THE PRO’S DON’T LIVE UP TO THEIR OWN ADVICE. DO THIS INSTEAD.
Many people have trouble identifying topics to talk about. They don’t know what others will find valuable. This results in posting “whatever they want” which makes it more difficult for people to gauge what you’re on about.
It’s made even worse by a lot of big accounts that tell you to niche down. How are you supposed to do that? What niche should you choose and why? Most of said big accounts don’t really teach you that, do they?
Most of the really big accounts don’t even have a niche themselves. They are the niche, so to say. I personally don’t like the frame “niche” so lets frame it another way…
You decide what you want to be known for.
Stop over complicating it. You are a person. You’re building a personal brand.
People have multiple interests. It’s OK to share those. I’d even argue that it’s better to do so, because of the fact you’re human.
People relate to people with multiple interests. If anything, you’re quite possibly repelled by people that only talk about one thing only. You know who talks about one thing only? Corporates.
So don’t do that. You’re not a corporate.
You’re known for the things you talk about and how you talk about them.
So you have to decide
- What topics you’ll be talking about
- How you talk about those topics
How boundaries help you perform better.
Alright. Niches, I don’t like. But one thing that is good about niches, is that they limit you in what you can say. Doing so is valuable because you make life easier for yourself. Why?
- It makes it very clear what you’re writing about. This attracts others. Effectively, it’s making you “easy to follow”.
- People see your stuff and think: hey, that’s interesting. Lets look at their profile.” They see some other stuff, but also more posts on the subject that’s drawn them to you. Even more so, if you happen to answer some question they had. Boom, you got yourself a follower.
- People see your stuff and think: hey, that’s interesting. Lets look at their profile.” They see some other stuff, but also more posts on the subject that’s drawn them to you. Even more so, if you happen to answer some question they had. Boom, you got yourself a follower.
- It’s easier to show competency in a specific area. It would otherwise take a really long time to do so. As said in the previous bullet, this is what draws people to you in the first place. Nobody likes everything about a single person, but chances are that there’s a lot of overlap. I write about personal brand building but also about my cat perhaps, cooking, fitness, traveling and photography. Chances are that you hate cats but also love traveling and photography so you’ll gladly follow me for those reasons.
- It’s far easier to remain consistent if you don’t have to constantly think of new interesting things to talk about.
I recently came across someone who posts whatever he wants. Nothing wrong with that in general, but he was wondering how to monetize his personal brand. Looking at his profile, his personal brand had no structure. None at all. Come to think of it, it’s more “just a Twitter account” instead of a personal brand. It lacked intention.
You don’t have to monetize your personal brand of course. You don’t have to start a personal brand with the end goal to sell stuff to people. The main goal of any personal brand is to share skills and information. To learn new things. This combination of things helps you land new opportunities, either on personal of professional level. It may be a new job, it may be your first job even
Build your content strategy
The process is fairly simple. You’ll create 3 buckets: professional, personal, lifestyle. List problems, solutions, goals and inspiration and choose the tone you want to add to your posts.
- Create 3 buckets: professional, personal, lifestyle.
- List out everything you want to talk about
- Experience
- Problems
- Solutions
- Goals
- Inspiration
Why these things? Other people will have the same problems you’ve had. Stating those problems and the solutions you’ve implemented are worth sharing.
Goals you have, can be interesting to others. It might just bring you into contact with someone that’ll make that happen.
And of course the stuff that inspires you can inspire others. Why keep it for yourself? 😉
- Experience
- Decide the tone you want to use. There’s 4 main buckets:
- Formal/informal
- Objective/subjective
- Positive/negative
- Engaging/Informative
What helped me a lot is this: for anything you want to post, think about how you would tell a friend about it. See something interesting posted by someone else? You can elaborate on it. Give your own perspective. But don’t do that in the voice of the original post (unless of course it’s how you speak too). Reframe it so that it sounds like you. Feels like you.
- Craft your main message. This is your story. This is you.
Find one frame that brings together most things you do and like.- This helps you frame everything you say. People remember you for the concepts you share.
- People follow you for the thing you share that bring them to the level you’re promising.
In my case, my main message is you can learn anything you want and improve your life with it. Either through getting a better job, or creating extra sources of income for yourself. This enables you to live a life that suits you more.
This allows me to easily frame anything I want to say with regard to my job, personal life and lifestyle. And so can you.
I hope this helps! Don’t focus on a niche. Create one so that you can own it.
You get to determine what you want to be known for and how you’re talking about it. This is what people see. This is what they experience. This is how you can influence the perception people have of you, so it’s very valuable.
Enjoy the process! And if you need any help with it, let me know by replying to this email or send me a DM at X.
Make sure you keep a notebook ready when doing this. I’m a 100% sure you’ll think of a ton of posts to write even while going through this process.
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