EP 3 Breaking down my favorite soapbox topic: NICHE
My complex gal who is dead set on being everything, this one is for YOU! I've gotta break it to you... lifestyle is not a niche and a single word like "fitness" is just NOT enough, honey bee. Let's dive deeper into those details and position you for social media success.
Timestamps:
[0:29] Niche-ing down.
[1:29] How and why Harley ended up niche-ing down.
[3:22] Think about what makes you decide to follow someone.
[5:56] How do you own your thing?
[10:17] Why does this matter?
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LINKS:
Find Harley:
IG: @harleyyjordann
Website: https://www.millennialescape.com/
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00:00
Welcome to brand meet crater podcast a place where we pull back the curtain of what it means to be all in on social media. So get ready to kick start conversations about the social media world with a little leave nothing off the table transparency, or maybe more than just a little you girl has yet to learn the art of a filter. So talk in it's time to bring some solidarity to the influencer and brand space
00:28
honestly, who needs another soapbox when I have a niche to talk about this episode, we are breaking down what makes a good niche, why it matters for growth and how it might affect your chances of booking collabs? Alright, question question question. What is your niche your niche is the main topic of your Instagram, the theme of your Instagram, what people follow you for. So think on it, hold it in your head. I promise I won't make you feel personally victimized. Maybe I will. Let's run it back. So if you use the words, lifestyle, or mom life, sit down and stay a while and not a niche if you used three plus unrelated words, travel health, baking, dog mom gardening, fashion, you're just saying random words sit down and stay at while if you said one word like fitness, stick around, hang out, we can still level that up. So backstory for why this is my soapbox. I've been there. When I first started I wanted to talk about everything under the sun, sustainability, health, wellness, fitness travel. I felt like every month brought on a weird existential crisis. My friends kept saying fitness, fitness fitness. Why are you trying to talk about anything except fitness? My degree was in fitness. It just made sense. But every time they cheered on this idea in my brain, I just got the ick factor. I kept saying Yuck, that sounds awful. So let's break that down. Fitness was the only skill in that lot. So no wonder my friends and family kept pushing me towards it. The rest were just passions. The problem was that I wasn't all that knowledgeable about the rest of the things on my list. I love sustainability. I was super passionate about it. But I couldn't teach on it. I love travel. But I had bet a couple places and we were in lockdown. It didn't make sense. So with fitness being the only one that I could talk about, and also the thing that bored me to tears. I just didn't want to talk about it guys the number of times that I changed my bio and tagline. Wow. There was a whole phase before I had that first growth spurt, where I was dedicated.
02:53
is actually ridiculous. I was dedicated to combining travel and fitness. But it wasn't your average fitness. It was lifestyle fitness, because I didn't want to post workouts. Oh 2020 Horos sit down with your lifestyle stuff, the number of times that I complain to someone that for some reason, in quotes, you just don't see fitness and travel together was ridiculous. So why does it matter? We see many blogs on reels and tic tac all the time. And I'm going to continue calling tic tock tic tac. I don't know if it's demeaning, if I think it's funny, but tic tock is tic tac from now on. I want you to consider why you follow someone new as you scroll. I'm gonna give you a whole behavioral analysis of your scrolling. So consider how you scroll on the rails tab. How long do you give a video before you scroll on? My guess is literally two seconds. And if you're my my husband with his super speedy reading skills, I swear it's like one second. I'm like, Did you even read that? Like I don't think you know what that said. You know that Billy Eilish song that goes I don't talk shit about you on the internet. Yeah, well, making fun of my husband, I swear is my favorite pastime. So anyway, as we scroll, sometimes we save often we don't like we don't like as we're scrolling on the rails tab. And sometimes we end up on a profile very seldom will end up on a profile. Now on that profile. I bet you watch three to four videos before you follow if they are your kind of person sharing something that makes you feel like they are taking you towards some kind of hashtag goals realm. You binge watch their page, you feel connected, you feel like you know them, you love them. You want to share them with everyone. It's because they have a thing. All the big accounts started with a specific thing that they do, and they do often. And I'm willing to bet that any bigger count that grew within the last two years started with a thing. They positioned themselves as that girl, that girl on the rails tab on tick tock on YouTube, whatever your platform, even what you think of as lifestyle. Is it really lifestyle? Or are they that girl that orders coffee every day? Are they that girl living in Paris, that girl that creates funny rules about dating. That girl real example, blew up on Tik Tok for making videos of herself eating candy. That was a niche. That was a niche. You can do whatever you want. But you have to do it constantly and frequently and position yourself as that person on line. And I hear your thoughts loud and clear. I'm complex, too. I understand. I'm gonna get sick of talking about this. If you're doing it, right. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Yes, you are. So how can you take the crown and own the lane? Consider what you like? What topic does your audience find interesting that you put out slash what sparkles for your audience. What topic that you love might not be the thing that sparkles for your audience, what makes you sparkle. So it does take some throwing spaghetti at the wall, it does take some experimentation, but commit for the sake of growth. If you want to grow on Instagram, you have to be that girl, you have to have your specific thing that makes you sparkle. So two options here. Number one, I encourage you to list out your passions and your skills. What falls on both sides. Remember, that was my initial problem. I was really good at fitness. But I didn't like to talk about it. I love to talk about travel, but I wasn't some super big expert on it. If you can't teach about it, it just might not be the best option. You want to find a problem that you've solved solved a topic that brings out your highest standards. Really think about that one what topic what thing brings out your high standards. If you are a budget shopper finding deals is that thing that's brought out your high standards. If you are interested in sustainability, that's your thing. Find that thing. Good coffee, good wine. Good. What do you need good have in your life. recently.
07:25
This is an amazing example. Recently I had a niche intensive, where my client listed everything under the sun. She starts off I asked her to tell her tell me about her Instagram journey because that's how we start off every meeting. And she lists fashion makeup DIY, she tells me her whole life story. And how as I listened she kept bringing up skincare issues, skin issues, she solved this hormonal acne, she is using specific makeup, she's talking about affordability of makeup and how she struggles to find makeup or skincare things that are affordable, but are also friendly to her sensitive skin. And that's the thing that kept coming up. That was her thing. That was the thing that brought out her high standards. That was the thing that made her sparkle. So that's exactly what we want to happen. We want to find that quirk about this topic that makes it special. Those of you with a single word niche, this is where you come in. So instead of my beauty blogger, just being a beauty blogger, instead her niche becomes makeup looks for fun girls with sensitive skin. We get a little bit detailed. She's talking about how she wants fun makeup. She wants to use the colored eyeliner, she wants to use all the fun products. She wants to use the glitter, but she has a sensitive skin. She has this problem and she cares about affordability. So those are the details within all of this. And you know what? Realistically, she's always going to be wearing an outfit in her rails. She's always going to be wearing an outfit she will always get to ask where her outfit is from where her outfits from. She does not need to be a fashion blogger to tell me where her outfits from she doesn't need to be a fashion blogger for me to ask where her outfits from so what category can we want you in so that those details will still be in the caption those details will still be in how you show up. But your content first and foremost is one specific thing. So as she creates with this makeup looks for fun girls with sensitive skin.
09:37
She knows exactly who she's talking to. She knows blue eyeliner is more on the table than your everyday glowy look. She knows we care about ingredients a whole new world has opened up to us. So as she begins to create and call out New Year's Eve inspo that is sensitive skin friendly and we want that tab lineup that is sensitive skin friendly. Now she's going to become known on the rails tab for that one thing. We know, immediately on the rails tab if she is our kind of girl are kind of follow or not. So, so box. This is why it's my soapbox, why does this matter? Does this matter for your success online? To grow? Yes, it absolutely matters. We know you have to be that one thing to grow online because we want you to become recognizable to a new audience. But you know where it also matters? Your engagement. If I post about travel and fitness, let's bring that combo back up. What did I keep saying I kept asking, why don't these things go together? Why don't my travel people like my fitness content? It's because those people come to me for fitness. They recognize me for fitness. So when I throw my travel, my travel spaghetti at the wall, they're not interested, they don't interact. Now, if I do bring in new followers with my travel spaghetti, they're not going to be interested in my fitness content. It's too different. Now I'm splitting my engagement, my engagement is going to dank I don't need that to happen when Instagram is really normalizing this low engagement anyway, we don't need to be treading this uphill battle, but what is your engagement relate to how it relates to making an income on this platform. It relates to how much money you make, whether you are a network marketer, whether you are a brand whether you are a influencer, whether you are a service provider, no matter what you are, if your engagement is tanking, if you're reaching fewer fewer fewer eyes, you're not gonna be able to make sales. And that sales thing is so important here if you want to make an income no matter what path you're taking that sales thing is so am portent. So, yes, it matters. Yes, it really does matter. And that growth phase is coming. If you lean in, push through and commit to that one thing. Now, bringing in our next episode, we're gonna dive deeper into how that really matters for booking collabs we know engagement matters, we know we want to put our best foot forward as we work with brands, if I'm going to pitch myself my high engagement, my engagement rate is going to matter. Because if they if they have someone with twice my engagement rate, I bet they're gonna be taking them not me. But it also matters as we create. If I can show off that I am an expert. I have a specialty in this one thing I'm doing one thing exceptionally well instead of 12 things half ass and are true aren't going to pick the person that's doing that one thing exceptionally well, aren't you going to pick the person that's owning the lane? So that's my spiel to you today. niche down? Do that soul searching I know this will be a whole soul searching journey. And this is my cheers to throwing tons of spaghetti at the wall this week. Thank you for listening to this episode of brand new creator if you loved it, rate review, subscribe and of course share. For more on how you can create influence and get paid. Come hang out with me on Instagram at Harley Jordan