With the constant flow of new content and a tsunami of viral trends intensified by the rise of TikTok and Instagram Reels, trying to catch up and jump on the bandwagon is a huge challenge, let alone being ahead of the creator curve.
So, if you’re looking for ways to help you stand out in the massive and increasingly competitive content creator community, you’re in the right place! Here are a 5 essential strategies that can potentially help you stand out from the crowd:
1. Be Yourself
As cliché as this might sound, being yourself is quintessential when you’re creating content for the masses. Expressing yourself in the content you’re creating and telling your story will show a clear distinction between your work and others’.
Getting to personalize and develop your own creative space is not only going to help you become more open and identifiable, but it also opens doors for readers to get a sense of innovation when looking at different content. Communicating your ideas to your audience and being able to create a personal connection with them is what makes an individual’s content unique.
But do not misconstrue this as a chance for you to use big, complicated words just to seem smart, some may not understand what your message is about and worse still, if your audience were to be misled by your content.
2. Keep Up with Industry Trends
Although it would be great to know the trends around the world, it’s not necessary to know all of them in order to improve your content.
Changes will constantly be made throughout the industry, but knowing what is the most relevant information needed in your content is of great importance to stay connected with your audience and to ensure that everyone is on the same page as you (more so that you’re on the same page as everyone else).
Need another reason to be on track with the current times? Inactivity could be another cause to your content’s downfall. By updating your website, you could help search engines navigate your content and find the most relevant posts for your targeted audience. So make sure that you’re producing up-to-date and fresh content!
3. Discover Your Niche & Stick to It
Firstly, you need to find your niche by identifying your passions, interests and skills. You then need to figure out if there’s a market for your niche. Do some competitor research and you’ll soon be able to identify the gaps in the market. Once you understand what the market needs or what the industry is currently lacking, you can start creating content that fills that specific “gap.”
However, it’s always easier to create content about an industry that you already know very well. Perhaps an industry that you are currently working in.
For example, if you are a veterinarian, you can always create a TikTok account to educate people about caring for their pets. Or, if you are a designer by day and a freelance artist by night, you can create design-related tutorials and share them on your YouTube channel.
4. Quality Over Quantity
By just telling you to create high-quality content is too vague, and you must be wondering what exactly is considered “high-quality.” It’s essentially content that provides the most relevant information that your audience hopes to find; whether it be to answer and solve an issue, or even to simply entertain them. And if you’re able to give them that, it drives both your current and new followers to come back for more.
It’s well known that the quality of the content is superior to its quantity, especially to your targeted audience. They want content specific enough to what they’re searching for and that speaks to them on a personal level, it shows you are putting effort into your audience engagement, as well as knowing that you want the best audience experience.
5. Know Your Audience
Your audience plays a big role in your success as a content creator. Understanding and forming empathy for your target audience enables you to set standards for future tailored content and have it be purposeful or inspirational for your readers.
Building strong connections with your audience will help with expanding the community around you. But before this, engagement with your audience is critical, like getting to know what their experience was like using your products or what their opinions are for improving those products.
Start somewhere small to understand them more, receive insights or feedback, and build on that for you to deliver quality content to your targeted audience. By producing quality content, your creations will surely be recognized for its value.
