Finding Your Niche as a Content Creator: Insights from The Creator Diaries Episode 1

Are you an aspiring content creator looking to make your mark in the online world? If so, you may have wondered how successful content creators find their niche and create content that resonates with their audience.

In this episode of The Creator Diaries, we hear from Klara McDonnell and Ana, two experienced content creators, about their journey in identifying their niches and creating content that connects with their audience. From trial and error to personal experiences, they share valuable insights on how to find your niche as a content creator.

On today's episode of The Creator Diaries, you saw

- UGC Creator Klara: https://nomysh.com/portfolio/klaramcd...

- Social Media Wiz Ana: https://nomysh.com/portfolio/anasavu

Starting Without a Specific Niche:

Not everyone starts their content creation journey with a specific niche in mind. Klara McDonnell, who has been in the entertainment industry for quite some time, shares that she didn't feel like an expert in any particular topic when she started her TikTok account. She simply started posting content that she enjoyed, such as travel vlogs, and built on what worked for her. For Klara, her life itself became her niche, and she started creating content around her experiences and insights in the entertainment industry.

Trial and Error:

Both Klara and Ana emphasize the importance of trial and error in finding your niche as a content creator. Ana, who has worked in social media marketing and has a passion for TikTok, suggests trying different things and seeing what resonates with your audience. Analyze the performance of your content and experiment with different formats to understand what generates the most engagement and interest. Klara adds that you can be your authentic self and slightly exaggerate it to create a unique niche that aligns with your personality and interests.

Identifying Your Community:

Understanding the community that you want to connect with can also help in finding your niche as a content creator. Klara mentions that she looked at the audience that resonated with her content and identified a specific community of like-minded people who were interested in the entertainment industry. This helped her narrow down her niche and create content that catered to the interests and needs of that community. Ana, who is a self-professed TikTok fan, also acknowledges the importance of belonging to a certain community and creating content that resonates with that community.

Personal Experiences and Belonging:

Personal experiences and belonging to a certain community can also be driving factors in finding your niche as a content creator. Ana shares that her passion for TikTok and her experiences working in a TikTok advertising agency influenced her niche as a content creator. By leveraging her personal experiences, Ana was able to create content that was authentic and resonated with her audience. Klara adds that being true to yourself and creating content around your own experiences and insights can make your content more relatable and engaging for your audience.

In conclusion, finding your niche as a content creator can be a combination of trial and error, personal experiences, belonging to a certain community, and being true to yourself. Whether you start without a specific niche in mind or have a clear idea of your community and interests, it's important to experiment, analyze, and create content that resonates with your audience. By understanding your audience and being authentic in your content, you can create a niche that sets you apart as a content creator and helps you connect with your audience on a deeper level.

So, if you're starting out as a content creator, take inspiration from Klara and Ana's insights from The Creator Diaries and embark on your own journey to find your niche. Remember, it's all about being true to yourself, experimenting, and connecting with your audience. Happy content creating!

VIDEO TRANSCRIPTION

hi everyone I'm Rija from Nomysh and this is our first episode of The Creator Diaries where we're going to be talking to some really great content creators you're going to be sharing their experiences and in this episode specifically the niches that they focus on first up we have the great Klara McDonnell who has been in the entertainment industry for quite a while and has focused on a variety of different areas along with doing various different gigs and in the past year or so has been focusing on ugc content hey Klara hi glad to be here thank you next up we have Ana and Ana has been a social media marketing wiz she has worked across different areas in Europe and she has not only been working at a Tik Tok advertising agency recently but she has also been working at tiktok and she's a self-professed tik tok fan she also does UGC content on the side hi Ana hi everyone I'm so happy to be here thank you all for being here thank you so much for making time I wanted to start off discussing as I said the niches that you guys have right and we can delve a little bit more in terms of the different communities that you guys have grown within and empowered as well with your content but one of the questions I've kind of always had is whenever I look at content creators is how do you figure out where to start is it taking more of like a very analytical approach of like oh I've done all of my research and everything and yada yada different reasons possibly you belonging or going you know belonging to a certain Community yourself or going through certain experiences or trial and error or just like you know just kind of randomly just going for something or possibly a combination of that um so how has that how did you guys figure that out for yourself uh personally I remember like I I've been wanting to start to take this account for so long but I never really felt an expert at anything I I have I I like so many different things and I never really knew what I want like I don't feel like I have that thing that I can speak about for hours like people say find your niece uh your knee should be that thing that you can speak about for hours but I don't really have that thing so I just started posting whatever I enjoyed um I I used to do a lot of traveling so I would just post a lot of like travel Vlogs and and that's what kind of worked most on my account so I just built on what worked and and now I'm traveling as much anymore and I'm just saving my life in London and maybe some side gigs that I have um so it's just I yeah I don't really have a niche I I guess my life is my Niche um so that's how I go about it if that makes sense yeah um like Ana was saying her life being her Niche I think that's a good way to go about it sometimes you can overthink it and you can do what you were saying trial and error try different things out see what's getting you the hits see what's engaging for you um I think be your authentic self but up that a little bit maybe slightly exaggerate it if you're comfortable and your personality can be your Niche or how you look how you dress how you Style Yourself um I think going back to that we were having a discussion earlier before this recording um and I was talking about how much I love Klara's outfits and it's just kind of like you know that pop of color um and you're discussing how your clothing specifically the Hat has just been such a distinguishing Factor um Clarity kind of like related to sonogenic's comments there particularly in terms of kind of like giving that confidence as well too in terms of The Styling yeah I mean how do I dress it's not for everybody and I do get ready get ready with me videos now and again and I might style like one of my videos has like this dress was 50 Cent and then I style around this 50 Cent dress so how I dress it's not for everybody sometimes it's a little bit over the top I can get a bit of trolling um you know what I mean so not everybody's gonna love how I dress but then I have gotten comments people saying you give me confidence to be myself and dress how I want to dress I can be braver with how I dress braver with color and patterns when you guys go for that though do you tend to focus more on style or Comfort uh because I know personally I love heels but after moving to London which is very much a walking City like I have unfortunately had to give up on them and before I feel like I could even wear four and a half to close to five inch heels for some party and now it's like okay two inches my limit that's it and even for a very short period of time so how do you guys kind of like balance that out I I love heels but I mostly live in biker boots and like Doc Martin style boots and and when I wear heels I always put Flats in my bag as well but I think that's age I think that's because I'm in my early 40s now so I know it's just age I don't remember the last time I wore a pair of heels honestly I almost naked girl I mean I love to see you but I just hate the pain so I I stay away from them I think clearly uh as I have been recently told uh Fashions fade style is eternal right and a lot of fashion to be fair is very cyclical as well too so it's more about what's your specific style is and focusing on that then um Ana uh you know as you said a lot of your stuff kind of originates from the travels that you have done right um and then kind of more so sharing your life experiences there in a manner is that like purely like hey I'm just kind of like putting myself out there or did you like also try to like experiment a little bit in terms of like okay this is like what the audience is possibly engaging with a little bit more

um do you mean for my videos or for your videos yes in terms of you know the content you're putting out on tick tock yeah so um I I started my account initially uh you know talking about how I didn't quite enjoy my nine to five life and how I wanted to travel so I kind of built that audience of the same people that you know were dreaming to become maybe digital Nomads or like going to like taking a gap year and and then when I finally did it myself I had this audience dreaming to do the same and that's when it really my Tick Tock really took off um my travel videos were doing quite well um so I just built on that um and like talking about Niche if I think about the future that's for sure something that I would like to like go into maybe working with more travel brands or working with hospitality you know companies restaurants hotels and create content for that kind of Brands rather than just um like I don't know makeup or beauty or which is like you know ugc is mostly with this type of brands at the moment so um yes I would definitely love to start working with more travel Brands and like stick to this travel Niche because that's what I kind of relate most to um so yeah so talking about niches and in terms of relatability as well too I guess coming on to experiences um Klara uh you're a cancer survivor how how is that experience kind of going through um both as an Entertainer as well as other content to creator yeah so um before my whole experience uh I mostly use social media just to promote myself as a musician and as an activity that sort of way and I dabbled in Tick Tock and so I started those for cancer December 2019 and this is chemo hair my hair was much straighter before this three years ago I was going through chemo completely bold and a couple of months before cancer I was dabbling in Tick Tock this is before the lockdown so where there weren't a lot of people on it and I was really bad at Tick Tock I was vlogging on it because I was I was totally convinced that short form blogging would take off in Tick Tock and it has now and that's one of my main forms the content is vlogging um but back then nothing was really happening with my videos I was diagnosed with cancer and I said to one of my best friends should I tell people about this on social media because I'm self-employed and I need the work and I want to work through chemo and I had 10 months of treatment and two different operations I didn't know I was going to have all of that ahead of me but I was like will I tell people about this publicly and my friends and my family were like yes because they believe a lot of people in my life believe in positivity and manifestations and positive thought on mass would help me heal so they were like yes publicly tell people about this so I did long form YouTube videos and then I started kind of short form Vlogs and I had a video that went almost viral I mean viral on Tick Tock is really when you go into millions but this was maybe 400 000 views on a video where I was getting my chemo put into my arm and a lot of people drink a lot of water during chemo and then you have to go to the toilet a lot so I was in the toilet in the hospital and I danced around my chemo bag and I was high in my steroids in the hospital I didn't expect it to get so many views I got about 400 000 views and I was like oh my god what have I done but everybody in my life was kind of saying to me now do more of this and the comments most of the comments were from other people that were going through chemo that related to it so it was the relatability factor is that a community that you still stay in touch with or tap into I do but you know what is really weird I'm so positive about mental health awareness and about cancer awareness and I still do videos like that but they don't do that well when I'm sitting down in front of a camera and I'm talking about the facts and statistics and trying to help people they don't necessarily do that well compared to something that I just film in the moment of something silly or funny happens so sometimes you and you sometimes you can plan for a video even a vlog you can plan for it to go viral or do really well and it's all about those first couple of seconds you can plan but you don't really know what's going to do well and I had this video where I think I think I told some of you is about this before where I was messing with a filter and I got four million views on this video where I was just like trying out a filter reacting to it in real time saying I really don't like this and this doesn't really look like me and that kind of went viral and it's like no I want cancer awareness videos to go viral or even like a song I wrote like you know so it's disheartening in a way but that's it there's no science to it there is and there isn't yeah well talking about going viral for kind of possibly something random where you didn't necessarily plan uh Ana uh you had an interesting Journey there right yeah I my first tiktok account was um I don't know how this came about I made a few jokes about like turkey Series so I made a few like a couple of videos on Turkey series and they blew up I don't know why I don't know how and on that account like if I posted anything else that wasn't related to 30 series I would get like a hundred views 300 views maximum uh but as soon as I would post something related to Turkey series or even just turkey then there you go one million views or half a million views and that's why I started another account because I didn't want to be the turkey series girl I just I wanted to make um like I wanted to work with Brands as well so that wasn't gonna really happen with that account um so I definitely had a lot of videos going viral for silly things as Klara said and you you have to be careful what you go viral for as well because if you go viral for something silly that is not really the type of content that you usually pause then the people like from those viral moments a lot of bunch of people will will follow you but they follow you for that silliness rather than your usual content and they will not relate to you in the future when you post your usual content so um yeah you you need to like everybody is chasing by these days but you have to be careful what to go viral for so then do you guys let those be basically like a fluke and then go back to focusing on I don't know like if you as you're creating this and actually I'd love to know the answer as a separate question uh in terms of like your plan your strategy uh for the content creation or you're like oh maybe I should learn from this and try to like maybe lean a little bit more into that

yeah so after my filter video that was in February um I stayed up all night um replying to comments because I was thinking oh yeah this is going to get me lots of followers it got me a couple of more followers a couple of thousand but then I made a video um kind of like explaining my reaction to the filter a bit better and then I made another video a reintroduction to new people that have followed me and I had to apologize and they said look this isn't usually what I do but if you're here and you want to stay I do vegan food reviews I do sustainable fashion and I'm a cancer survivor I talk about cancer awareness and what was good is um people didn't really react to that that video the new followers they reacted to an introduction video that I had pinned to the top of the profile and they started commenting on that so yes a lot of those followers from that video they're not real followers like eventually they're going to unfollow me but maybe I got 1 000 real followers which means a lot because they're going to be more engaged with me uh I mean I kind of now know what to post about so I try to like I have content fillers and I try to stick to them so it doesn't really matter what um I if if I use one of these fillers and if I go viral in these pillars then it's totally fine but I try not to jump on like CD trends that wouldn't benefit me or just because it's funny if it doesn't relate to like maybe if it's not a day in the life or a side hustle idea or a travel Vlog I just try not to pause those um Trends anymore I try to be more authentic to my account and given that you guys have like full-time part-time you know one-off gigs uh always happening on the side as well too how do you think about content creation like is it kind of like a full-on plan of how you know a corporate a brand might do it of like okay this is our social media strategy and that's how we're thinking about it um or is it more so like as you guys were discussing um sharing your experiences sharing like just what you're kind of like you know going through what you've relate to your lifestyle and talking about that hmm you know it's hard because I do actually have social media clients and for them I kind of feel like I I give more respect to them and I work out like a proper kind of plan for them especially when I work for Arts festivals I might have a six week period where I'm posting for them but myself I don't really plan that much like a lot of it is Vlogs and in the moment I do content days to a certain a certain extent where I might have a day once a week where I might film three videos but other than that it's mostly in the moment during the week

same like I don't really I should but I tend to prioritize other people's like my my nine to five content creation rather than my own Tick Tock account you know and I try to you know find little times maybe because I'm in content creation at work as well like and I I post daily Vlogs I can use the time at work as well as to like Vlog about my day or do it like that or otherwise weekend or evenings but I definitely um prioritize other people um instead of my own uh content creation gigs so not gigs like I prioritize the gigs but not my take my account so I should be more consistent there for sure yeah and it's kind of weird because I know what you're saying that you prioritize different things like with ugc then it's like oh I have a time frame on this there's a fast turnover but with my own stuff if I'm doing something that I'm just passionate about like if it's just a vlog about something going on in my day it's different but when it's ugc sometimes it's a bit more fast-paced okay well talking about that talking about possibly like you know just doing whatever feels good as well as specific social media strategy there's a lot of social media platforms out there right and there's constantly the Advent of new ones as well too um and Klara uh as you've mentioned uh you know you have a wide variety of experiences and I think um in a past conversation you're mentioning uh that when you first started doing this it was also kind of like some of the Myspace stuff was there but you've definitely seen like when the YouTube was the hot video yeah um so how has that experience been for you like kind of like obviously YouTube is still there but the dynamic I'm loving the moments I'm loving this social media war that like all the store form content they're all fighting with each other because the reach is so good you know and sometimes I'll repurpose the same video like save it to Vlog across all of them like across Facebook reels Instagram reels um YouTube shorts Tick Tock and it'll be the exact same edit which you shouldn't really do that but sometimes I'll have the exact same edit it might be a little bit lazy it might be like a 20 second video and I'll think oh this is going to do really well and on Tick Tock and it won't it will do better on Facebook reels or YouTube shorts so I think that's so exciting I think it's a great time okay but how is it actually like adapting to so many of these different platforms like is like how has it changed yeah

um I think it's probably the attention span of people you know and YouTube many years ago was a lot easier to get used so I'm 41 now and I was 24 I used to Vlog on YouTube and I was having these videos that were getting 600 000 to 800 000 views and nobody back then was really vlogging on YouTube so people in Ireland they were commenting saying what the hell and what is she doing like um and I was freaked out and you know when I stopped and I wasn't doing social media as much and um I don't know I think I prefer a short form video because my own attention span is not the best and then I guess talking about like you know the main social media darling that's Tick Tock um and Ana given your experience both actually being a consumer a content creator but also being on the other side how has that been

uh it's been great but also I I'm addicted like I spend my days my weekends my everything on Tick Tock it's it's not healthy guys like I admit this it's not but um yeah and you know you're like it's uh okay I'm gonna watch a movie and then you're like am I ready for the commitment and then you spend four hours on Tick Tock instead it happens too often like I I need help um but working at tiktok was amazing and obviously that's when I when I started posting as well I was watching a thousand videos a day guys at Tick Tock every day as the content with the razor so that's and getting paid at the beginning I was like is this I remember before getting hired at Tick Tock I told my sister once like I wish I could do this as well as a job and one month after I got hired as a Content moderator and I was literally doing that as a job but be careful what you're asking for because it was not easy so yeah 1 000 videos a day and that's when I like started to recognize patterns of what works on the platform what doesn't I learned the community guidelines by heart which also helped me in my own country Journey because you know then you work with the policies again instead of against them um so it was definitely a big help in my own content creation Journey for sure um and in terms of like some of the niches that you guys have actually built when you are in consumer of content yourself do you actually tend to focus on that same content that you're actually producing or you're actually looking at a some other type of content

um do you mean languages for other other games or you or what's affected him so uh as you mentioned uh you know you're uh posting a lot of your experiences in terms of like just traveling being a digital Nomad as well as also being like a social media marketing manager and the work that you do on the side so when you are browsing Tick Tock is are you actually looking at other content creators who are posting about similar stuff as well oh I see oh my God my fyp at the moment is it's side hustles I had my money online how to you know how to travel like in Southeast Asia with just a backpack um so it changes it changes [Music] um but I do I do love to see travel content a lot and um yeah definitely I kind of like sometimes I feel like the target audience is your niche as well um so um yeah that's the the type of content that I like working as well and also it's like so interesting to see like daily Vlogs and what people are up to um or you know and there's a um we are in London now and there's a lot of people like um posting about um how much they make in a month or how know how much they spent in a month and because there's like their their living crisis right now like everybody's so experience oh my God let me see how much she spends on them so can I can compare with me so um yeah I love those type of videos it's so fun to watch well I'm going to admit something really bad that I've been enjoying um the blind gossip videos that I've seen a few creators create you know like celeb gossip but legally they can't say anything and I was getting a lot of them when I was sending them to my friends and I was like oh this is so toxic why am I enjoying this and now I'm gonna get more but on a more wholesome level I do like get ready with me videos I like vegan food videos I'm not a great cook but I'm I've gotten into cooking and I like really fast recipes like you know like air fryer recipes that sort of thing so definitely looks like you can Embark outside of your focus area for what you're creating content but possibly also learning from that content as well too and being entertained by it um all right as a final question uh given the evolution of so many different platforms but as exactly as you said there's so many of them out there uh which one is your favorite as a consumer and which one is your favorite as a content creator I think for me the answer is

like I just I I'm a fan um especially for um as a as a Creator I I find it so easy to create and take photographer because it's just like short form but it can be longer form as well but it's so much easier to create a one minute video rather than a 10 minute video for YouTube I Love YouTube and I love the idea of having a YouTube channel it's just I wouldn't know what to talk about honestly like one minute sometimes it's even like a long time so I would definitely love to have a YouTube channel but I will stick to fix up for now I would have said YouTube and you know even when I was going through my cancer journey I made a lot of kind of long-form YouTube videos which was very hard because I was on very heavy medication so it was quite high like so to do long form was hard and then doing YouTube during that journey I was doing maybe sometimes seven to 12 minute videos and I was thinking this is too long for somebody if they can't concentrate so I don't know I prefer Tick Tock in so many levels okay all right and you don't know what you're gonna get in your for you page but yeah it sounds like Tick Tock is a clear favorite here which totally makes sense given um their amazing algorithm um and where ugc has kind of originated from more than anything else and given a lot of both of your focuses there well I just want to thank you guys uh I know we've taken up a lot of your time so thank you guys so much um is there possibly one last piece of advice that you'd want to share with people who are just starting out and trying to figure out what their Niche should be just post start creating um so many people spend so much time thinking I'm gonna do this I'm gonna do that just do it and learn from it yeah and don't buy fake followers can I still see so many people buying saying followers to side to me you can always tell it's so bad um and a lot of my like people I love my friends for example um they wanted to start a jewelry business or they started a jewelry business and they were like should I buy a few fake followers on Instagram and they did it as well and like no don't like you can tell those are obviously fake people it's not gonna benefit your business it's gonna ruin your engagement so yeah just try to build organically thank you guys so much Klara Ana for giving us so much of your time hopefully our viewers will actually find this helpful you can find us again next month on Creator Diaries with a new episode and join us on nomysh.com to have your content get monetized thank you guys so much thank you so much

thank you