Writers often forget about their hobbies and interests when brainstorming niches and marketing ideas. However, I have found pastimes are a create source of niches. During my workshop on finding your niches at Content Connections, several of the writers were struggling to find a niche that they felt excited about and could see the possibilities until I asked them what they liked to do in their spare time. Without fail, their faces lit up and their notepads were quickly full of market ideas.

Here are five reasons hobbies are great content marketing niches:

1. Hobbies are typically different from a writer’s journalism clients. To help reduce conflicts of interest, I always recommend that writers focus their content marketing writing in a different niche than their journalism outlets. However, since most our expertise is in the areas we have hundreds of clips in, it can be challenging for writers to find a new topic that they also have expertise in. Hobbies solve this issue.
2. Writers are usually very passionate about their hobbies. Most people (if not all) only spend their free time on things that they love. So, if a writer can find a hobby that translates into content marketing then most of the time they are more motivated to find market ideas so they can write about a topic that they truly enjoy learning about. And I often find that I do my best work when I am writing about something that I care about.
3. Hobbies are usually very narrow in focus. One of the biggest challenges writers have when finding markets for their niches is that their niche is too big. Health, finance or parenting is too broad. But typically hobbies are narrower in focus. At one my sessions at Client Connections, a writer came up with a niche of “recreational soccer for middle age women” was a good niche. And I gave her first pump because it was a very defined and a great niche.
4. You are often the audience yourself for hobby related niches. The soccer player picked the niche because she was in her 40’s and loved to play soccer on the weekend in a league. In addition to her passion and experience, she was also the target market for the companies she was targeting. She understood first-hand the problems that women soccer players have as well as knew exactly what products both she and her teammates purchased for their hobby.
5. Fewer writers approach hobby-related companies. Large agencies, Fortune 500 companies and other businesses in popular niches are often overrun with qualified writers. But I feel very confident that the head of content marketing for women’s soccer products or roller derby skates doesn’t have a pile of writer’s resumes on her desk. You will have less competition at these companies and more opportunity to stand out.

Have you written content marketing materials about your hobby? What has your experience been?