Saying No to the Niche: Throwing Conventional Wisdom Out of the Door

 

One of my favorite chats on Twitter is #Blogchat which is hosted by Mack Collier. This chat is full of great nuggets that you can immediately apply to your blog.  The topics vary and the thought leaders that drop in are extremely helpful.  I would highly recommend this chat to anyone that is looking to monetize their blog.

One of the ideas that came out of the most recent #Blogchat was the notion that one should pick their niche to focus on within their business. I had to think twice about if I was in agreement with this idea or not.  I recognize that conventional wisdom would tell you that you can not be great at everything.  Although studying and mastering one topic is a novel idea, but is just not one that I see as beneficial to my clients.  I look at my client roster and think that they need someone who knows how to develop a strategic marketing communication plan, a social media strategy, out of this world events, and being able to speak to the media on their behalf if that is necessary.  I don’t think that a client should feel the need to hire multiple consultants to cover their marketing needs.  I do understand that one person can not literally know everything.  For example, I am not a graphic designer and I recognize that is a service that I will have to hire out for if a client has that need.  I am also not a website designer, but I can provide top notch strategic counsel to someone that needs to develop content flow on their site (to bad I do not have enough time to work on my own site).

Another person that I enjoy learning from is Marie Forleo .  She recently sent out her video to launch her upcoming B-School.  One of the ideas that she mentioned was that she is of the mindset that it is great to be a ‘multipassionate entrepreneur.’ She feels like this idea of designating a niche is completely wrong for some people. (How timely?!?) The comments agreeing with this thought process were in the hundreds (if you have time, take a look at her site). Not that I was planning on changing my mind once I had thought this through, but this video made it even better that someone else that is very successful feels the same way.

I would absolutely love to hear your feedback on this topic.  Do you believe that someone should pick a niche and stick with it or do you think someone can be great at being a generalist? My gut feeling tells me that the answers will probably be slightly generational in nature.  Just a hunch!