Should You Blog About the Same Topics as Everyone Else in Your Niche?

Yours is not the only blog in your niche, and you have an interesting problem about content: how do you differentiate but still give your readers the basics or show that you know your stuff? Is it OK to blog about the same topics as the other bloggers in your niche?

The short answer is: yes.

But of course, you want to know why, and how to do it well, so read on.

Why You Should Blog about the Same Subjects
as Others in Your Niche

There are perfectly good reasons for doing this:

• You need a catalog of basic educational posts on your blog, because for some of your readers, you are the first blog in the niche they will encounter. If you want them to stay with you, give them beginner content and label it as such on your blog where they can get to it easily. You’ll notice on the home page of Remarkablogger, there’s a group of links labeled as for beginning bloggers (scroll down a bit).
• Your readers read you because they like you: they like the way you explain things, the way you write. This is why you should be as personal as you feel you can be on your blog and inject as much personality as you can into your writing. So, even though they could get this information elsewhere, they’d rather get it from you, doing it your way, in your style. Secret hint: this is also why they will buy information products and services from you, even though others have them or the information may even be found for free. This is where trust comes in, and it’s a powerful force.

Okay, so we now see the case for blogging about the same things everyone else blogs about in your niche. Now for the tricky part: how to distinguish yourself.

How to Blog about the Same Thing as Everyone Else
(and Still Stand Out)

Yes, it can be done! Here are some tips:

• Personality is a crucial differentiator. Does your blog sound like you? Could your blog post be copied and pasted into someone else’s blog, and no one would know the difference? If so, you have a problem. In writing, we call this voice. Work on writing in your authentic voice. Tip: read your posts out loud to yourself. Do they sound natural? Do they sound like your conversational voice? If not, imagine what you would say if you were chatting someone up at a bar, and write like that. You know who’s really good at this? Naomi, Clay, and Havi. Learn from their example.
• Teach the lesson from your own life. In other words, if you have a story to tell from your own life that teaches the point, there’s no way anyone else could duplicate that. There’s no way you’re duplicating anyone else—even though ostensibly you’re writing about the same topic others are. By the way, the same folks in the previous point are also good examples for this one.
• Super niche-ify. For example, in the “blogging about blogging” space, I differentiate by focusing on business owners who use their blogs for marketing. But instead of writing generalized “beginning blogging” posts, I’ve written beginning blogging posts that are specific to a field, like Artist Blogging 101 and Commerce Blogging 101. Google both of those phrases to see the real power here.

What do you think? Have questions about this? I’ll answer them in the comments! Don’t forget to subscribe to Remarkablogger so you don’t miss the next post.