When I started writing, the mainstream advice given from the internet was that in order to be a successful blogger, I had to find a niche and get good at said niche to grow an audience of readers. I agree this is mostly true, in fact looking around at the majority of writers, bloggers, and Youtube content creators out there who have made it on their platform, most of them have a niche and a target audience of followers. Some of these content creators that are currently widely popular are focused on topics of productivity, personal finance, health, or food and cooking. These are some of the popular categories of content in social media and I fully understand why. I myself follow content on productivity and personal finance, and have subscribed to productivity Youtubers such as Ali Abdaal or Malaysian personal finance bloggers like Suraya from ringgit oh ringgit.
But personally, I decided against writing on niche topics, especially not at this point of my writing journey. Why? The most basic answer is simply because I want to grow my writing skill, not only in finding out my style of writing but more so in content. I have interests in a vast pool of topics that include parenting, motherhood, early childhood education, personal finance, productivity, food, movies, music, and finally the topic of writing in itself.
Choosing a niche now would be limiting my creativity and to be honest, it would take the fun out of writing for me. I started a personal blog six months ago and back then I wrote about whatever topic that came to my mind, and that was part of the journey. One criterion I choose to have was that the majority of the written post would need to impart value to the readers, even if in the form of providing entertainment, or from personal perspectives on common topics that are relevant to be talked about in today’s society.
If I look back at my older post from 6 months ago, I cringe as the grammar, spelling, quality of writing and general delivery of the written topic were reflective of an amateur writer. I would write extremely long sentences that would be hard for readers to follow and had an informal way of storytelling that occasionally seemed as though I was talking to my own self. All in all, not the best writing I admit. I would say though that the only good point was that the range of topics written in my blog was diverse, and hopefully there was something for everyone in there.
Why have diverse topics? Because you need to grow as a writer. To be able to write on different topics is a skill and shows a writer’s range, and I intend to grow this skill. We are not one-dimensional in personality and it made sense that what I think about in my head are from a variety of topics. Besides, it feels good to be able to write it out in a clear narrative and decide what I want to make out of my thoughts on paper, or in my case, on digital paper.
I may choose to narrow down my written topics to select few categories, later on, should the opportunity arises for some writing work. However, I would still be writing on a few key topics of interest and not just on one main niche. I choose to continue writing this way because writing is fun, and I will keep it fun by not limiting my topics.