Find Your Niche Online, Part 1A: Influencers

Has anyone ever said to you, Oh, you just haven’t found your niche yet? Those words can leave you feeling a bit aimless and empty. Entrepreneurially adrift.

Photo by Pink_Sherbet_Photography courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons.

If you’ve heard {or thought} that comment one too many times, then this 3-part series, Find Your Niche Online, is for you.

This series will help you discern — perceive, recognize, apprehend, intuit, distinguish — your creatively entrepreneurial niche. It’ll help you see how your niche swims along with all the other fishes niches swimming in the big blue sea of the web. And it’ll help you see how your niche goes against the tide.

Trust that if you’re looking for your niche — that gloriously well-defined yet oh so freeing space in the entrepreneurial universe that only you and your gifts and talents will occupy — you already have some inklings about the following: what interests you, what and who you gravitate to when you’re relaxed and just seeking pleasure and engagement, what you’re good at, what comes easily to you, what you relish doing, what would seem like such a crazy stroke of good fortune if you actually got paid to do!

This is Part 1A of Find Your Niche Online, in which we look at your influencers, or in other words, the people whose body of work, delivery style, and overall vibe you’re attracted to online.

Why is this important? It’s important because everybody who does business online needs a community. Your community helps define you and refine you. Your community is the group of people who will teach you more about yourself and your business than you ever imagined.

Your community is made up of the following groups of people. And everybody needs all four:

• clients and customers {at first, prospective ones, and later on, existing ones} — people who’ll support your business financially, buy your goods or services, and help you build the lifestyle you envision,

• fans and friends — people who may never contribute financially to your business, but will keep showing up to cheer you on, provide support, help promote you, and possibly derive benefits from your free content,

• partners — people in complementary businesses who can send you referrals or team up with you on projects {i.e. if you’re a graphic designer, you might look for partners who are web developer/coders or copywriters}, and

• peers — people who are doing something similar to what you want to do. If you blog for stay at home dads, your peers would be other bloggers who write content geared toward stay at home parents and especially stay at home dads. Before you declare your niche, it’s really valuable to explore the sites and offerings of your peers.

The obvious advice is to start with a blog you already like and follow bunny trails. See who your favorite bloggers link to, and who they link to. Don’t waste your time on sites that don’t massively appeal to you pretty quickly. There’s enough great content online that you shouldn’t bother with what doesn’t stir you. {As an entrepreneur, time is your most valuable resource!}

It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the info glut. There’s just so much out there to consume. And when you’ve been consuming a lot for a while — reading blogs at least an hour every day, subscribing to a few dozen blogs by RSS or email — some of them start to blur together in your mind.

But not all of them.

Some people will stand out to you. And you’ll find yourself thinking about them when you’re not reading them.

You’ll catch yourself thinking, I wonder how so-and-so is spending his time right now? I wonder how much work so-and-so really has? I wonder what so-and-so will post about next; I hope she tells us about such-and-such.

All of these are signs that you’ve got a crush on someone’s niche. And the way they trick their niche out. This is a big clue. This is a big oversized finger pointing you toward your niche.

So first, find your influencers.

Think about it.

Who’s speaking your language? Whose blog do you never forget to check for a new post {even if you already subscribe by RSS or email}? Whose ideas keep you up at night? Whose tell-all e-book would you drop your last $50 on if it promised to reveal all their secrets and best tips?

In the next post in this series, I’ll share with you the bunny trail of influence that led me to create Abby Kerr Ink in three short months.

As for the comments on this post, come on, ‘fess up. Do you have a crush on someone’s niche? Whose ideas are keeping you up at night?

Interested in nichifying your “thing”? That’s my specialty! I created a 10-part e-Course call Creating a Truly Irresistible Niche to help people do just that and it’s been getting some fantastic feedback. The e-Course is yours free when you subscribe to Inklings, my weekly-ish e-newsletter. Look for the sign-up form in the righthand sidebar.