Content creators, social media influencers, and businesses perennially ask themselves how to get noticed. How do I gain more followers? How do I get more likes? What will generate brand deals or get people to promote my work? But I’d argue that before you focus on attaining an audience, you first need to focus on yourself.
Producing consistently high-quality content is generally the first step to building and sustaining an audience. Having a solid portfolio and product will help demonstrate to your audience that you’re a trusted voice in your field. It will also give people a reason to check you out in the first place and to keep coming back.
The questions below are a starting point to evaluate what you have to offer. They may not quickly land you thousands of new followers, but they will help you sharpen your brand and establish your credibility.
Define Your Focus
How can you succinctly describe who you are and what your brand is about? Having this sense of identity can help guide your content into a cohesive portfolio. Consider developing a mission statement to lay out your purpose. Ask yourself what you’d say in your elevator pitch to quickly sum up your brand. What makes you pour your heart and soul into your work? Understand that, and you can start understanding what you have to offer your audience.
Although it may sound obvious, it can be easy to lose sight of your brand identity when you’re operating in the social media sphere. Yes, constantly scrolling through other people’s feeds can inspire you and keep you sharp on the latest trends. However, it can also consciously or subconsciously push you toward creating content that resembles what seems popular. Having a clear sense of your own brand identity can help you stay true to yourself, instead of simply emulating everyone else.
Know What Sets You Apart From Other Creators
Why are you uniquely positioned to tell your story or share your content? Once you identify your primary purpose, you can explain why you are the best person to spread it to the world. Think about your uncommon expertise, skills, or point of view. Ideally you’re responding to a gap in the marketplace and filling your niche better than anyone else could.
Ask yourself what special insight you have to offer your audience. Maybe you cook common dishes but adapt them to certain diets, or you recreate popular dishes at home. Perhaps you’re an expert on a type of under-the-radar cuisine or a regional restaurant scene. You may take photos that have a distinct aesthetic. Or have special schooling or extensive hands-on experience in the kitchen. Keep in mind that the opposite of this can be true, too—for example, if you’re a novice who is inviting us to take a culinary adventure with you as you learn something new.
Not every social media post or other form of content has to showcase your unique point of view. Consider this more of an underlying theme that spans your portfolio. It will help you figure out the areas in which you probably have the most to offer your audience, and where your unique perspective can most easily shine through.
Produce Consistently High-Quality Content
Where should you focus your time and energy to produce content that you’re proud of? Once you’ve identified your focus and unique perspective, try working on your core skills. Figure out which mediums work best for you, and master those before moving onto others. For example, you could be known for your cooking vlogs and recipes, or sharing food news and interviews, or developing a signature product, or some combination of a few skills. Whatever it is, make sure you can do it over and over again so you can build a cohesive body of work. Natural talent and honed skills will only get you so far—you need discipline and a plan to create a body of quality content.
A big challenge in the modern social media environment is that creators can feel pulled in many directions, in part because of how many platforms exist. And the 24/7 nature of the Internet means that there is pressure like never before to get content out fast. You can easily find yourself in a crunch to develop recipes, take professional-quality photos, create podcasts, run a website, share dining tips, publish sponsored content, respond to messages on a bevy of platforms, and more. The reality is that for many solo creators, it’s hard to do everything and do it very well.
All that being said, developing your skills and building a strong portfolio takes time and effort. It is a good path for creators who are looking to establish meaningful connections with their audiences. If you just want to get more clicks and eyeballs, quantity is almost certainly going to get you there fastest.
Be Ethical And Honest
What can you do to build a brand with integrity? You want your audience to trust you. You can do this by being an ethical, responsible creator. The good news is that you’ve already laid the groundwork to make that easy if you’ve gotten this far. Now it’s a matter or being accountable and honest on topics like intellectual property and sponsorship.
The easy ways to generate content and free stuff tend to come with a long-term price. For example, we should all agree that plagiarism is wrong—on social media, this might mean taking photos from someone’s page without attribution and passing them off as your own. Yet this kind of theft happens all the time. Other topics get more murky. Many influencers still don’t disclose when they’ve been paid to promote a brand or given a product for free—or they use vague words to obscure their compensation—despite Federal Trade Commission (FTC) rules to do this. People buy followers even though it’s against many platform’s terms of service, engage in fake giveaway scams, or make minor tweaks to recipes and don’t credit their original authors.
Make sure your opinions and your work is your own. Admit when you’ve been paid or gotten something for free. Let your audience know when you have a conflict of interest. Share original content and credit others when you use their work. These things will show your audience that you try to be fair, honest, and transparent. It will help you generate real engagement and people who trust your work—and hopefully it’ll let you feel good about the quality of the product that you’ve worked so hard on.
