#24 - Our Little Corner of the World

Hey Friends 👋

I hope you had an amazing week filled with joy and progress.

This week I wanted to share my story and experience with how diversifying from my core niche into wider fields of content. And, why ultimately I believe it was a mistake.

But, first, before diving into that, I wanted to spend a few words to cover why I believe it's important to have a core niche that we tie ourselves to.

For many content creators, including myself there is a dream of building a business around and making a living by creating content. And, to achieve this, it's pivotal to build a brand around ourselves and the content we produce.

We need to establish a foothold in the market; our little corner of the world if you will. Essentially, we need a style and category that becomes recognisable as our own.

And, a vital part of this process is the genre of content we create, to establish a foothold, we need to become synonymous with a genre so that when people think of that genre and content creators, we come to mind.

This of course takes time. It takes time:

• To create enough content to build a reputation.
• To interact and engage with enough people to build a following/brand.
• To build authority in the genre.

And, this is where I believe I messed up last year.

From March to September 2021, I created content on Twitter every day without fail in the Web Development niche and only this niche. This was going well, my stats were slowly increasing and by the time it was July I was getting over 600k impressions/month until September...

In September, I decided I wanted to expand into other areas/niches that I found interesting such as self-improvement, more general technology and content creation as a whole while still posting web development content alongside it.

And, what happened? All my stats tanked.

I dropped from 600k impressions/month to 200k and then the month after 110k...

Now, I won't claim to fully understand why this happened as the algorithm is largely unpredictable and can be unkind to many. But, I do believe that my shift in content did play a large role in this.

I had spent months telling the algorithm this is the content I make so show it to the people who are interested in it, then all of a sudden I started throwing curveballs at it and muddying the waters. At this point, the algorithm doesn't know who to show my content to.

Ultimately I think this multi-niche approach while still a relatively small account (2k-ish) followers lead to a massive hit on performance. Looking back, it is something I would heavily advise against if you're interested in building a following.

Now, I'm slowly rebuilding my content and niche again, creating content every day since the start of the year without fail and starting to see some traction.

And, before you start worrying that you need to commit yourself to one niche for the rest of your life to build a following, let me share this with you.

I still post about other topics like self-improvement, productivity, content creation and making money via content. So, why am I not seeing the same hits in performance as I did last year?

Because I'm making sure to tie it back to my niche of Web Development/Software Engineering. So, in effect, I have one large niche in these categories and then explore smaller sub-niches within them. E.g. "Improving your productivity as a Web Developer", "How to create content as a Software Engineer", etc.

There's no harm in exploring other content as long as you can tie it back to the main niche you are building around. Give the algorithm one niche to feed on, not several, so as long as you can tie all your content to that one topic, it's fair game I'd say.

Of course, I don't know how the Twitter algorithm works. Or, any other social media algorithm for that matter. So, I may be barking up the wrong tree completely.

But, from my experiences and observations, it's better to commit to one niche and have sub-niches linked to it than it is to have completely different niches and content going out confusing the algorithm.

As always thank you for reading and I hope you have a great week.

Coner x

Personal Website Redesign 💻

The redesign and development of my website is finally underway. I announced it on Twitter this week and the design seems to have gone down well which is a huge relief. 😅

I'm hoping to have the MVP of the website built and live by the end of March so keep your eyes peeled on my Twitter for updates as they'll be coming thick and fast. 👀

Thought, Question, Challenge 🤔

• Thought: To build authority takes time, energy, and most of all, grit. Tough times will come, so we need to persevere.
• Question: Have you tried to expand to more than one niche in the past? How did it go? What could you learn from your experience?
• Challenge: If you create content around a single niche right now, could you expand into sub-niches that interest you and your audience? Why not try it this week?

Enjoyed This Newsletter?

If you have enjoyed this edition and want to see more of my content please consider checking out my various socials below:

• Twitter
• YouTube
• Twitch
• LinkedIn

Questions

If you have a question you'd like me to ask me then I'd ask you to consider publically tweeting me it so others may be able to learn from it. However, I understand not all questions are suitable for the public domain in which case you can email me at hey@conermurphy.com

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