“What could my Personal Brand be about?”
This is the question every aspiring Digital Nomad has.
If you have absolutely no idea about what you are interested in or you think you’re not an expert at anything, this article is for you.
In this article, I am going to take you through a step-by-step exercise to find not just one but a plethora of ideas to find a profitable niche for your Personal Brand.
Idea Mapping
Let’s first begin with putting some ideas on the paper.
Ask yourself these 5 questions:
- What do other people struggle with or complain about that you find effortless?
- What do your friends say you are great at?
- How do your friends introduce you to other people?
- What do you think you are great at?
- What would you do if you have extra 3 hours on a Saturday or a Sunday afternoon?
To reiterate from the previous article, we know that you do not need to be a world-class expert in anything, you should just be better than the ones you are helping.
So, in answering the above questions, do not worry about sounding too critical, or trying to come up with smart answers. Just write down everything that comes to mind.
Next, write down the:
- Skills you’ve acquired – such as content writing, time management, playing a musical instrument, cooking, comedy, or film reviews, etc.
- Knowledge you’ve acquired – such as any programming language, personal finance, marketing, auditing, world history, quantum physics, literature, film making, journalism, or any knowledge in standardized tests like SAT, GRE, IELTS, PTE, etc.
- Challenges you’ve overcome – such as your fat-to-fit journey or skinny-to-muscular journey, or how you came out of depression, pulled yourself through a tough breakup, defeated your stage fright and gained public speaking confidence, or solved your self-esteem issues.
Look at your own self to find the everyday wonderful things about yourself that you are good at but never really noticed, and try to write at least 5 things under each category: Skills, Knowledge, and Challenges.
Invest Time for this Step
I would suggest that you spend at least an hour doing this exercise with incredible detail and write as many ideas as you can because this is going to be the cornerstone of your Personal Brand journey.
When I did this exercise back in 2016, I even listed one of the skills as, “How to cut potatoes for fries like a pro?” By the way, I really do make the best fries in the world 😉
I was able to write more than 50 small things overall.
The point is that you need to do this exercise with no inhibitions and second guesses. No one is ever going to look at this list of yours. It’s only for you.
So, list out everything you can because this is going to take you a long way in finding your profitable niche and building on it further.
Choose A Winning Idea For Your Personal Brand
In the previous step, you have made a list of the potential ideas on which you can build your Personal Brand.
In this step, we are going to refine those ideas to narrow down on one of those that you can take ahead to start your Personal Brand first.
Once you are on your Personal Brand journey, you can slowly start incorporating other ideas into it as well.
That’s the best part about building your own Personal Brand. You are not restricted by any limitations.
The key lesson for you in this section is that all ideas are not equal.
No matter how exciting an idea sounds and regardless of how much you love it, you need to understand the supply & demand dynamics of the influencers’ market to choose your winning idea.
Therefore, you have to settle on a profitable niche.
The Personal Brand Matrix
Let me explain this by using the Personal Brand Matrix below:
This matrix will enable you to understand the potential and profitability of your idea, even before you start.
Allow me to explain each quadrant in more detail:
Ripe Market – High Demand, Many Influencers
Ideas here have high demand from people. At the same time, there are a lot of influencers making content in these fields.
Examples: fitness tips, food reviews, or travel hacks.
There is a high demand for these. Everyone is looking to build a chiselled body and travel for cheap prices to exotic places. However, there are already many established big players in these fields.
Nonetheless, you can still penetrate this market, but it will take more consistency and effort from your side.
Growing Market – High Demand, Few Influencers
Ideas here have a high demand from people, and only a few influencers are making content in these fields.
Examples: how to earn side income through freelancing or online business, personal grooming tips, mental fitness, productivity, learning any skill, or coaching on social skills.
Therefore, in these fields, you can stand out pretty quickly.
Gone Market – Low Demand, Many Influencers
Ideas here have low demand, yet many influencers are making content in these fields.
Examples: motivational quotes, funny videos, dance reels, or gimmicks like 10 best business ideas to start in 2020.
This style of content has worked well a few years back, but it is not going to work now.
Potential Market – Low Demand, Low Influencers
Ideas here have low demand for now and only a few influencers are making content in these fields.
Some of these fields have a huge potential in the future.
Examples: world-class online courses on digital skills or psychology, or productivity systems to have a perfect work-life balance for corporate employees.
These are largely untapped markets with a lot of promise for the future. Hence, operating in this arena could give you a first-mover advantage.
What You Have to Do
Your task now is to plot all the ideas you jotted down in the idea mapping section and plot them in their respective quadrants.
It does not have to be 100% accurate. You can refine them as you gain more experience. This is just the back-of-the-envelope kind of calculation to refine your thought process.
Doing it now is more important than doing it right at this stage.
You can also analyze each of your ideas using the following tools to get a better sense:
Facebook Audience insights – here you can see how many people are interested in each of the ideas that you have. You can also sort by country, age, and other demographics.
YouTube and Instagram search bars and hashtags – search for your own ideas on YouTube and Instagram to see how many other content creators are building content in these fields and how much reach they have.
Quora – This is like YouTube of written content, is another great platform to gain a good perception of your audience.
Google Trends – Lastly, you can put the keywords of your ideas in the Google Trends tool to know the audience breakdown based on region, country, or the whole world in the last few years. This will give you a sense of how the interest in your ideas is changing.
Once you have plotted your ideas in the respective quadrants, I want you to choose one that excites you the most from the right side – from either the Growing Market quadrant or the Potential Market quadrant. This will be your profitable niche.
Make sure this is something you are excited about.
You can always come back and select a different idea later.
In this article, we will stop here. Do these two steps in order to reach that perfect, profitable niche you can build your Personal Brand on.
In the next article, I will take you to the next step in building your Personal Brand journey.
Over on my blog, Digital Nomad Academy, you can find several other articles and masterclasses that will teach you different aspects of building your own laptop lifestyle.
Also, for behind-the-scenes mischief, you can follow me on Instagram and join 30K+ others like you who are in different phases of building their location independent lifestyles.
Hope to see you around globe-trotting one day 🙂
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