We’ve said it before, but one of the most proven ways to establish yourself in the blogosphere is to hone in on a niche, focusing what you know best and do best that sets you apart from the rapidly growing community of other blogs out there.
Attorney and clinical bioethicist Bernard Freedman has done that nicely with his Clinical Bioethics Blog, a forum to confront dilemmas in clinical bioethics.
Bernard’s blog aims to serve a three-fold purpose: to provide a forum to discuss and exchange ideas about bioethics cases, to expose students to real-life problems in clinical bioethics, and to share Bernard’s own experience as a mediator, consultant and expert witness.
“There is a great amount of articles, literature, and news stories discussing clinical bioethics or a place where serious physician or bioethicist conduct has resulted in pain to a patient,” Bernard says. “A forum is needed to disclose these cases in an anonymous fashion for the exchange of major dilemmas for physicians, ethics committees to disclose and discuss, and suggest different approaches.”
In addition to maintaining a unique niche, however, what Bernard aims to do with his blog is the tactic used by many successful bloggers — to have the blog be a central hub to analyze and discuss the sometimes overwhelming amount of news stories and cases available online.
In this way, you as a blogger reinforce your status as a thought leader by positioning yourself as the one making sense of all the noise out there on the Internet related to your niche. By continually providing your take on news and issues and showing why they are relevant and what can be learned from them, you can make yourself into the go-to resource for that specific issue.