Mark Schaefer's book Known has been an eye-opening read for me.
I have been producing content for years, writing blogs, and publishing on X. However, my writing was never consistent, and I wrote about various topics. I have always found it challenging to narrow down a niche I could write about until now.
Not long after reading Known, I posted what I had learned and my intention to go through Mark's Known Personal Branding Workbook on X. I received a response from Kevon Cheung, "What do you want to be known for, Tash?"
In my opinion, this is a more powerful question than "What is your niche?"
I just realised I never responded to Kevon's tweet! Sorry, Kevon!
What Do You Want To Be Known For? Finding A Sustainable Interest.
In both his book and workbook, Mark advises that identifying a sustainable interest is the first step to becoming known.
The topic you want to be known for should be based on a sustainable interest. It's a topic you'll love and have fun with for years. It should go beyond passion or hobby.
That topic is digital writing.
For years, I have followed great online writers, both bloggers and social bloggers, continuously learning from them how to be an effective digital writer. But, in my mind, I have always thought that a niche needed to be different and unique. Digital writing is a crowded space, with so many better digital writers gaining traction online. But Mark advises that it's okay to want to be known in a crowded niche so long as you can develop a unique tone or point of view.
Other Lessons To Implement.
- Stop approaching writing online as a hobby.
If I want to succeed, I must change my online writing approach. Writing is my way of building my brand. I must stop treating it as a passion project but a business start-up. As Mark puts it, "Think of your personal brand as a start-up, the start-up of YOU."
2. Re-evaluate my space.
By space, I mean the social media platform I should be present in. I've always been a Twitter fan, before it became X that is. Twitter is a casual and easy-going platform, but if I want to build a name for myself professionally, I will need to move to LinkedIn.
Unfortunately, I am not as familiar with LinkedIn as I am with Twitter, so I may need to research before using the platform.
3. Creating consistent content.
In Known, Mark interviewed nearly 100 individuals about what it takes to be known, and every person mentioned the same word: achieving consistency over time.
In the past two years, I have taken courses from successful digital writers like Ali Abdaal, Justin Welsh, Nicolas Cole and Dickie Bush, and similarly, they say the same thing too; consistency wins the game.
Drawing from my own experience writing on Twitter, I am rarely consistent. To overcome this, I will need to craft time to plan my content instead of writing a day in advance, like I'm doing currently. This is a bad habit, I know.
If you're reading this and you read my other blog posts, you will notice that the topics I write about are on digital writing, and I am more consistent with publishing my posts. It's a start, but I love what I have published so far.
I'm grateful to have stumbled upon this book and taken the time to read it in detail. It's forced me to pause and reevaluate my objectives and the strategies I should implement to achieve my renewed professional goals.
My next steps are researching LinkedIn and creating a content strategy to help me stand out as a marketer. I'm sure there will be many experiments, learnings, and pivots along the way, and I hope to share my progress.
