For the longest time, traditional brand and marketing experts have advised online creators to have a “niche” and the last 7 years that I’ve been in the online space, I’ve found this advise to be extremely controversial.
As someone who helps other leaders shape their personal brands with vulnerable and inspiring stories (I call it memoir-style branding), I have a thing or two to say about this proverbial question.
“Should you niche down or not?”
I don’t agree with niching down in the traditional sense of being known for just one thing. This way of brand building is more short-term sales centric and highly limiting for creatives with multiple gifts and evolving identities.
I’ll go to the extent of saying it’s a disservice to hide all of your gifts, personality and passions from your brand just to make conventional sense and fit into a box or label.
By doing this, you rob yourself and people who could be your soul-aligned community, the chance to experience true loyalty and belongingness — the highest success markers of a personal brand.
In my opinion, your “niche” is actually the kind of people (audience) you want to call in and build a lasting community with.
This is where my belief about building an unforgettable personal brand stands different from other advisors — you are as much part of your niche as much as your audience.
By this theory, I define niche as the process of how you serve the psychological and emotional needs of your people and yourself through your personal brand (because you are as much part of your brand as them).
While other advisors exclude you, the creator, from your brand and make it all about an imaginary figment of what your audience needs to increase short-term sales — I bring balance to both your psychological needs as well as your audience’s without any guesswork.
After all, if your personal brand doesn’t fulfil you at an emotional level, beyond just monetary goals, what’s the point of it all!
Most people I work with, have already created multiple ways of monetizing, they don’t need to build a personal brand for monetary purposes but they choose to invest time, money and energy in building their personal brands for creating a space of emotional belonging.
A space where they feel seen, heard and accepted for their truth and who they are. In turn, their audience gets a community with a shared purpose through the creator’s truth and lived experience.
And this is exactly what your niche should be — a home, a community where both you and your people feel true belonging.
In the long term, this does create unlimited monetization paths, not in the way traditional brand experts advise but by creating a space of belonging for all your evolving identities, multi-dimensions, your quirks and esoteric beliefs that you fear could be “too much” for others.
If you are a multi-passionate leader or someone who goes through constant identity evolutions, traditional niching advice may never work for you.
Even if you try it and let’s say you build a brand as a copywriter or a web developer, there’s a high probability you’ll outgrow that identity in a few years and then feel restricted to showcase your evolved identity to your audience without confusing them.
This is where fear of becoming irrelevant starts creeping in with many founders and creators but honestly it’s never about you becoming irrelevant it’s almost always about the way you’ve set up your brand that would become irrelevant in future. There’s a way to ensure that doesn’t happen.
My way of building a personal brand is rooted in timeless strategies that market disruptions truly cannot shake.
How do I say that so confidently?
Because human emotions and their intrinsic psychological needs will always remain the same.
Humans will always crave for emotional belongingness, comfort and community — these are built in our DNA and can never change.
No matter how much the world progresses, human suffering and need for emotional connection will never change.
The moment you start aligning your personal brand with these core needs of a human being, you’ll never experience fear of irrelevance and market disruptions. Along with this, your offers may evolve to solve different range of problems for your audience with time but the core essence remains the same.
Memoir-style personal brand (the way I design it) is the most nurturing, effortless and best way of ensuring your brand from irrelevance, market disruptions and boredom.
This path is a slow-burn for sure but a deep-rooted one.
Your personality is your best niche, waiting for you to bring “all of you” in your brand.
If you want to work with me to build your memoir-style personal brand, send me a message through this form and I’ll get in touch with you.
