Position Yourself in Your Niche

Now comes the time when you take control of how you want to be known in your niche. This is way more than branding. Most people leave this to chance, and what they don’t know is that it’s all part of your streamlined success.

You can get where you want to be financially much faster if you simply work on positioning opportunities. So, let’s cover four ways you can get the branding, the following, and the profits that follow.

First, figure out what you can do better than your competitors. This is something that’s a necessity if you want to be competitive. It requires you to literally become a follower of those very people you’re competing against.

You want on their list to see how they communicate. Do they rarely keep in touch with their audience? Or do they slam them with daily, sometimes multiple times a day, offers? You could find a nice balance that attracts their audience over to you.

What about their minisites and Kindle products? Can you tell it’s an obvious do it yourself graphics job? Could you pretty much ensure you could have better looking products if you simply outsourced it to a reasonably priced professional?

Is their writing top quality? Or is it filled with typos, spelling and grammar errors? What about fluff and filler – is it jam packed with it, where your eBook would be viewed as highly valuable when you compare the two?

Do they blog consistently, post on social networking sites all the time? Do they interact with their audience whenever people comment, or ignore them like they didn’t know they exist?

All of these kinds of things – including obvious factors like releasing products that are timely and fresh, compared to your competitors, will position you as the go to person in your niche.

You want to brand yourself as the best. This is uncomfortable for many, but if you don’t snag that title, someone else will. Don’t be afraid to label yourself as the dominate marketer in your niche.

If you are afraid, ask yourself why! It may be that you know you’re not living up to your utmost potential as a leader, and once you begin really working toward greatness, you feel comfortable adopting the title of “best” marketer in your niche.

You hear this in marketing all the time – you just glaze over it. There’s a “best” ice cream, the “best” hosting provider – everyone else is willing to tell others about how great they are, so you can’t be shy about doing the same.

Dominate the conversation online. One thing you never want to happen is to have all of your competitors actively engaged in conversations with your audience, while you simply sit on the sidelines, quiet.

If you want financial success as an online market, then you have to be active and engaged. This can be as simple as posting a quote and a question on your Facebook fan page.

So for instance, you might be in the health niche. You can create a quote poster that says, “Every time you eat or drink, you’re either feeding disease or fighting it” by Heather Morgan.

Then add some of your own commentary – it doesn’t have to be much. Ask your readers a question at the end, and get the conversation started on your blog, Facebook Fan page, or Twitter stream.

If someone else that you’re following as a competitor writes something, jump in and participate on their posts, too. If you provide good insight, people will see that and want to check you out as a potential source to learn from.

Obviously, you don’t want to be blunt and unprofessional and say something like, “I have better information on healthy eating on my Fan Page at this link…” Because that won’t win you any fans.

Keeping an ear to the ground for niche trends. You might be in an evergreen niche, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t trends and fads you can discuss. For example, the dating niche is pretty evergreen – there will always be men and women trying to find their soulmate.

So, if you looked up dating on Google, and then started digging in, you might discover that instead of speed dating, pheromone dating is gaining in popularity. That’s where everyone brings a cotton shirt they’ve slept in for 3 nights to a party in a Ziploc bag.

The shirts are assigned a number, and then matches are made based on who liked which scents. So, on your Facebook page or blog, you might post an image of a cotton t-shirt and talk about it.

At the end of the post, ask the question, “Do you find yourself attracted to a person’s scent? Have you ever attended a pheromone party – or would you, if invited?” This gets the ball rolling and people will want to participate in the conversation. 

So-called streamlined success is achievable. It’s not just a fancy catch-word that makes people think there’s some magic system. It involves planning and preparing, as well as following through. Once you can chip away at it little by little, you’ll realize that before you know it, you’ve climbed to the top of the ladder of success!