Who are you, who are you talking to, and what do you want to say?
When we begin our journey into content creation, there are a number of different factors to consider. What platform will we produce on? What basic format of content are we going to make? What is my release schedule going to look like? I could make this list go on and on, but that would only further prove the point I’m about to make.
Finding your voice is one of the most important steps you can take while building your brand. It creates a consistent voice, which makes your audience more comfortable, since they will know what to expect for you. It can also make your content more entertaining. The three major elements of finding your voice that we’re going to discuss today are the answers to these questions:
Who are you, who are you talking to, and what do you want to say?
Who are you? More importantly, who is the person you are putting in front of the camera? There are a number of routes that you can go with this question, and none of them are necessarily wrong. Here are a few of the more popular options: For starters, many people just are straight-up being their normal personality in front of the camera. This is a solid option, as it is the easiest, since you are already that person. One of the biggest drawbacks to this style is that your mood is more likely to affect you, leading to a more inconsistent performance.
Another common practice is to use a magnified version of your personality. Essentially, this works by picking traits about yourself that you think would be good for the character, and then leaning into those traits. BIGBITE Joe, one of our community admins, uses this model. He said that he focuses on the upbeat, happy-go-lucky parts of his personality, which helps him stay high-energy during the content. He went on to say that it’s easy to stay in character, because the character is based on him.
The third common practice is creating an entirely new character. This is especially common with people using cosplay/full makeup/costume/vtuber wardrobes for their content. The idea here is simple acting, where you create a new character, and act as if you were them. While this is straightforward acting, it does require both at least a modicum of acting chops, as well as the ability to keep a character straight and within canon. If you take this approach, we wholeheartedly recommend planning out the character on paper, and having a full idea of who this character is before creating content.
Now, equally important to who you are, is who you are talking to. Your audience is often reflective of who you are as a person, and who you intend to reach. At the onset, you can really decide who that person you want to reach is, what they are into, and what they would watch. And then you have to find that person, which is an entire series on it’s own. Once you’ve been going for a while, you can compare notes with your platform’s analytics reports to see if you are finding your people, or if you need to readjust your approach to align with the audience you’ve found. Of course, interacting with the community you’ve built is a key factor in this. Here at the Noname Nerd, we know that a large swath of our audience is into making content online, so we’ve developed a blog series, podcasts, classes, you name it, to cater to that audience, and have adjusted our tone to fit that space.
Perhaps, most important thing on this list is figuring out what you want to say. What sort of message do you want to share on your channel? What kind of vibes do you want to give off? For example, here at the Noname Nerd, our message is one of inclusivity. We want everyone to feel welcome here, so we focus on content that makes people feel welcome. We also want to foster peoples’ creativity, so we focus on topics that can help creators.
In the world of content creation, consistency is key. People love knowing that they can come to you for the content that you create, but who are you? Clarifying your personal voice by asking yourself who you are, who you are talking to, and what you want to say can go a long way to building that consistency, and in turn, building your brand. If you try these techniques, we’d love to hear about how it went! You can find us in our Discord and Facebook at nerdsbelonghere.com! Join us next time when we discuss finding the voice of a team. And of course, make sure to stay tuned for more great tips and tricks!