A specific niche website is essential to building your brand and attracting the correct audience.

niche    /niCH,n?SH/   Place in nature: The role of an organism within its natural environment that determines its relations with other organisms and ensures its survival. ~  Source : The Urban Dictionary!

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I am prefacing this with the assumption that you have chosen a hosting site or even started your blog. Read this if you haven't taken the leap into blogging yet. It might just help you decide. If not then head to Bluehost because they rock!

Why?

1. Their customer service ROCKS. (They patiently walked me through each step)
2. They have handled my questions and issues; resolving them quickly. (I had to switch from a shared plan unexpectedly due to my INCREDIBLE traffic)

I like to think of choosing your niche in terms of selecting a restaurant. For instance, You wouldn't order Chinese from a Hot dog vendor.

There was this cafe in the town I used to live. They were one of those all-nighter places that you go to after being out all night. For the record, I was past my staying up all night and dancing stage of life; more into my working in the hospital all night stage. At three am in Chattanooga back then, you could not order decent food anywhere. So we resorted to ordering from this particular diner/cafe. Every time we ordered, I would think, this is blah. (If you are planning to visit Chattanooga soon, check out this lifestyle hotel!)

One day I walked into the diner, and I kid you not, they had like 500 menu options, including 100's of cakes? I immediately knew why everything was bland! They were trying to do a little of everything and failing at most of it.

Let's put that into Blogging perspectives, your niche needs to be narrowed down and specific.

Choose your Specific Niche:

Picking your specific niche website is similar to choosing a restaurant, in that you must select it wisely. You need to narrow it down so that you can excel at something and not be blah at everything. I'm not saying that your niche can't diversify into several topics. Take our niche of motherhood. Motherhood encompasses many different issues (check out below).

A niche website that is narrowed down to motherhood:

• Fertility
• Pregnancy
• Labor
• Birth
• New Mom Tips
• Mom Fashion
• Careers/Making Money
• Budgeting
• Shopping
• Lifestyle
• Starting a blog so you can stay at home with your babies!
• Mom Bloggers

The essential ingredient being, all that I publish in my niche is related to Motherhood!

I can share my experiences and wisdom with my audience. All while using my expertise (Labor and Delivery) and life experiences (mom of seven) to educate my audience.

What's your area of expertise?

You want to leverage your expertise and use it to narrow down your specific niche. What do you have a knack for? Do your friends and family come to you for a particular need? Use your past experiences to move into a similar niche market in which you can become profitable. (This jumps into affiliate marketing, which I highly recommend Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing course as she has made over 300k from ONE POST and I made over 100 right after I implemented my newly learned skills)

What's your passion?

Is there a particular topic that gets your heart racing? What do you find yourself searching for on Pinterest?

Your passion can be a fantastic starting point for narrowing down into a specific niche. Your passion may be something a lot of other people don't know about. What makes your passion uniquely you? How can you share that passion with others? Is your passion an already saturated market? If so, How can you make it unique?

I would encourage you to explore what you love during the research section and find out if it's something you can expand on. Ask yourself if you can create meaningful content around that niche.

Research your Specific Niche:

As Pinterest is my thing, I recommend starting there. (Pinterest has brought me over 150k views since launching 3.5 months ago) (Update 4/19 over a million views and rising daily!)

• Go to Pinterest and type in your niche or a topic close-related to your niche.
• Check out the top trending pins and click through to those websites. Look around those websites and check out the content and compare to your expertise.
• Write down ways in which you could be different than your fellow specific niche blogs.
• Write down how you can work closely and complement those blogs in your specific niche. (Think about how you could promote their courses or products) Blogger in the same specific niche should work together not against one another) Like, Heather, who has a blog called A Life In Labor, work together to help boost each other or Gina at Bella Creative Studio (who built my incredible site)
• Email other bloggers in your specific niche and ask questions. Develop a relationship from the start.
• Search Google and scroll to the bottom and look at the related searches. Are any of these topics something you could create content about?
• Find Pinterest Group boards related to your niche and follow them. Watch the activity to see if they are current. (More on this when you have developed your niche)

I don't mean geographically. I mean where do they go for information. Where do they hang out?

• Find out who they follow on social media and follow the same.
• Research hashtags in your specific niche and comment on the posts using those niche hashtags.
• Be consistent on social media because it pays off.
• Join Facebook groups in your specific niche: for example, I am in a group called Mom Blogger on Facebook. Head over to our new Pinterest engagement for Mom Bloggers group and grow with us!  Our goal is to support one another through participation.
• Engagement is essential for getting noticed!
• Find a course that teaches you the basics of blogging. I highly recommend Alex and Lauren over at Create and Go. They have several classes that have changed my BLOG LIFE! I wish I had gotten their bundle instead of taking smaller bites.
• Master Pinterest. We have had over 1.2 million views just in 9 months. Take your blog seriously from the start and invest in it. The bloggers who are making six figures all invested in their blog to start! Imagine if I had tried to become an RN without spending money on college? Would you want me to deliver your child? NO!

Get your brand noticed by developing relationships that are genuine and mutually beneficial. Share your wisdom with your specific niche audience and watch it grow!