How To Find And Monitor Your Niche

Finding a niche as an aspiring artist is as important as enhancing your artistic skills. Monitoring your niche is as equally important.

The opportunities to earn an income from your artistic skills are endless and has never been easier.

You can build a WordPress Website with BlueHost for just 3.95 per month.

Selling original art, giclee prints, online classes, eBooks, and offering services has never been more accessible or affordable.

But how do you get your art noticed online with so much competition?

Chris Ducker talked about the importance of discovering a niche in a post he wrote. He went on to say, “If I want to create and market successful online products and services, I need to focus on finding a niche, not just once, but over and over again, to be able to create countless business opportunities for myself online.”

Here is a complete guide on how to discover and monitor your niche so you can create countless opportunities for your art business:

What is a Niche

Before we get started, I would like to help you understand what a niche is. A Niche is your specialty.

• You are an artist but what is your specialty?
• Are you an oil painter, graphite artist, or do you work with pastels?
• Do you paint portraits, still life, or plein air?
• Do you work with bold colors or soft colors?

The more specific you can be the better. Targeting a smaller market will help you to stand out and be noticed.

For more information on niche marketing read Separate Yourself with Niche Marketing.

Importance Of Finding Your Niche

Every artist has a unique style and a target audience. Your target audience is a group of people who have a passion for what you create.

Within your target audience are subgroups of people who have specific preferences, wants, and needs.

The subgroups are known as niches, and knowing your niche will provide you with an abundance of marketing opportunities.

When you discover your niche, you will be able to focus on marketing to a smaller group of people, which will be more productive.

How To Find Your Niche

Finding your niche is easier than you might think.

To start, you will want to describe your artistic style and the subjects you paint or draw.

The next step is to be more specific by including the medium you use to create fine art, the size of your paintings or drawings, and be more descriptive of the subjects.

I will use myself as an example and show you how I narrowed down my niche.

I am a wildlife artist.

There is a large group of artists who create beautiful wildlife art, and there are a lot of people who are searching for wildlife art to purchase.

How could I have my wildlife art noticed with all of the competition online?

First, I start by being more specific about my art and artistic style.

• I use pastels to create my wildlife art
• My artwork is usually 8 x 10 framed.
• My artwork is very detailed.

I create a series for each group of animals I am drawing.

This helps me to promote my artwork to people who are interested in purchasing “big cat” artwork, wolf artwork, elephant artwork, fox artwork, etc.

The people who I want to spend my time marketing to are the people who are searching for smaller sized wildlife pastel paintings.

Many artists become discouraged in selling art online when their art doesn’t sell and start to question the quality of their artwork.

Some of the frustrated artists start to search for what style of art sells the best and begin to create different subjects with different mediums.

When the new art they create doesn’t sell, they become more frustrated, and some give up on their dreams.

We are programmed for instant results, and unfortunately, digital marketing does not work that way.

It takes time and hard work for an art marketing plan, content marketing plan, and social media marketing plan to produce results.

Successful artists you see online are the ones who stayed true to their passion and learned how to market their artwork. Those artists did not become successful overnight. It took years and many hours trying different marketing strategies.

When they discovered what was working for them, they went full throttle.

The bottom line is that if you want to become successful, take a look at what your passion is, what subjects are natural for you to create, and what medium you enjoy using. Think about what you would like to be doing long term.

Internet Marketing

Now that you know what your niche is let’s talk about how to be more productive in marketing your art online.

First, you need to know why people go online.

People go online to search for information, socialize, shop, or entertainment.

People discover new things eighter by search, social media, or word of mouth.

When people use search engines to discover content, they type in a few words that describe what they are searching. Those words are known as keywords in marketing.

Your objective is to write content that your potential art buyers are searching for in Google’s search.

There are many tools available, like Google Keyword Planner for keyword research.

My favorite keyword research tool is KeySearch.

Watch the video to see how easy it is to discover the keywords your target audience is using in search.

Receive a 20% DISCOUNT for KeySearch by using promo CODE: KSDISC

How To Monitor Your Niche

As with any job or trade, there is always more than meets the eye.

You already know all of the benefits of blogging. That is why you are taking this challenge. Today I want you to take the next step. I want you to become more aware and efficient with your blog. In return, your blog will help you to build an audience and drive traffic to your art gallery.

Why Should You Monitor Your Niche?

• Curating Content
• Know What Your Competitors Are Doing
• What’s Trending in Your Niche
• Learn What People Are Saying About You
• Post Ideas

Curating Content

Whether you are providing content for your blog or social media platforms, your goal is to provide value for your audience. There will be times when you can curate content that will be beneficial to their needs.

Curating content does not only provide value to your audience, but it also frees up some of your time.

Monitoring what is going on in your niche will allow you to come across articles, videos and images you can share with your following.

For more information on curating content read Social Media Marketing Tip, Curate Content.

Know What Your Competitors Are Doing

It is important for you to watch what your competitors are doing. Are they promoting specials or promoting events? What are they talking about? You do not have to be the best blogger to attract a large audience, all you have to do is be better than your competition.

What’s Trending in Your Niche

Monitoring your niche will help you to stay on top of the latest news. Not only will this assist you by providing content you can pass along, but you will also be able to implement it in your blogging and marketing strategies.

You will become the go-to place for upcoming events and news.

Learn What People Are Saying About You

It is important for businesses of all sizes to know what people are saying about them and their brand. You can’t fix something if you do not know what needs to be fixed.

Monitoring what is being said about you will allow you to become a better business person. You will be able to put your efforts into strengthening your business and providing excellent customer service.

Post Ideas

You will have endless material to write about as you are staying up-to-date with what is going on around you. Writing about real-time events will attract a broad audience looking for the information you are producing. You will be building authority and be seen as an expert in your field.

Today’s Action Step

Today you will be developing a plan on how you can monitor your niche. You will want to decide what will work best for you and your schedule. I recommend trying one at a time and see how it works for you. If you find you like the results of what you are using and you want to try a different tool, it will not feel as overwhelming implementing a new strategy.

• Google Alerts
• Feedly
• Buzz Sumo
• Sign Up For Newsletters
• Google Trends
• Twitter Alerts

Google Alerts

Google Alerts is a great free tool offered by Google. Google will email you with notifications of any topics that include the keywords you are monitoring.

Setting up Google Alerts is easy and will only take a few moments to finish. You will be able to choose how often you will be notified, what type of sites you would like to see, what part of the world you would like the information to come from, and how many results you would like to see.

For information on how to set up, Google Alerts read Create an Alert.

Feedly

Feedly is one of my favorite apps for organizing my favorite blogs. They offer a free and a paid membership. I get everything I need out of the free version.

You can get the free app for your smartphone and mobile device as well as log on to the site from your PC.

Feedly allows you to follow blogs, YouTube channels, and photos. One of my favorite features is that it allows you to make categories for specific blogs you are following. For example, I have a group of content marketing, social media, and art.  If I am searching for something specific, it is easy to go to the category and find the information I am looking for.

Buzz Sumo

Buzz Sumo is a very powerful tool that allows you to see what is trending in your niche and what posts are receiving the most social shares. They offer a free version as well as paid memberships. The paid plans are costly and offer much more information. However, the free version will provide you with valuable information.

If you are interested in how well a particular keyword is performing, all you have to do is type a keyword into the search, and a list of the most shared posts will appear.

You have a good chance of finding new people in your niche by using Buzz Sumo.

Sign Up For Newsletters

Another way to monitor your niche is by signing up for their newsletter. Every time they have a new post for something they are promoting you will receive an email directly to your inbox.

This saves you a lot of time by not having to visit their sites on a regular basis.

The only problem I have encountered in my email can quickly become filled if I am not careful. This does happen periodically.

Google Trends

Google Trends is another one of my favorite tool that is free to use. If you are interested in seeing how a particular keyword or keyword phrase is performing Google Trends is the tool to use.

Type in a keyword and Google Trends will show you how many times it has been searched. This is useful information for when you are deciding what you might want to write about.

Last Thoughts On Monitore Your Niche

Now that you know some niche ideas and the best keyword planner tool, it is time to write content you are passionate about so you can reach your target audience and watch your search volume increase.

The more blog posts you write the more your monthly search volume will increase.

Track your results in your Google Analytics to see what content is working the best for you.

Knowing what is happening in your niche will give you an upper hand over your competition.

Schedule some time every week to monitor your niche.

Stay focused on your business goals and develop art marketing plans that compliment your goals.

You might also be interested in:

• Developing a Niche Marketing Strategy Course
• Artist Vision and Mission – Online Business
• How to Showcase Art with Blog Posts

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