You Don’t Need To Niche Yourself Down To Grow
We’re tired of hearing the same social media advice. We’re pulling down the curtain and telling the truth, right now, in this blog.
There isn’t ONE single way to grow on social media. There isn’t a one-size-fits-all strategy. There is no such thing as a rule-book and an ultimate guide that works for all. You’ve probably heard the tip that social media gurus give out - and that’s to “niche down”. Guess what — you don’t have to. Keep reading to find out why.
WHAT NICHING DOWN REALLY MEANS
Niching down means picking one topic and sticking to it throughout your content and excluding everything else. For example, social media can be a niche, but then, you can get even more specific and niche down even more… so your niche is not just social media, it’s social media news, or social media video transition tutorials, or social media tips. And you JUST make content about that.
We see the importance in niching down, as it allows you to be an authority and to be a true expert in one specific topic; however, it doesn’t account for the fact that there is only so much you can talk about and create content around regarding a specific topic. What if you get bored of it? What if there is a change in consumer’s interests and you want to pivot? It’s a recipe for burnout.
So the reason why we’re not huge fans of getting mega-niched, is because it kind of puts you in a box. You, or your business, is so much more than just one specific topic.
YOU CAN BE YOUR NICHE
Instead, embrace your core, who you are, or, if you’re a business (product-based), embrace the core of your business (p.s. your business has a personality too) and make that your niche. There are so many different aspects to you and your business — infuse it ALL in your social media strategy. That’s how you truly build an engaged, army-like community.
“You can be your niche.”
Take the owl that broke the internet as an example, DuoLingo — do you think the social media team sat down and chose a niche for this owl? No, I don’t think they chose the “green owl that makes funny videos” niche.
Their content is a reflection of the brand’s personality, their values, and the people behind the brand. They’ve embraced that and as a result, they stand out from everyone else. At the time that they started posting funny & trending- type content, no other brand was doing it. They didn’t have any proof or data to suggest that their content will perform well, but they did it anyway and now everyone else is doing it, which leads us to our next point…
STOP POSTING TO APPEASE THE ALGORITHM
When you start posting whatever you want — that’s when the algorithm will appease to YOU. Posting whatever you want means posting content that reflects who you are, or who your brand is. Again, this isn’t just one thing, it’s a variety of things, which translates to a variety of content. It’s common for the algorithm to only respond to one type of content, for example, if the algorithm has labelled your account as a “social media tips” account, anything you post outside of that specific topic (or niche…), like an outfit check or a makeup video, most likely won’t perform well. To that, we say — WHO CARES.
Stop posting to appease to the algorithm. Forget about the numbers for a second (I know… a social media agency telling you to stop looking at your insights? Ironic), and take a step back. Showing different facades to you or your brand, gets people to trust you more, and what comes with more trust? A community. Being unapologetic about what you post is exactly what creates that highly engaged community. What do a highly engaged community do? Buy from you, sign up to your email list, work with you, and the list goes on. By the way… this doesn’t happen overnight.
CULTIVATE PATIENCE
Building a community doesn’t happen overnight. I mean, sure - you can go ahead and follow all the social media rules & recipes for going viral, then actually go viral… but then what? Do the same thing over and over again? Sounds exhausting to us! Going viral isn’t the be all end all, because it doesn’t guarantee that all the accounts you’re reaching are your target audience. Building a loyal & army-like community takes time, consistency and patience. Keep pushing the boundaries, setting trends in your industry & keep showing up authentically in your content.
STOP LISTENING TO all social media advice
When we say, “showing up authentically”, we don’t mean having perfect editing skills, using the right trending sounds or implementing all the social media growth tactics. I know, we’re a social media agency, and a lot of the time, we recommend text-book like tips like this. But we’ve got to be real. A lot of advice from social media gurus is very formulated & generic, and what actually matter on social media is learning how to be more like yourself, learning how to talk confidently & concisely. This is FAR more important than ANY social media tip, editing tool, growth hack etc.
LET’S GET SOME CLARITY
One of our wonderful clients didn’t know what to post on social media. She was burnt out, she was looking at what others in her industry are doing and she was replicating that but not seeing any results (shocker). She booked the Strategy Curation Service with us in which we got clear on her goals and what she wanted in her business.
We figured out that there was SO much about her that she could share, both related to her business & not related (P.S. this will be different for everyone). We told her to stop looking at other’s in her industry, because although that can be helpful to identify what you can do differently, it doesn’t help when people are already vastly different to those in their industry, it only makes you feel like you have to be put in a box. Based on that, we created her social media strategy and she’s already doubled her engagement in the past 2 weeks… that speaks for itself. If you’re in-need of a total revamp of your online prescence, check out the Strategy Curation Service on our services page and book it before 2023 comes around (we’ll be ramping the price up then).
