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Finding Your Creative Niche

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What Is It?

Niche (noun): a place, employment, status, or activity for which a person or thing is best fitted. –Merriam-Webster Dictionary

You’ve probably heard this word before. It’s commonly used in the world of ad, business and PR…but what can it mean for you?

A niche is what you do best, what you’re passionate about, and what sets you apart from the crowd.  These days, uniqueness is essential when it comes to promoting a product, business or brand successfully. A niche brand targets a specific audience or group of people, and offers what other brands don’t.

“Niche branding, also called narrow branding, is connecting with your audience (customers and prospects) in a targeted way that focuses on their needs and circumstances, not on you or your product.” –Your Brand Inc

Successful Niche Brands and Products

Finding Your Niche

What do you enjoy doing? Do you write about music? Vlog while shopping for clothes? Film your own cooking show? Whatever it is you may enjoy, you can likely make a brand out of it. Want to learn how? Check out this article on Wordstream for these tips and more:

  • Know your target niche inside out
  • Solve your audience’s problems
  • Listen to your audience

My Niche

As a music blogger, I have a lot of competition. There are countless music blogs all over the internet, so it’s often difficult to produce content that no one has seen before. So, when I first started my blog in 2014, I targeted a very specific audience: teenage music/concert fangirls. I chose this audience because at the time, I was one too! I was always looking for blogs and websites that catered to my specific interests, and never found one that fit. So I launched my own.

My first few, niche posts (please keep in mind that I wrote these posts more than five years ago, haha):

Although my blog’s content has changed a lot since my fangirl days, one thing has stayed the same: I strive to produce music-related content that readers/music fans can’t find anywhere else. That’s my niche.

AM:PM PR’s Niche

Strategy is our niche. Good communicators are first good listeners. No two clients are the same. We work with your objectives in mind and build strategies focused on results. Whether you want to position your organization, connect with your audiences, sell a new product or need help managing a crisis, we believe effective communications are rooted in such timeless principles.

-Sophie

MeetUp - the social site that encourages you to meet in person.

MeetUp – The greatest social network you’ve never heard of

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– by Cam Clark

One of the most prominent complaints I hear against social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter is that they actually make us less social. They suck you into interacting on a superficial, virtual basis rather than face-to-face.

There are arguments for and against this thought process, but for the past ten years one social network has been quietly and successfully nullifying these two assertions right under our noses by creating a network of people who meet virtually and congregate physically.
 

Meetup.com is one of the rare websites that actually encourages people to meet in real life. The website aims to help people create communities unified by a common interest, such as: politics, books, sports, movies, health, pets, jobs or other hobbies. Members just enter their ZIP code or their city and the topic they want to meet about, and the site helps them arrange a place and time to meet.

Meetup’s mission is “To revitalize local community and help people around the world self-organize. Meetup believes that people can change their personal world, or the whole world, by organizing themselves into groups that are powerful enough to make a difference.”

This under-recognized social networking site is the world’s largest network of local groups, with people getting together somewhere on the planet every 13 seconds. Meetup boasts an impressive 9 million visitors per month in 45,000 cities worldwide, and has 280,000 monthly Meetups on every topic imaginable. Sure, compared to Facebook numbers, 9 million is a drop in the bucket and the site could use a visual overhaul, but just because this site has been outshined by others does not mean you should ignore it.
 

 
I personally have made some great connections through this site, and in a very short time frame. I’ve pub-crawled with the “20 and 30 somethings in Portland,” happy-houred with the “Happy Hour Aficionados of Portland,” run with the “NoPo Run Club” and even sung my face off with the “Portland Karaoke Singles.” There is so much fun to be had.

If you don’t think you have time to check it out, do me a favor. Go to meetup.com, enter in a topic that interests you and your zip code, and just see what comes up. If you are unable to find anything interesting, come to one of our PR 3.0 meetings and I will buy you a beer. Or, maybe, just maybe, you will find a group of people that will forever change your life. Either way, what do you have to lose?