Go Niche or Go Home
Writing on his blog 500ish Words, M.G. Siegler breaks down the way a social media network or other audience-based app can expect to attract that essential audience. Basically, Snapchat was the last big social platform, and by now, the market is saturated. No social platform can scale to a massive audience, no matter how good it is, because it won’t deliver a significantly better value than the existing networks. But because those platforms are so large, they are a great environment for smaller, targeted platforms to take hold. Here’s the essence of Siegler’s argument: Once you have your niche base, you can monetize it directly or you can continue growing by using your existing audience as a foundation for branching out. “If I was to give advice to anyone looking to build a social network right now, it would be pretty simple: go granular. Niche, even. The road to massive scale is closed, but another one has opened. A large percentage of a small base is still small. But a small percentage of a massive base is large.”
In 2017, the Niche Is King
You may have heard me praise the concept of niches before: The niche is killing fads, giving you better data, and nabbing better engagement. It’s also the best way to get traction with a new blog, though you’ll have to be passionate about it. And now you know it’s the future of social media platforms. Cat videos had their run: Looks like niche engagement with passionate communities is the future of social media. Read more about niche marketing at Tech.Co
