbertoVee or Facebook at www.facebook.com/iwillunthink - if you have any questions please feel free to message me :)
One way you can approach this is to allow your niche to announce itself.
1) Start blogging.
2) Ensure your pages are SEO'ed correctly - mobile friendly + no HTML syntax errors + LD-JSON is correct + site's verified + sitemap is correct, your site runs latest LAMP + HTTP2/ALPN SSL, to name a few. Ensure all your onsite SEO is 100% correct.
3) Run small amounts of paid traffic to many of your pages. I suggest Outbrain for this.
4) Run Adsense on your pages.
The combo of #3 + #4 will likely create a profit stream or at least, neutralize... so your income pays for your traffic.
5) As your natural traffic increases, look at your Google Analytics to determine how people are searching to arrive at your pages.
Consider the most prevalent search criteria + formulate your niche from this data.
So in essence, let your readership tell you your niche.
Why dont you approach a publisher?
The answer to this question is two-fold. Firstly, what's your best answer so far as to what your niche is based on your experience and expertise? Secondly, what is your audience most interested in and responding to? The answer to this will be a sweet spot in the middle. I find that often it simply takes an outside perspective to be able to narrow down a niche. Also remember, you can have more than one niche, as long as you write about them separately. Hope this helps! Happy to answer any further questions.
Related Questions
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Personal branded domain (mattpeplinski.com) or a branded domain (empiricspirit.com) to promote books?
Both domains are very important. I suggest that you use both of them in different ways. If you believe that your empiric spirit domain is a "company" that you would like to support in social media and in articles, etc., for years to come, support it on its own domain separately from your personal domain. However, I surmise that your personal domain is where you will (and, in my opinion, should) be driving up your social media presence and content. So, I recommend that you direct all book traffic there. So, create a subdomain for your site, or a subfolder, and "point" your book domain to that subfolder. Write about the book in your social media and blog, and all traffic will come where you want it to ultimately come - your website. It's important to maintain a website for the success of your book - for informational purposes, and to show people where to purchase the book. But it is important that you use social media like a pro, and become a guest blogging expert and frequent guest on radio programs... Those things matter much more. Direct all traffic where you want using bitly links, and track what is most effective. Good luck! Enjoy the journey :)KG
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How do you market a product that's a new concept or "wavelength" for the target market intended when they have somewhat "unconscious incompetence"?
First thing I might comment on here is are you absolutely certain this is a new product? From what you describe its a new angle on an old idea. With that more in mind if you think people are unaware of your view point then education based marketing seem the most relevant starting point. You see this style of "advertorial" or article style promotions in health products all the time so there should be plenty of good examples in most womens magazines laying around. What do you need to do..? 1 - education based marketing 2 - give your book away - free pdf version - $1 kindle options - $4.95 hard copy option all your efforts should lead back to your central location to educate your audience further on your approach. Start with the top 10 things you deal with & you have 10 good articles to educate with. In each article you have a - For further help with this go here [link to book]" What are you doing after this...? Consulting...?PN
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Why do some romance novels fail?
There are several reasons a romance novel fails, and that always has to do with the development of the romance between the two love interests. Every character in a story is going to have a main goal and something they want or need. In romance novels, this ends up being the relationship that ends in a happily ever after. Most of the time. That darn Nicholas Sparks! Obviously, romance sub-genres will have plot layers if mystery or suspense is involved, but when we're talking straight romance, it's far more noticeable if the development of the relationship is off. Here are just a few issues I've seen in romance novels. 1.) Love in a vacuum: nothing is happening other than the characters suddenly falling in love for no discernible reason. 2.) Purely Physical: the romantic tension relies on nothing more than the physical aspects of the relationship, preventing any development of emotional attachments taking place. (Note: erotica is a whole other subject, and its readership generally expects there to be explicit content when forming the relationship. Nothing wrong with that if that's the kind of readership you are aiming at. Just know your audience and write accordingly.) 3.) Little or no romantic tension: romantic tension involves wanting without fulfillment. Even the anticipation of a simple kiss can cause enormous amounts of tension if the two love interests are always close to succumbing but never quite get there. 4.) Weak sources of conflict: Are the obstacles that prevent the love interests from coming together superficial and unbelievable? Consider what each character wants and what they need, and put those wants and needs in opposition to one another, causing their relationship to seemed doomed before it even starts. 5. The reader doesn't care: are your characters likable, easy to relate to, or people we can admire? If they don't have any redeeming qualities, interesting backstories, and quite possibly some deep, dark secret that prevents them from moving on and falling in love, then you might end up with characters who fail to inspire readers or pique their interest. There are three things every romance needs. !.) An emotional connection between characters: they can't just be really attractive. Lust does not build a connection. Emotional connections require interaction and time. There also needs to be an emotional connection for the reader. They need to see the strengths and weaknesses of your character. No one can relate to a perfect person. There needs to be a compelling reason for your couple to be together. This helps with avoiding: the love vacuum, reader caring, cliche characters and plot. 2.) Need fulfillment: what does the character need? The deeper the need the deeper the connection. So figure out what your character needs in a significant other. This helps with: the love vacuum, weak source of conflict, cliche character, and no foundation for the love. 3.) Unique connection: the couple is something to each other that no one else is or can be. If the connection isn't unique, it will lack impact and will not be satisfying to your readers. This is why their connection must go beyond love at first sight, infatuation, or physical pleasure. This helps with poor reasons for miscommunication or no communication, the love has no foundation, little or no romantic tension. I'm always happy to answer questions on the fundamentals of fiction writing if you would like to discuss romance or any other genre in greater detail.CA
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Are there competitors to Whattpad (besides Amazon)?
Here are some lists I found. Do you think that the competitors listed here are true competitors or just similar? https://datafox.com/competitors/wattpad http://www.startupranking.com/wattpad/competitors https://www.owler.com/iaApp/108863/wattpad-competitorsTC
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Can you control whether a paperback or kindle version of your book appears first in an Amazon search?
Not any way that I can think of. I would trust Amazon's judgement on this one. They want to sell your book just as much as you do.DK
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