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Welcome to the socialized strategy. It is that wacky time of day where the sun's coming in the window and reflecting, and I just I can't help it. We're gonna go anyway. I wanna just say that I'm full on in holiday mode. The tree is gonna stay.
Helen:It's gonna stay with me through the holiday season. So unless I get a different one because I spied a couple of other little things and if I I might change it up, but we'll see. I also stopped at a holiday market today on my way back from a meeting, which I scheduled purposely so that I could walk through the holiday market on the way back. And it really puts me in such a good space when I go to this particular Union Square holiday market. I love it.
Helen:And I know there's a lot of holiday markets in the city, but I just happen to love the Union Square one. I've got little Christmas tree earrings, which I'm holding up here, and they're so cute. I found, these jingle bell ones. I was gonna wear these except they actually make noise and right in the microphone. So I took them off and I put on these Santa Claus ones.
Helen:I've gotten myself a choice of holiday earrings so I could be in good spirit. They were very inexpensive, needless to say. I also love when I go to the market because I find things. There's an alpaca store there, and I got this gift for someone. It's so soft.
Helen:I can't even tell you. It's delicious. I got this gift for someone. I'm not gonna say who because, you know, let them be surprised. But these are little fingerless gloves.
Helen:And every time I get something, I'm like one for them, one for me. I I feel like I wanna go back and get myself a pair of these fingerless gloves. And they have ones with the skulls, and they have ones with hearts. I'm just obsessed with the holiday market thing. Wish I could just do all my shopping there.
Helen:Anyway, it was really fun. But now let's talk about unusual gifts while we're on the topic. Because I was thinking about I know we're having so much fun in the the socialized studio, so we created gift packages. So that if you have a content creator in your life and you think, oh, and I give them something and I want it to be an unusual gift, you could do something like a simple tripod and then a 1 month trial of the socialized studio, which is very inexpensive. It's like a dollar a day.
Helen:So you can give them a $30 gift. You don't even need to do the tripod. You could just give them the studio with a little card that says for the content creator. So this is just a lot of fun things that you can package up with a studio gift if you love it in there. If you're in there and you're really enjoying it, and I'm really enjoying it.
Helen:And I feel so weird because I was always the person that said I hate selling things and I hate talking about things that, if I have something where I'm making an offer, it makes me feel weird. But I'm so comfortable talking about the studio because it's something I love so much and I'm so passionate about. So I don't feel bad even talking about it because it's I'm not here to even convince you to do it. I'm telling you it's so much fun and you're gonna learn so much. And it's like just having a little helper every single day giving you guidance, and I'm really enjoying it so much.
Helen:I can't believe that I'm enjoying it enough that I actually wanna talk about it on every single podcast, at least in the beginning or at the end. Let's get on to the topic of the day, which is how to find your niche. I love this because it came up in the studio this week, and we talked about it as one of the things in our Zoom session. And everybody was really engaged in this conversation because a lot of people don't know what they're doing or they think I might wanna do 2 different topics and do I have to have separate accounts. So we had a big long discussion about it and that prompted me to want to really focus on the single thing, which is how to find it.
Helen:So I'm gonna give you some things in here because really the word niche is the hottest word on social media right now. I mean, everybody's like niche down or people are advising you, you're not gonna grow if you don't have a niche. Pick a niche. And then some people are like, my life is my niche, which is very, very valid. So you have to really decide and and you don't have to decide.
Helen:There's no timeline to say I have decide by a certain time. So I'm gonna talk to you a little bit about finding the niche, some some, I guess, bullet points of how you can approach it and strategies for thinking about it. The first thing is that plenty of creators have a success without a niche, and their niche is their life. And a lot of these creators that you'll see, they're just humorous sharing. Maybe it's like their niche could be being a mom.
Helen:Maybe they're a mom. They're just sharing their life, their day to day. Maybe they're a grandma. Maybe they're, just as a couple and that's just their their life together that becomes it's I mean, it's still a niche. It just means that their life is their niche.
Helen:So it's not a specific topic that they're on. So you don't have to have this particular, like, I'm gonna be the jewelry person or I'm gonna be the skincare person. You don't have to have that if you don't want it. And so I I beg you to just think about what you enjoy the most and that's gonna lead you to your niche. So first thing is you don't need to have one.
Helen:Alright. This personality that you bring to your content could be your the reason people follow follow you and therefore your personality is your niche. The next thing to think about is when you're trying to think about what your niche might be, think about what your goals are in social media in general. So if you have a business, obviously that's gonna be more directed and something that you want to evolve into being your niche. But I'm gonna give you an example of a friend of mine actually who I met recently.
Helen:Her name is Suzanne Rico. Hello, Suzanne. And initially, she got on social media to promote her podcast and she was very, very focused on that. And it was just gonna be about her podcast. And we had a long talk about it because I'm like, you know, if you if you lean into a podcast being your niche, number 1, a platform like TikTok or even Instagram, they don't want you to go away from their platform to go somewhere else.
Helen:So if you're leading someone to a podcast, if you're leading someone to a YouTube channel, to a website, they don't necessarily want you to promote and get people to leave their app. So that could backfire, and then it just becomes a a bummer that you're posting content and it's getting no traction. And it's hard to talk about a podcast without saying the word podcast. And sometimes, in her case, the topic of the podcast has a lot of words that would get flagged in the content. So then it's gonna be even more challenging.
Helen:How do you talk about this podcast? You can't say anything you can't say anything that's in it, or you can't say a lot of things that's in it, and you also wanna avoid the word podcast. So it becomes like this spiral of of kind of a downer. And so we talked about it and she is actually leaning more into lifestyle to find her niche now. And I said to her, you know, you might get grab a following of people that just enjoy you, your life, your family, whatever it is you wanna share about, your experiences of as a former news anchor, whatever those things are.
Helen:And then people will eventually go, oh, you have a podcast? Because you'll put it in the link in your profile. So the a way to approach it is to share the things that you love talking about and you're passionate about, and then potentially the promotion of whatever the thing is that you decide to lean into will be found just because people are finding you and then they're kind of into everything about you. I did not have a niche for a full year when I started on social media. And as a matter of fact, I was on Instagram long before TikTok, and I was just sharing family and things and work and whatever, and I was interviewing people on the street and I thought, well, interviewing is gonna be my niche.
Helen:I guess I thought that. And then when the pandemic hit, oh, well, that cut off my interviewing so I had to follow Like, I had to pivot. And so I then I started making baking videos because it was something I could do and record in my kitchen. And then I thought, oh, baking is gonna be my niche. And after doing baking videos, I realized, okay, I only have a certain amount of recipes and I'm not I'm not, you know, Martha Stewart.
Helen:I'm not gonna be coming up with recipes every week. I just don't have that interest. And so somebody happened to ask me how I did a certain video of one of my baking videos, and I was like, oh, I'll make a tutorial. So then I started thinking, well, maybe teaching things is gonna be my niche, and it sort of found me. So going through the process of getting from thing to thing to thing might lead you to the niche that you think ultimately something else is what your plan is.
Helen:So you can let the path follow you. But initially, just think about what you love and what you wanna talk about, and that's gonna get you to the place where you need to go. Alright? I know that this sounds like very ethereal or not I'm not giving you specific direction, but I'm telling you to listen to the audience that what what are they enjoying that you post? And maybe try posting more of that.
Helen:And that's what you should really allow yourself to be creative. Allow yourself to be come to become who you're meant to be on social media. Next thing is, and this is also very similar to the previous one, which is start by posting what excites you. So it is difficult because if you're all over the place with ideas, you don't know what to post and you wanna limit yourself to a niche right away, then focus on posting and creating content that excites you the most about doing that thing. So if it's like, alright.
Helen:I like to do household tips. And what's my favorite thing? Oh, cleaning and organizing. So you maybe get focused on cleaning and organizing. Listen.
Helen:I also did a video where I sprayed my refrigerator with Pledge. I thought I might be doing household tips at one point. I was all over the place. I'm like not even it's one I'm one of those people that it's like I defied all odds and ended up in a place just by by accident. But you could do that too because I think that's what does happen to a lot of people.
Helen:At the time, it seemed weird that I wasn't leaning into something specific, but now it seems like it was meant to happen that way. But it's always easier to see that when you're looking back at it. It's never easy to see it when you're going through it. It's just not clear and it's confusing and it can be very I don't know. It can be really a bit of a bummer when you're like struggling.
Helen:Okay. Now let's think about what you enjoy on social media and how that could bring you to your niche. So if you are watching video and you find you're watching more skincare and that really interests you, maybe that is a sign that you wanna talk about that kind of stuff. And maybe you're doing reviews of things you purchased because somebody convinced you to buy it on that you saw on social media and maybe that leads you to your niche. So thinking about what you're watching could eventually get you connecting the dots to where you're headed.
Helen:And I do think about that a lot. I'm like, oh, what kind of content do I like to watch and how did I end up here? And for in the beginning, I was watching tutorial videos because I was so interested in editing because it interested me. And I was sitting in edit rooms all my life, so it was something very familiar to me. Then I was like, oh, you can do these things with the phone with this app.
Helen:Are you kidding me? So I'd start watching people that were teaching it. And what I found, interestingly enough, is that it was happening so fast. And me as a professional, I could pick it up, but I was thinking, my God, how is anyone else learning from this tutorial? Because they're moving so fast and they're not even telling you you need to tap that, to cut that, to to slide that.
Helen:They were just moving. I think that a lot of young tutorial people didn't have to learn technology. They were they grew up with it, and so they don't think to explain the basic things that we tend to be, as older people, tend to have missed. Like, you don't we a lot of older people don't automatically know if you drag or when you see the hamburger, the three lines that that means settings. And when Now they know that I think a lot of older people know the wheel, the little, kind of gadget wheel.
Helen:They know that that's settings. But there's a lot of things that are innate to younger people because they've been doing it since they came out of the womb practically. But as older generations, that's not natural to us. So when I would watch a tutorial and it was so confusing, I could figure it out because I'm technology savvy and I have the editing background. But I thought, well, I can explain this better because I'm not gonna skip the 5 steps that got that person to this point because those people skip the steps because they know them innately.
Helen:That was a long way of saying, maybe an older, I think helps me as a as a teacher. That was a long way of saying that. But think about what you like watching. And, you know, we can talk about Julie who loved loved watching baking videos, and then she decided to lean her channel into cooking and baking. And if that's something you love, maybe food niche is for you.
Helen:So allow yourself to find what you enjoy so that you can find what you wanna post about. And I I sometimes I say, well, I like to watch dog videos and I like to watch animal videos, but I don't have an animal. So how would how would that help me? And it's like, well, maybe if I was that interested in it, I would do reviews of the best animal content I've seen. So then I can kind of spin it into reviewing.
Helen:Or I could decide I mean, I could really be creative because I could think about it myself. And, like, if I really wanted to do an animal focused page, I would try and find people on the street who would want to let me, feature their animal. And I would stop people on the street and say, can I feature your your pet in my Instagram and can you tell me a little bit about them? I mean, I already have ideas for let's do it. You know?
Helen:And I'm thinking about my animal people now who are in the studio. You could really evolve your content with your animals that you're making you're talking more about their personalities and what's like almost using your animal as the person in your videos, but also getting deeper into the personality of your animal. Instead of just like, oh, here's a him doing a cute thing and here's him doing a funny thing. Have the voice sharing his thoughts. Like, the animal could talk about his morning therapy session and how he felt when he woke up and he was like, his mom was not there or whatever it is.
Helen:So there are some fun things you can do if you really push your mind and find your way to your niche. So just allow yourself to open up your thinking and don't get so tunnel visioned that that you don't allow yourself to find something new because you could be in a niche for a while. I was in a baking niche solid for freaking 6 months to a year solid. And if I was not open minded enough, I would never have found tutorials to be a niche because I would have been like, I gotta just keep doing baking content. That's my focus and I'm just staying in my lane.
Helen:I'm so glad I didn't do that. You know? So think about yourself and test out and create different kinds of content. That's why the studio is so helpful because each week when I do a mini challenge, it might not be right for every person. But I might be offering an opportunity for a person to find something they didn't know they were good at.
Helen:Because I'm not saying you have to do every challenge, but even if it's out of your comfort zone, maybe try it and have some fun with it and see if it's something that you might have never realized you enjoyed. So keeping your mind open, testing, creating different kinds of content, analyzing what if you like doing the analysis and looking at the analytics, see what performed the best. Because the key to finding your niche is finding a topic that excites you and that you can see yourself making tons of content and never running out of ideas. That is the thing. Like, I will never run out of ideas of what I can teach.
Helen:Because every day I learn something new and I'm like, oh, I'm gonna teach that. And it's just a way of keeping yourself fresh, keeping yourself current, and reinvent continuously reinventing. And I think that I'm so happy that I have that in my soul, and I just wanna help people find that for themselves. Okay. So that's that's it for today.
Helen:Believe it or not, I have a meeting and I just cut it a little too close. I have 2 minutes to get on a Zoom call, so I can't even answer any questions today. I apologize in advance, but I will definitely get some questions lined up for next week. Hope you have a really good weekend, and I just hope that you're enjoying the holiday season in some way. Some of us have tough times in the holiday season and it brings some sadness and some people are lonely.
Helen:And I guess my my thought to you is to try and find just a little thing that brings you joy even if it's something you do alone. And today, I had a s'mores hot chocolate. I mean, that simple joy, and it was really crazy because right in the middle of drinking my s'mores hot chocolate, some snowflakes started to fall in New York City. And I was like, my cup runneth over a little bit. So, of course, I captured it on video, and maybe I'll share it with you right here.
Helen:Here it is. Oh, wow. What? I know this is happening. I wish you could smell it.
Helen:Picture the smell of s'mores. That's what I'm smelling right now. Smell it. Wow. And now it's snowing.
Helen:I can't believe it. That's it for today. Have a really nice weekend, and I'll see you next week.