How To Niche Down: A Step-by-Step Guide

As the virality of short-form video formats continues to be a dominant force in social media, Creators with strong niches have emerged as experts on specialized topics.

It sounds almost counter intuitive, but creating targeted content for a smaller, more specific audience can actually help you grow your reach. As your content reaches more relevant audiences who deeply care about what you share, you’ll get better engagement. This boost in engagement  sends positive signals to algorithms and increases the chance that your content will be served to more and more people.

Thus, we truly believe that identifying a niche is one of the keys to social media success. If you’re not sure how to find your niche, or want to get even more specialized within your field, here’s a step-by-step guide to help you niche down.

1. Audit Your Content

If you’re consistently publishing quality content, yet not seeing the reach and engagement you’d like, take some time to audit your content. Performing a content audit can help you better understand the audience you’re currently attracting, where your content is too broad, and why it may not be resonating as strongly as possible.

Try to look objectively at your content, and take note of:

• Topical themes you’re covering: What are the broad topics you currently post about? How would you describe or define them? If you can only get as specific as “travel tips” or “healthy recipes,” your content may not be niche enough. 
• Performance by topic and content type: Which topics, themes, or content formats are getting the best reach and engagement? If you’re noticing that healthy vegetarian recipes always perform best, that might give you some insight into your audience and their interests.
• Current audience metrics: Try to identify who’s currently engaging with your content, and get as specific as possible. Maybe you’re targeting an audience of young dads, but what else do you know about them? If you don’t know much else about them, then your target audience might be too broad.

2. Identify Your Target Verticals & Connective Thread

After auditing your content, you may have a clearer picture of which general categories perform best with your audience. These categories can include things like:

• Home Decor
• Fashion
• Beauty
• Food
• Travel
• Wellness

And while finding your niche is all about figuring out where you can be the expert, it doesn’t mean you only ever have to post about one topic! 

In fact, you can target multiple verticals, as long as there is a connective thread. What’s the one big theme that ties all your content together? If your verticals are Food and Wellness, maybe your connective thread is something like “debunking myths” or “easy health hacks.” Use your content audit to help you figure out what may be right for you.

3. Define A Niche Audience

As we said, your niche doesn’t need to mean that you only post about one specific topic. Instead, it could mean that you post about many topics, but for a niche audience. This sounds similar, but it’s an important distinction!

“I encourage Creators to share content with a niche audience in mind,” explains Marketer and Creator, Taylor Loren. “As an example, if you’re a Gen Z Marketer living in a big city who loves exercise, you can share videos that resonate with other Gen Z Marketers in urban settings who also appreciate wellness. So your content buckets could be career growth, wellness, and whatever other interests you have in your personal life. This allows you to cultivate an audience of people who have common interests, so you can work with a variety of brands who are also looking to reach Gen Z.”

Give some thought to what you want this audience to look like by filling out these categories:

• Audience demographics: Ex. Age, gender, location, family, subcultures
• Audience needs: Ex. Product recommendations, beauty hacks, easy recipes, quick outfit ideas, entertaining distractions
• Shopping habits: Ex. Online, in person, price point 
• Product preferences: Ex. Luxury goods, contemporary finds, deep discounts, Amazon hidden gems

4. Create Content Pillars

Now that you know your vertical(s), connective thread, and niche audience, it’s time to put them all together. Create a set of content pillars—these are the foundational concepts and idea buckets that’ll guide your content creation. 

You could have two content pillars, or ten. But importantly, they should all ladder to your topical categories, how they connect, and what your niche audience wants and needs.

Example content pillars might include things like:

• Relatable parenting tips
• Candidly outspoken viral product reviews 
• Insider, budget-friendly travel tips
• At-home, equipment-free workouts
• Luxury finds for less
• Products and styling techniques for curly hair

5. List Your Content Modifiers

Ready to get more specific? Give some thought to how you want your content to look, feel, and sound: this can help you niche down even more!

For example, if you realize that you want your content to be educational, consider how you may position yourself as an expert or authority within the verticals and pillars you’ve designed. Maybe these can become even more specific, like, “a makeup artist’s favorite budget beauty products.”

Create a list of your content modifiers—i.e., the adjectives you’ll use to describe your content. Keep in mind that this may be different for each platform, or even each content pillar. 

Here are some potential content modifiers to consider:

• Format: Ex. Short-form videos, editorial images, informational graphics
• Goal: Ex. Educate, entertain, inform
• Tone: Ex. Authoritative, relatable, cheeky
• Aesthetic: Ex. Airy, moody, colorful, modern, minimal

6. Bonus: Brainstorm Your Content

You’ve done the work, so put it all together! Use these specific parameters to brainstorm fresh content.

Try this exercise to brainstorm new content in record time:

• Templatize and serialize: Come up with five general templates or series ideas that match your content vertical(s) with your connective thread. Then, you can come up with specific content ideas that match each template. 
• Use those content pillars: Come up with five content ideas for each content pillar.
• Solve problems: List out five problems your niche audience needs solving.
• Mix and match: Combine content modifiers with content pillars, and come up with an idea for each.
• Brainstorm for each platform: Come up with an idea for each content pillar on each platform.

Feeling stuck? Don’t worry. Try one of these techniques to get the creative juices flowing.