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How to include yourself in your content
Published June 17, 2022
878 words… 6.8 min read
How to include yourself in your content
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You're a creator with a specific niche. Unless you're hyper-specific, chances are there are thousands of other creators making great content in your niche.
This is a good thing. It means the market (or, available audience) affirms the need for your kind of content. But how will you compel a viewer to follow you and ultimately become a fan of your content?
In this Kale Tip, we'll cover how to stand out in your niche and attract the right kinds of followers.
Even if you don't care about building online community, following this tip will help you significantly improve your content creation game.

Depth > Breadth

Don't let the power of distribution on TikTok and Reels dilute what makes your content special. Large-but-shallow reach doesn't necessarily translate into the success you're looking for as a creator. You want deep and meaningful audience relationships.

How to find your niche

Let's begin with a quick exercise to help you build language for what you can uniquely bring to your content.
Ask yourself the questions below. Your answers will reveal aspects of your personality and interests that you could leverage to distinguish your content.
  • What topic can I confidently talk about and have experience to draw from?
  • What am I an expert in?
  • What aspects about my background make me unique?
  • What do I wish more people knew about?
  • What's a content gap that needs to be filled?

The super follower

Now, let's move on to who you should be targeting with your content niche.
I saw this tweet that perfectly encapsulates the value proposition of a smaller, engaged audience over millions of followers. 👇
Your target demo should realistically hover in the low thousands. These few thousand viewers are the super followers who regularly return to your content, engage with you on multiple platforms, and in some cases, pay for access to exclusive content or the privilege of a deeper community.
  • The only way you'll attract this kind of fandom is if you showcase your personality through your content
    • 💡
    Highly engaged viewers return in search of camaraderie. That's hard to do if your content is faceless and has no clear differentiators.

    Include yourself in the videos

    Let's do a thought exercise where we examine good examples of personality-driven content.
    🤔 Consider this: There's nothing unique about making a vegan chocolate chip cookie recipe, but there is something unique about how *you* make this recipe.
    • If you're tech savvy, your personality can shine through with creative edits, music, and voiceover.
    • Think: What makes Susi Vidal's meal prep TikToks so fun & enjoyable? Notice how her commenters praise the music, visual appeal of the food, and how the video makes them feel. 👇
  • In terms of substance, maybe you include a voiceover on a topic where you can offer meaningful insight.
  • For example, everything written is green is what you could bring to the mundane video of baking a cookie recipe: Voiceover on taking care of your mental health as a second-generation immigrant while making a cookie recipe that you modified to include red chili flakes because your auntie put chili flakes on every meal she cooked. Notice the specificity & personality.
  • Think: How does Jameson Hsu enrich his recipes with personal reflection? Notice how his commenters are connecting on the substance of what he shared via voiceover, not necessarily the recipe. 👇
    • 🚧
    Fair warning: It'll take you a several attempts to identify and effectively execute on the aspect of your personality that you want to showcase through your content. Embrace this and publish imperfect videos until you've found your fit.

    This should be fun

    Once you figure out how to effectively include yourself in your videos, you'll attract the kind of follower who's invested in you, the [insert niche here] creator. Trust me, it's worth the process. There's nothing like connecting with an online community invested in you as a creator.
  • And if you don't care about building online community, you'll still end up with better videos.
    • Making this content should be fun. If you're really going to excel, you need to put time into it, and you better enjoy it, otherwise you'll be on a fast track to burnout (trust me).
    Make your content creation process work around your schedule—not all of us are full time creators, and that's okay! But this process of sharpening your niche takes a lot of time and effort.

    ✍️ Takeaways

    • Redefine what success means to you in terms of audience reach. A few thousand highly engaged followers is better than millions of passively-engaged followers.
    • Include yourself in your content. Figure out how to deliver aspects of your personality via your content via trial & error.
    • Making content should be fun. If you're creating something you don't truly care about, you will burnout. Make your content creation process work *for* you, not against you.
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