As as new content creator, you’re faced with several, and sometimes seemingly overwhelming choices like finding your niche, or voice in a deeply saturated market. As trends move faster, and viewer attention spans shorten, what is a new content creator supposed to do to reach an audience?

Beginning in 2004, Dr. Gloria Mark, a professor of informatics at the University of California, researched the decline in the ability to focus. In 2004, Mark found the average attention span to be 2 ½ minutes. Years later it dropped to about 75 seconds. The findings now say “people only pay attention to one screen for an average of 47 seconds.”  As a content creator, how do you grab and hold those short attention spans and social media saturation?

Identify a Problem

As a creator, you have options and a world of opportunities. One of the best ways to capture your audience’s attention is to first find a problem. In the words of Vanilla Ice, yo, you solve it with a new approach. Statistically, “over 75% of customer relationships are lost because customers don’t find the content they need.” You are providing answers and adding value. Creative problem solving shows you’re innovative, encourages creativity, and can facilitate further engagement. 

When looking for a problem to solve, or creating eye-catching content, seek out inspiration. Are there other influencers or companies that inspire you? Look at their business models. What worked for them, what didn’t? Ask questions. Keep asking questions until you find the root cause. Once you’ve found the heart of the problem, you can find countermeasures and trackable solutions. This not only works for content creation, but as the basis of your own business model. 

Create Value

After several years of study, research, and trial and error, Sakichi Toyoda, founder of Toyota Industries, initially wasn’t looking to build a car. His first invention came from the desire to help. Toyoda desired to help his community and more specifically, his family who were weavers on large handlooms. The work was slow, inefficient and took long hours to create a single piece of fabric.

Toyoda wanted to improve both the process and his family’s lives. In his search, Toyoda created a power loom that was steam powered. Toyoda found a solution to not only the loom, but along the way solved many problems while also serving his community. He also was open to inspiration from many sources and asked questions. This eventually led him to create not only one of the world’s most trusted car companies, but he also is responsible for the creation of The Toyota Way. This method is now considered one of the most innovative and sought after business production processes.  

Don’t be Afraid to Fail

Failure isn’t an option, it’s an opportunity. Those inspirational and successful businesses or content creators weren’t instantly successful either. Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak started Apple Computers living in Jobs’ garage, beginning the now $3.15 billion company for $1300. The initial $1300 was from personal savings and money borrowed from family and friends. Jobs, like Toyoda, also reiterates the need to ask questions, “dig deep, and challenge old methods.” 

Thomas Edison made over 1,000 attempts before finally having his light bulb moment. Edison’s teachers said he was “too stupid to learn anything.,” He was fired from his first two jobs because he was “non-productive.” When he failed at a creation, he said “I will not say I failed 1,000 times, I will say that I found 1,000 ways that won’t work.” The fear of failure is the enemy of creativity. 

Failure isn’t failure, it’s experimentation. 

Use those so-called failures as content, use polls or blog posts to ask questions. This allow others to experience similar processes. This shows your audience examples of how to better solve a real, working problem, creating authenticity and adding value. Audience engagement creates conversations, meaning you’re increasing engagement. 

Get creative! Be willing, open and ready to see and do things differently.

Don’t worry about finding your niche. 

This may seem contrary to other pieces of advice that repeatedly say to find your niche. When you’re new, you won’t know what works for you or what your voice is yet. While you do want to find your voice, don’t expect it to happen immediately. When first starting, follow what interests you and don’t worry about a niche. It will find you through trial and error. Do you love travel and your dog? Create content about dog friendly travel destinations! And don’t worry about whether your idea has been done already. It hasn’t because your content will be your voice, your perspective and thus be unique. 

Consistency is key

Instead of worrying about a niche, focus on consistent content creation that adds value. You’ll find what works, and what doesn’t work for you. Consistent creation will also open your way for inspiration and more content. You don’t have to be an expert when you’re starting out, but with consistency, you will be.

Create a Plan, set Goals

To help you create consistency, you will need to create an actionable plan. Creating an actionable plan should be something uncomplicated and easy to use. There are numerous tools to help you, like a Kanban board. You can create your own Kanban board using sites like Trello or Jira that are online and free. Both have apps and websites so you can use them almost anywhere. 

For more visibility, the traditional Kanban board is using a white board and moving cards or sticky cards. This is a great addition to your office space and there is something deeply satisfying when you get to move your sticky note from “To Do,” “In Progress,” to “Done” and it’s easily measurable. 

Try out an AI creator like ChatGPT and let it create a roadmap for you. Type in some keywords like “3 Month Content Creator Roadmap.” Play with the keywords and it will create a customized plan to suit your growing needs.

Create a Mixture of Content

To create a strong audience, you need a mixture of content both in formatting and monetization. Your formatting will depend upon what audience you want to reach first and foremost. If you’re a blogger, you’ll want to have a mixture of short and long written content whereas someone who wants to create videos will need to look at different content creation. Check out different formats, test your strengths and weaknesses. You might surprise yourself!

A good mixture of content should also include content that isn’t about you or your company. In an effort to increase visibility and search engine optimization (SEO), many creators flood their sites with content only about themselves. While the goal is to generate customers, constant branded information can appear impersonal or like content mills that have a “one size fits all” feeling. This can actually hinder your efforts by turning potential viewers away. 

Reposting

One quick, easy way to mix up your content is reposting. Use those companies and content you find inspiring and repost an article or other information you find interesting. You don’t have to be an expert, let someone else’s expertise do the talking. Reposting doesn’t have to directly relate to your company or niche, but you will want to make a comment regarding why you are reposting. Include a link to the original creator’s content. Always give credit to the original creator. 

Reposting is a great way to build community, support other creators and participate in current trends. By reposting, you are increasing both you and the original creator’s traffic, and generating conversations and costs you nothing but a little time.

Consider reevaluating how you measure success and set goals accordingly. 

To combat social media oversaturation consider different sets of goals. Ask yourself what metrics are most valuable to you- number of people that scroll past your content versus that one person who finds your post relevant enough that they save it and tag a friend? Reevaluating the metrics is another way to increase your success rate while breaking through algorithmic competition.

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