One of the first things when building an online community is to choose your communities niche. A niche being your focused topic, and I say focused topic because it’s super important to choose one topic. Over the years, I’ve worked with many communities that want to do EVERYTHING. They might say something like: ”Well, we play this one game, but we also want to support these ten other games that we play also.”
“We play games, but we also do artwork, make music, and have this whole fitness section.”
While, it seems like a good idea to do all these things because your community already loves them, it also creates an issue for new members. These many topics can make it difficult to navigate, or for the new community member to know where to start. This leads to more lurkers waiting in the shadows, unsure.
What do you want a community for?
You started this journey because you felt something was missing in the world. You felt there needed to be a place for this or that. You want to focus yourself on that, try to poke around your thoughts and figure out what “that” was. Maybe it’s because you struggled to find people to play your favorite game, or you wanted a group of friends to learn a new skill. What I’ve learned over the years is that it’s important to find a niche that you can add value to others. Not that you have to be the ONLY one that must add value to other’s lives, but that people gain something from you, and in turn want to share something back with you.
Don’t make it a race.
How I see a lot of communities start is with the click of the “Create Community” button, a five second brainstorm of the community’s name, and the rapid creation of chat channels or the keyboard clicks of filling out forms. What you should do is to sit back and brainstorm your “What, Where, Why, How, and When”.
What do you want?
A place to game, craft, learn, or relax? This is the part about picking a niche that sets everything in motion. Maybe your thoughts go to “I want a community to learn a language, so I can practice with others, and learn the small nuances.” This helps a lot because it sets the overall tone for everything around it. Will there be gaming? Maybe, but only if we speak in that language. What kind of events could we do, maybe a comic show, but you have to do your jokes in the chosen language, so people can call you out if the joke doesn’t land in the language. Finding your niche makes it easier to figure out the rest.
Where should we be located?
How would a location on the internet matter? Easy, some locations or platforms have tools and resources that make your niche super easy, while other might limit it. Going back to the language example above, choosing a platform like Reddit for a speaking community doesn’t really make a lot of sense. Something like Discord, with it’s live voice channels, makes a world of sense. While you could still have a Subreddit where your users could post videos and articles in your language, it doesn’t make sense as your primary platform.
Why should anyone join?
Your niche answers that, let’s say your building a generic gaming community. The issue is here that there are a billion of them, why should they choose your? What value do you bring to them? Do you even play the games they play? Now let’s say you have an N Gauge Model Railroading community. Well, that right there is very niche, and great. Because a model railroading fan might look at your community and say “I’ve been collecting N Gauge stuff for years! I might be able to find some people to trade parts with, or learn to craft things at that scale better.”
How should I make this community?
Your niche can make it easier to know how to make your community also. In the example of the model railroading, you might want a trading / selling channel, you would want general discussions, and places for people to showcase their creations and train lines. Let’s say now that you are a model railroading YouTuber. In that case you might want to create categories for tutorials and showcases. So picking your niche helps you figure out the right layout. If you get to the how and you don’t really know how, you might be too broad, and need to niche down even more.
When to start?
When might seem kind of a crazy idea to you? Right now right? Well, not so fast. Some niches might have seasonal times, say pumpkin carving communities. Starting in January might not be that great, but it also is the timing of if you are ready, have you figured out everything before hand or are you too broad still? You do NOT need a 100 page business plan, but you should have some notes written down, and maybe talked to some of your friends that are also into your niche.
Niches matter!
Niches do in fact matter, they help you find something that you will enjoy and stick to, and it helps you lock into an area and become the go to expert for that topic. It makes YOU and YOUR COMMUNITY valuable to the new person just getting started, or the veteran looking for more connections. Building a generic everything community just makes everything confusing for people. There is too many topics, and a little bit of people for each. The one thing to plant into your head is this, even if your niche is tiny, there are still WAY more people that you think interested in it. You just need to build it, and help those online interested in your niche, and when you do they might just want to join you on your adventure.