You Can Know a Little and Still Be Smart.

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There is a famous quote, "You can know a lot and still be stupid", and this may be quite true, but I want to propose the inverse statement of this and that you can "actually know very little, and still be very smart". There is one context that this becomes very relevant and that is the Internet, and becoming an authority (niche expert).

So How Can You Know a Little and Be Smart?

I want to give you some context. I am not saying that you should not be educated and you shouldn't embrace learning about new topics. In fact, I am going to be making the argument to the adverse of that. I think you SHOULD be incredibly educated, but I also think that as you build a business, you should put the emphasis of your education at ONE thing, not ONE HUNDRED.

If you look around within the online world to those that are succeeding and doing so as leaders in their space (also what are viewed as authorities), you are going to notice that people focus on being brilliant at one thing. They serve their industry, often times starting out in a very narrow niche and if and when their business grows, they decide to scale into other facets and diversify their business.

I have written in detail about one example of this topic when GolfBalls.com started out as a website geared towards Golf Balls, and through time as they gained clout, authority and based of customers, they diversified into golf clubs, apparel, drivers, carts, etc. That was the natural progression of their business and it happened because they knew very little in a sense about a broader niche, and focused on knowing a lot about a very narrow ONE thing (golf balls) first.

It is a natural draw to invest our time learning about too many things. This is not a good approach, in particular when you step into the business world where specialists are reaping all the rewards...in particular these days.

Jeopardy Knowledge Doesn't Mean Success.

We can all aspire to be the next Ken Jennings and know a little about a lot of things, but that doesn't equate to expertise at any ONE thing in particular. This is partly why you don't typically see people with crossword level knowledge or people that are book smart, being the most successful people in the world.

They want to learn, the same as you or I, but they also want to learn a lot about a lot of random things. It is great to be able to polish off a crossword in 30 minutes, but the random knowledge approach certainly will not lead to expertise at any one thing.

If you want to be successful within the online business world, you need to be a master of your craft.

How to Know a Lot About Something Particular.

So what direction are you heading, or do you want to head. What is something that you are willing to invest and immerse yourself in to the point where you could feel as though you know something in particular.

But what does that even mean? What does immersion into a niche look like, and how would you even start to design the process of becoming an authority?

It actually isn't as difficult as it may appear, but there are some key strategies that you should implement to really immerse yourself in your niche...and subsequently work towards expertise.

(1) Be the First to Know

One thing I have always recommended is being aware of all news and current trends within your industry. In other words, to keep a pulse on your industry. One of the best ways to do this is through a simple (and free) app that Google provides in their "news" platform.

I have created some training on how you can leverage "Google Alerts" to keep an eye on your industry, and to get the "idea engine" flowing on a daily basis.

Watch Video: Using Google Alerts to Research Your Niche

You can set these up easily in your niche so that as new content is published to Google and indexed in their search results, you are notified. I have MANY of these set-up across multiple niches and it helps me keep up to date with those niches.

(2) Watching Your Competitors.

Your competitors can have great ideas, not just for content, but for product reviews, and unique opinions and ways to think about your niche. It is important to always keep a pulse on your niche and what others in your space are doing, so I recommend that as you are doing niche research that you create a list or bookmark websites that you would view as competition, no matter how authoritative they are.

Then you can keep regular tabs on these sites, what they are doing, and use some of their ideas as influence into what you are doing. This doesn't mean copy by the way, influence is much different. You don't want to copy any content from competitors, but it is fine to get ideas in relation to content, information, products and even website design/layout as you are doing your research.

(3) Reddit, Quora, and the Community Platforms.

You want to get into the trenches with your niche? You should jump into some of the more popular discussion platforms. I would recommend that you check out Reddit and Quora at the very least.

Some conversations will of course be negative in nature (and often times flat out flame wars), but that is fine and often times warranted. You can get incredible insight investigating topics and being a regular reader of these threads.

For example, if I wanted to learn about the best diets, and what is popular right now (that is, I was working within the dieting niche), I could easily do a simple search on reddit for "what is the best diet". Here are what my results looked like.



Not only are you going to get perspective from seasoned "experts" in the niche, you are going to see the sorts of questions people are having, the issues they are having, and some smaller idiosyncrasies you should be paying attention to if you want to become a niche expert.

Search any topic in these engines and you are going to be getting lots of ideas, lots of information, and advancing your knowledge within your given niche. Plus a side effect is going to be discovering all sorts of new keywords, products, and ways in which you can diversify your website.

(4) Keep in Tune with Magazines.

Magazines are a very good source of niche related content, and they are also an excellent source of ideas for your website. Everything from headlines for articles and the way they are structured, to new and popular products, companies advertising within the magazines, and keyword ideas. They are truly a wealth of quality, and current information.

You can purchase magazines that are relevant to your niche through a local bookstore, or you could subscribe to them through a site like Magazines.com.

Me personally, I have a membership to Scribd, which is a great source of books, industry related literature, documents, and magazines. It is around $12 per month, and includes a wide range of magazines as well.


As you can see, there are plenty of options across many categories. Outside of the value for potential website ideas, reading magazines is a great way to stay up to date with your niche.

(5) Youtube.

Many of us learn best through video training. So why not follow that approach when researching your niche, and attaining new knowledge about your niche. Youtube has billions of hours of content across every niche, much of it pure informational and pure value. You can leverage this to polish your skills in your niche, acquire new ideas, and to advance your knowledge set about your niche/customers.

The best way to do this is to start following credible and quality sources of content within your niche. Do a keyword search within your niche, in this example I am going to searching within the "dieting" niche. When you do your search, you will also want to click on the "Filter" button and search based on "Channel". This will give you a list of channels on Youtube that are related to your search.


Then you can subscribe to those channels that are more active, I recommend that anyone over 1,000 subscribers and over 50 videos, as those Youtube users are typically more active with their video creation and will serve as a more credible source of information.

Here is one such example from the results.

Now that I have subscribed, I will be notified as they create new content on their Youtube Channel. This is a technique that is very easy to implement, but can lead to a wealth of niche knowledge.

Also, you can leverage Youtube to engage with a broader audience, and to get feedback on your opinions, ideas by creating your OWN videos. For those of you that do not know, Youtube is a massive source of free and quality traffic for affiliate marketers. If you can do video and are not on Youtube yet, get on there!


There you have it. Knowing a "little" and still being deemed an expert. The reality is, your expertise will increase if you focus on being great at one thing or a smaller subset of things, then trying to know everything.

Don't be the jack of all trades, master of none...in particular within the online world. It will only inhibit your potential, your brand, and your long term success.

I would love to hear your feedback on this topic. What have you been doing to become an expert in your niche? Do you have any additional techniques or strategies that you use to advance your knowledge in your niche? Do you feel that you have been trying to become everything to everyone which is slowing your progress (and your overall expertise)?

Drop your comments, and of course any questions below!

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Recent Comments

512

Thank you for this article. It was very informative. I have already set up Google alerts (which has offered up some inspiration for my blog). I have also joined a facebook group related to my niche, where I'm hoping to be able to share ideas and gain insights to issues in my niche.

Excellent, alerts can be great for getting ideas which you can then utilize these concepts for fresh content on your article, or components of articles.

There are plenty of ways to get "new ideas" for content, and at the end of the day if you offer better content than is available out there under particular keywords (which you have a good handle of), then you are going to be able to outrank them.

You're so right
I always believed in that saying Jack of all trades Master of none: but its a great challenge because a lot of us have very serious responsibilities and having to be multi-talented or skillful enough just to get by on a normal day witch some how still fuses ones passion witch can also be a great niche SURVIVAL
So my inversion would be culture that makes the Jack and the Master one cohesive force as to say the true mastery would be the consistent art of Survival and the Jack card is played when one needs to be versatile.. i come from a world were none of them bare any difference but the main scope here is to stay focus on your passion-niche goal-niche beliefs-niche see it to the end then on to the next Task

thanks Bro Have a Great Weekend

It is a great challenge, as we naturally want to do more...and be more to more people. This approach though limits our ability to obtain "expert" status, because if your niche or audience you are targeting is broader, then it is going to take a lot more content and time to establish yourself as an authority brand in that space.

Be specific, carve out your expertise in that specific area, and THEN diversify. At that point you will have the formula for success down and a solid brand in place.

I am so happy that I read this post today. I was struggling this week on content and my mind wandered far and wide. I was getting to the point where I felt that I had to start over with a new niche (or several). This article has reminded me that I do not need to know EVERYTHING on my niche but instead I should buckle down into an aspect of it and make myself an expert by research.

You will probably never know everything about your niche and that should be excited, as it is always going to give you the opportunity to evolve and grow. Through time, you are going to be able to establish more and more expertise in your niche, and that is where you work towards becoming an authority. :)

I've been a member of WA off and on since 2015, for the most part, with very little success. Why? Because I was never sure who or what my niche was/is. All I knew was/is I want to earn a living online. I've tried more niches etc. than I can list here.

My chosen profession is, I'm a teacher. Specifically, I am an adult school English as a Second Language (ESL) teacher.

A funny thing happened to teachers, including me, in 2020. We were all forced to teach online whether we knew how or not. I had never heard of Zoom prior to that, but all of a sudden, I was teaching on Zoom. I did it exclusively online for a full year before school opened again and students returned to the classroom

However, several students didn't want to return to classes in person. They preferred to take classes online. So, for the past two plus years, I've been teaching hybrid classes. Most students are in the classroom but some are at home and attend on Zoom. However, they are all in the same classes.

I've become somewhat of a master at teaching hybrid classes.

As it turns out, I prefer teaching online to having to go to school to teach.

Can you guess what my niche is now?

One day, it smacked me in the face when I wasn't looking. I realized I have everything I need and I'm getting paid to become better at what I do. There are people all around the world who want to learn English. I prefer teaching adults.

Hence, the tagline on my website is: "Teaching English to Adult Immigrants".

It's a natural target market and niche for me. I'm back in WA, only this time, I'm not in a rush. I know what I'm doing and I know it's only a matter of time before things will work out, as long as I focus on, as Kyle put it in this training, "being a little smart".

English Teacher KBob

Hello KBob, nice to meet you at WA, I bet you've learned quite a bit while being at WA as long as you have as well as your other profession and yes, it sound perfect.

This community and the training will help you move to that place.

We all have something to learn from you as well.

Thanks for sharing,

RitaAnn~

Hi Rita Ann. Thanks for your nice comments. Nice to meet you too. Let me know if I can help.

(K)Bob

Likewise KBob
If you have expertise you feel can help others, I'm putting together a Dec. 30, 2023 - Jan. 6 2024 workshop in Fla. which will not be WA only *for other companies as well. It's going to consist of possibly only 50 people from different sites.

I just invited some of my snapchat friends with hopes of that happening.

I'll add the information to my profile as soon as I'm able to 'get it together' I have an early bird price set at this point.

I'd love to stay in touch and here's to your success,

RitaAnn~

Yes, let's keep in touch.
(K)Bob

I'd like that, thank you. Looking forward to seeing more from you.

RitaAnn~

When I first started, I tried to do everything: writing, researching, creating the website, staying on top of comments, building email lists, social media, and more. I was doing so much as a one-woman show that I couldn't find the time to complete tasks. I was going nowhere! I finally realized that I needed to implement time management for myself to ensure that I would successfully complete at least one task a day to feel I had accomplished something. I planned my tasks for each day of the week and only allowed a certain amount of time on each task. It works for me! This way I finished the task planned and not just going from one thing to another, never accomplishing anything! That allowed me to work smarter!

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