The Power Of Niche

In the world of journalism, the arts are considered a niche.

Until recently, I had always thought of niches as being at a bit of a disadvantage in terms of getting enough attention to make those in charge of the purse-strings continue to invest. That's why arts journalists are always the first to lose their jobs when media organizations' budgets come under threat.

But there are niches within niches, and I'm starting to see an interesting pattern in the sorts of blog posts I put out there that get the biggest outpouring of responses.

When I write meaty posts about relatively well-known subjects, the posts tends to get much less attention than the times when I set down thoughts on themes that are way more esoteric.

My recent post about card tricks received a deluge of responses over the last few days, with dozens of magicians and magic fans weighing in on their love and hate stories about repetitive illusions. A blog post I wrote a couple of years ago about picture frames -- I though I was really scraping the bottom of the barrel that day -- continues to garner comments from professional and hobbyist frame-makers every now and again.

This is kind of weird.

And then again, I guess it isn't.

As "Long Tail" theory explains, the world is full of passions and it's no surprise that the most off-beat ones often attract the most zealous followers.

The trick for trying to make it in the blogosphere, then, is probably to home in on some kind of sub-sub-niche and reach out to its buzzing, busy community.