Niche vs Broad: Choosing Your X Strategy

The advice to "niche down" appears everywhere. Find your specific topic, become known for one thing, dominate a narrow category. This advice works for many accounts, but it's not universal truth.

Broad accounts that cover multiple topics also succeed. Some of the largest personal brands on 𝕏 post about everything from their industry expertise to their weekend hobbies.

The question isn't which approach is better. It's which approach fits your goals and constraints.

The Case for Niching Down

Focused accounts build expertise associations faster. When you post consistently about one topic, followers know what to expect. People seeking that specific content follow you rather than accounts that occasionally touch on it.

Niche accounts convert followers more efficiently. Someone following a "startup marketing" account has pre-qualified interest in that topic. When that account shares advice, products, or services related to startup marketing, the audience is already primed.

Discovery works better with focus. The algorithm learns what you're about and shows you to people interested in that topic. A scattered presence makes this learning harder. The algorithm can't pattern-match you when your content spans too many categories.

Competition narrows in niches. Trying to be the best generalist on 𝕏 puts you against millions of accounts. Trying to be the go-to voice for "product design in healthcare tech" puts you against dozens.

The Case for Staying Broad

Broad accounts build deeper personal connection. Followers see you as a complete person, not just a content machine on one topic. This connection creates loyalty that survives topic pivots and product changes.

Broad approaches stay sustainable longer. Posting exclusively about one topic exhausts most people eventually. The constraint feels liberating at first, then becomes a prison. See avoiding the posting treadmill for sustainability strategies. Accounts that can't post about their current interest gradually disengage.

Content possibilities expand. A broad account can respond to trending topics, share varied experiences, and experiment with different content types. A niche account that strays from its topic confuses followers.

Multi-dimensional expertise becomes visible. Someone who writes about marketing, psychology, and product design demonstrates connections between fields that pure specialists miss. This synthesis can be its own value proposition.

Factors for Your Decision

Your goal. Building a business around specific expertise favours niching. Building a personal brand or thought leadership presence can work either way. Decide what success looks like before choosing your approach.

Your interests. Can you sustain focused output on one topic for years? Be honest. Most people overestimate their capacity for repetition. If you'll burn out on a niche in six months, broad might be more sustainable.

Your audience. Some audiences value specialists; others value personalities. B2B typically favours expertise focus. Creator and lifestyle spaces often embrace broader voices. Consider who you're trying to reach.

Your current position. If you're unknown, focus accelerates recognition. If you're already established, breadth might add dimension without diluting your core reputation.

The Hybrid Path

Many successful accounts don't choose one extreme. They have a core focus that dominates their content while occasionally including adjacent topics.

A "70/30" approach works well: 70% of posts stay within your primary content pillars, 30% can explore related interests, personal stories, or timely reactions. This maintains recognisability while preventing content fatigue.

The adjacent topics matter. Random variety feels scattered. Interests that connect to your core theme feel expansive. A marketing-focused account occasionally posting about psychology (which underlies marketing) feels coherent. The same account posting about their rock climbing hobby might feel disjointed unless they explicitly connect it.

Making It Work Either Way

If you niche down: Develop enough depth to sustain years of content. Build a content system that prevents repetition. Connect with others in your niche for variety through conversation. Have a plan for expanding later if you reach the limits of your topic.

If you stay broad: Create some organising principle. Maybe you post about "building things" or "independent thinking" or "the creative process." A loose frame gives your variety coherence. Without any frame, you're just a person posting random thoughts.

Either way: Consistency matters more than the choice itself. Accounts that post regularly in a niche outperform accounts that post sporadically about the same niche. Learn how to stay consistent even with a full-time job. Accounts that post regularly about varied topics outperform scattered niche attempts.

The Evolution

Your approach can change. Many accounts start broad while finding their voice, then niche down once they discover what resonates. Others start focused, then expand as their audience grows and their interests develop.

Don't feel locked into your initial choice. The value of focus versus breadth changes at different stages of growth and different points in your own development.

What matters most is making an intentional choice and executing it well, rather than drifting without strategy. Either path works. Neither works without effort.

Questions to Answer

Before deciding, consider several questions. What topics could you write about weekly for two years without running dry? Does your goal require building expertise association, or is personality-driven connection sufficient? How do accounts you admire balance focus and variety? What does your target audience follow, and are their feeds filled with specialists or generalists? Your answers won't give you a formula, but they'll illuminate which approach aligns with your reality.

The Bottom Line

Niche accounts grow faster initially in most cases. Broad accounts can achieve significant scale but require stronger personality or status to pull attention across varied topics.

Neither is wrong. The mistake is following advice designed for someone else's situation. Choose based on what you can sustain, what your goals require, and what your audience values.

Then commit. Partial execution of either approach underperforms full commitment to whichever you choose. Consider how this decision affects your approach to virality versus sustainable growth.