3 Realistic Goals for Transitioning from General Writing to a Niche
Practical steps to go from writing about everything to becoming known for something specific.
General writing can be a great starting point, but it often leads to burnout and low engagement. To build a meaningful writing career, it’s essential to focus on a niche that aligns with your strengths and your readers' needs. Here are three realistic goals to help you transition smoothly.
Goal #1 : Identify and Validate Your Niche
When I started writing, I did not know about writing niche so I was writing on any random topics that interested me. But writing became inconsistent and boring when I had to research on the topics before writing as I was not writing from experience or prior knowledge. I was writing on new topics.
Then, I narrowed down my niche topics to these - online writing for beginners and personal development.
I write on social media and writing platforms on these two topics only. The comments of readers validate the content.
This has given me confidence that the chosen topics will have value for my target audience.
Tips:
Identify a specific skill that you have acquired or a problem that you have solved. It can be anything like waking up early morning, writing daily or mindfulness
Identify your target audience. If you write for everybody then the content will not have the reach and impact. For example, my target audience is the absolute beginner writers who want to write but are struggling to maintain the consistency of daily writing.
Identify the topics that you want to write the most. Writing fo the long term depends a lot on how you enjoy writing.
Goal #2 : Build a Niche-Focused Content Portfolio
Choose any one writing platform and consistently post about your writing niche. Here are a few things to keep in mind for each content.
It should have clear takeaways for the readers
If you can give them some tangible product like template, a ChatGPT prompt, a checklist, etc its great.
Tell them how it will save the time or money for the readers or help them to create money.
The readers spend their time on your content in exchange of the values you provide them to solve a specific problem. So if you provide them that value and continue to do that consistently, then they will want to come back and read your content.
Tips :
As a beginner writer, choose one writing platform an done social media platform. Choose any newsletter platform. Do not try to experiment in multiple platforms. It will exhaust your energy.
Goal #3 : Grow an engaged niche audience
Audience engagement is important to create a connection with the readers. When you post an article, check after a few days what comments the readers are providing. That will give you the idea about the pain points they are facing.
For example, on one of my Medium content, a reader had commented to help her on editing checklist. That gave me the idea to creat a free editing checklist for the beginner writers.
When you create any free product before making it final , you can validate it with the audience by showing them some glimpse of it and asking for their feedback.
Before launching my first paid product, I posted shortform contents on social media to see if this product will really add value to the readers.
Tip:
Create a chat community with you email subscribers from day 1 of writing even if you have 1 email subscriber
Enagge with them on a daily basis to validate your ideas and know about their painpoints
Shifting to a niche isn’t about boxing yourself in—it’s about finding clarity, building trust, and making your writing journey more purposeful. Start small, stay consistent, and let your niche evolve as you grow.
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