On Blogging Australia

I’ve been trying to keep within my niche here without really defining it past “Aussie bloggers and Aussie blogs”. I thought it might be worth thinking about it in a little more detail.

I use mindmaps a lot in my consulting work - they are a good way of illustrating hierarchical things like information structures and relationships in organisations. Darren Rowse wrote an article on mindmaps for bloggers over a month ago, and I’ve been meaning to apply it to my blogs since then.

So I did. Here is the best-guess mindmap for On Blogging Australia topic ideas as a niche blog:

It starts with the two key concepts: Aussie bloggers and Aussie blogs. Without fudging, I thought about what that meant in terms of how far I could stretch the two concepts without losing them altogether. The mindmap shows the boundaries of exactly how far I thought I could go without leaving this niche.

Articles on Aussie bloggers:

• Interviews: this one is fairly close to what I had in mind when I started On Blogging Australia - it is an obvious choice for “Aussie Bloggers and Aussie Blogs”.
• News: Australian bloggers in the news - again, another no-brainer for inclusion here.
• Aussie Bloggers Forum: This project is fairly close to my heart, and in some ways has replaced the need for this blog The comparison will get even closer soon when the Aussie Bloggers blog opens for business. Most of the blogfriends I’ve met through On Blogging Australia are over there at the forums now, and many of them plan to contribute to the blog when it opens.

Articles on Aussie Blogs:

• Reviews and profiles: Let’s lump these two together - they mean roughly the same thing when it comes to the way that I handle them. Again, these are a no-brainer for this niche.
• Hints on regional blogging: I’ve tried to keep general blogging hints over at Facibus On Blogging - and most of the time, I’ve even succeeded. I think to be specific to this niche, this topic should be “hints on regional blogging about Australia”.
• Tips on promotion: Again, this is one of those borderline/grey area things - if I’m writing on Entrecard, it should be Entrecard from an Australian perspective, rather than just “promoting your blog through Entrecard”.
• Australian odd: Oblique to regional blogging and promotion, Australian odd (quirky things about Australia) is certainly Australian, but it is a bit of a stretch to always tie it to blogging (apart from the fact that the oddity is being reported on an Australian blog). Under this rule, Healthcare equality for all species is certainly an Australian oddity but has little to do with blogging. The same goes for Motivation for the overtired and Cute animal photos (although to be fair, the kitten IS in the schooner glass beloved of many Australians). A fairly grey area.
• Bioblogging as an Australian: There are a lot of Aussie biobloggers - they blog on a variety of topics, and the only thing that really ties the disparate threads together is that they are (mostly) blogging from within Australia. Lani even blogs about being a bioblogger. When I am feeling down and need a laugh I read my two favourite funny Aussie bioblogs - Colin Campbell’s Adelaide Green Porridge Cafe and Kelley’s Magneto Bold Too (and congratulations to the cutover to your own domain, Kel).

So that is it - the On Blogging Australia niche as I see it. It may or may not survive the birth of the Aussie Bloggers blog, because most of the above will be well and truly covered, with a team of over a dozen writers (myself amongst them) that I can’t really bring myself to compete against. Time will tell. I’ve still got Facibus On Blogging for general blog hints and discussion - there is still a world of opportunity for me to keep metablogging under my own steam.

It’s worth thinking about how you could do this for your own blog in your own niche (even if, as a bioblogger, you blog about your own life and you are your own niche). Mind maps don’t need to be done on commercial software - pencil and paper are just as good. You should know where your boundaries are so that you stay within them, or cross them in full knowledge that your blog has evolved beyond that point (and change can be great, especially if you take your readers with you and gain new ones).