First of all, you may be asking yourself, “Why even have a niche?” I hear a lot of aspiring creators say, “I don’t have a niche and I’m fine with it.” Well, in some ways, we agree – you don’t necessarily need to have a “niche”, so to speak, but you do need to have an angle that’s authentically you. You need to tap into your special gift and understand how your content can help others. This is quite simply because content that serves up value is content that will bring you success. Period.
Go to any source that you get content advice from or go to any content strategist, they will tell you the same thing. And that is that you have to have an attitude of service or you have to bring transformation to people. Just having a huge following because all you’re doing is dances and trending sounds is actually somewhat meaningless. This is because this approach of doing the trending stuff only is not going to get you very far when you’re trying to create a career out of content creation – the content has to serve somebody, it has to have a purpose.
To start off, start with a list of topics where you have some expertise or topics that you’re passionate about. If you look at course creation, for instance, there are courses on everything and guess what? People buy them. If maybe you potty trained your child in a record period of time, or maybe you lost weight, or maybe you have a cooking skill — whatever it is, write down where you have expertise. If you don’t know, if you can’t think of anything, then ask your friends, ask your family, “What would you go to me for advice on?” Or “What do you think I’m an expert at?”
It doesn’t have to be some broad category, such as I’m an expert at tennis and I can show somebody how to play tennis. It can be something very, very simple, but that is very useful and that solves a problem. Also, it does not just have to be one thing – because we’re all good at a lot of things. It helps to narrow it down by thinking about where you’ve had success personally, and where you can help someone else achieve success with your content. Trying to home in on that is going to be crucial for creating really valuable content.
Don’t make yourself crazy though. This isn’t about making yourself crazy figuring out a niche. It is thinking about what you’re passionate about and what you enjoy creating content about, because if you don’t enjoy creating the content, then it’s not sustainable. And I see a lot of people on social media in general that are mimicking others, because they think that that’s how they should do things. I want to ask them, “Are you really enjoying that?” Because if you’re not enjoying it, you’re not really going to get anywhere.
I read a book called Story Brand by Donald Miller (affiliate link). In the book, he says that, in terms of telling stories—because really, content is about stories, whether it’s a 15 second story, or it’s a long form story on YouTube, content is about a story. And you and your audience, you are NOT the hero, your audience is the hero and you’re trying to really give them something that’s going to help them achieve success. You are the guide. You are yoda and your audience is Luke Skywalker. You’re helping them become jedis with your content.
And honestly, it could be a short form content, and maybe it’s humorous, maybe it’s just making them smile or whatever, but it’s not about you, which I’ve talked about a lot in my social media, it’s about the people that you’re serving your content to. So, again, you’re the guide in your content, you’re the storyteller, but you’re not really the protagonist, your audience is. So, think of all the stories and the products that are connected to the areas in life that you have achieved success, or had some fulfillment and really write them down and start mapping them out and seeing what the patterns are, because becoming a full time content creator, even though it’s not necessary to have an audience these days to monetize, it is still important to have an audience that you’re serving.
Even if you’re not promoting content on your own channels and just creating content for brands, I think that it will be a much more fulfilling career for you if you are creating content for brands that resonate with you because of the stories that you’re telling through creating the content. So, think of the stories the products that are connected to the areas in your life that you’ve had success and just write them all down because they’ll serve as a framework for your content. Ask yourself what do I love doing? Write down everything that you love doing, you could do all day, and could be paid for it, even better.
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