You're Not a Niche, You're An Artist

How you can lean into being YOU online

Happy Friday and welcome to another newsletter.

This week we discuss the perils and the pleasures of being a creative person who is interested in multiple different pursuits and paths - aka doing #allthethings.

Before we launch into that fun and very relevant topic I’m super excited to let you know that I’ve just launched my very first online course!!!

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HOW TO BUILD AN AUDIENCE FOR YOUR ART ONLINE - A SELF PACED 6 MODULE ONLINE COURSE

This has been in the making for several months now and compiles everything I’ve learned over the last four years of sharing across multiple platforms and building an authentic audience for my creativity online.

This is NOT about viral trends or selling your soul to the algorithm - it’s about showing up online in a way that aligns with your goals, ethics and personality and leans into who YOU are!

If you feel confused about the online space, how to build a community and ultimately, how to use the internet to your advantage as a creative person then this affordable, easy to follow course is going to be a GAMECHANGER for you!

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Why being a jack of all trades is actually a superpower

In the last few years the general consensus online has rammed down our throat the notion that “finding a niche” has been paramount when building a presence online or making it in any way as a creative.

Niche down

Find your thing

The riches are in the niches

Stick to your lane

…and look, as someone who has been sharing online incessantly for over 4 years I can attest to this being a solid way to build an audience.

But that doesn’t mean it’s the only way, or even the right way anymore.

So let’s discuss why this approach works and why it can totally suck.

Human beings are very adverse to change and they find comfort in routine. We don’t like to suddenly go somewhere and everything is in a different place or get in a groove and then have things suddenly be entirely different. Think about when something gets updated on an iPhone and it totally throws you because suddenly you have to pay mind to what you’re doing and get used to this new system as opposed to cruising along on auto pilot.

Human beings also LOVE to put people in boxes, like they fucking love it.

Think celebrities that switch it up and how much flack they cop and how long it might take for society and the media to come around on this sudden change.

Or on a more relevant note, think about YouTubers, you’ll find they tend to have a niche.

Cooking, photography, politics, tech or pokemon, it could be literally anything. Anything can be a niche, I’ve seen whole channels about keyboards, like computer keyboards…

This does well because the audience feels safe and they know I go to X channel for X thing and I know what I’ll get.

If the keyboard guy is suddenly making homemade ramen it can throw you. I get it and I’m part of the problem that boxes people in online because I want my fav channels to dish out their usual content style, and when they don’t I get anxious about clicking on the thumbnail and suddenly feel like I’m going out on a huge limb for them. It’s kind of pathetic really and I think as viewers and consumers we expect a lot from the people we watch without even being conscious of it.

Me pondering my niche

So niching down will serve your audience well but eventually it won’t serve you well and here is why.

You niched down hard and you’re in your little keyboard or ramen bowl shaped box online and people love you for it.

The trouble is you have boiled yourself down to one single aspect of what makes up you as a whole, probably complicated person.

You might start to resent your niche and you might even have the occasional mirage of other niches, dreaming of your life in another lane that didn’t just talk about the one topic people know you for.

Basically, you outlive your niche. Which feels inevitable if you are at all partial to dabbling in other art forms or interests, which nowadays kind of feels par for the course considered how exposed we are to so many hobbies.

You feel a call somewhere else but your parameters are built up so tightly it’s hard to make room for those other interests.

Here is the antidote to niching down and something to keep in mind if you are either experiencing this already, or you are worried about “choosing” a niche online for your existing or next venture.

YOU are the niche.

This is actually something my agent told me recently when I had a big cry about feeling boxed in. They said these exact words and highlighted that people are there for you, which is true to an extent but I’m fully aware some people are there for the niche, aka the camera or the advice and not necessarily for LL vibes only, but it is true and worth remembering and repeating to you all here.

YOU ARE THE NICHE

The things that make up YOU are the things that you are interested in and these will be multifaceted. The other things that make up YOU are the nuances like the way you talk, the way you dress, the quirks of your personality or how you choose to present your art/interests online.

On top of this we have our past experiences and knowledge that tie together to make up a human being that isn’t like any other. YOU.

So we have to find the sweet spot of sharing in the general vicinity of a niche, think, cooking/lifestyle/travel with a healthy injection of just you and who you are thrown in, or something like photography/music/movies/fashion and creative advice??? This one is me and sounds a bit hodge podge when written down, but I’ve made it work over time by never veering too hard into one specific thing and one specific thing only.

I make sure that there is me in the content and it’s not just a vehicle for the niche.

Don’t be a slave to the niche, use the niche as a way to let your creative self rise to the top. It’s a slower process but it’s more sustainable and gives you room to grow.

Think of a plant in a pot that’s too small, the roots are so congested and the plant can’t do it’s thing to grow. I’m actually a serial plant killer so I’m not sure if that matters but it seems like it would.

You need to start off with a big enough pot to let your roots spread and grow into the version of you that will show its best self.

It’s a hard balancing act and the truth is you just won’t get it right all the time, but it’s something to be aware of when building anything online.

Embed each post, newsletter, video or email with a little sprinkling of YOU and overtime people will get to know the real YOU not just the niched version of you.

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If you enjoy the way I explain the online landscape and feel aligned with my views around how to approach social media and marketing as a creative you will get so much out of my online course.

I’m excited to help more artists and creatives understand how to show up online and create community, opportunity and feel positive about promoting themselves and their art to the world!