How To Rediscover Your “Why”

Dec 16, 2020

Whether you’re a blogger or a small business owner that uses social media to promote your products and services, rediscovering your why can make a huge difference on how you go about promoting your business and the connections you make.

Before we get started, I want you to think back to when you got started with your blog or business.

What was the reason that you started it in the first place?

You probably had something that stirred this desire in you, in addition to making money by talking about the things you like.

What is it about you that makes you special?

What is it about you that nobody else does? That someone that would come to you and your blog to hear what you have to say?

It’s easy to get started and have this “why” and be passionate and then things start to happen when you have people coming to you asking to promote their products, using their affiliate links, and you start to make money.

Overtime, you start to slip away from the original goal of why you even started in the first place.

You start feeling like you don’t have much of a direction. You take whatever comes to you and apply it to your business.

You try to be selective that they are things that you like and that you feel confident sharing with your followers, but other things can get in there and it ends up being a lot.

The “Why” of Your Blog & Influence

What I want you to do is to think about your blog and your influence.

Strip away all of the opportunities for any way that someone could pay you, collaborate with you, promote you. Strip it all back.

Now, think about what you really care about.

If you are somebody who started your blog because you wanted to share sustainable fashion and that’s something that really matters to you, WHY does that matter to you?

Think about what is important to you about sustainability? What is it that’s important to you about making sure that you make a conscious choice whenever you pick the clothing that you’re going to wear and share?

If you’re a food blogger, why did you start sharing recipes? What is the story behind this? Did you maybe learn how to cook because you had to?

Maybe your family was deployed overseas and you had to learn how to cook so that you could eat meals that weren’t from the freezer. Maybe it was a journey for you that you actually found was fun.

WHY is the deeper reason? WHY do you want to share this with other people? WHAT is the deeper reason for all of that?

The market is really saturated with people who are generalists right now. Influencers and bloggers that do all of the things.

Finding Your Niche

I totally get the appeal of being a lifestyle blogger.

It’s fun and exciting. You can be dynamic. It’s a way of being in a niche.

You always hear about the importance of niche-ing down but there’s a balance between niche-ing down and niching down into something that you might not find interesting down the road.

Say you started to talk really specifically about how to plant orchids and then maybe your hesitation is that “oh my goodness, if I decide to start talking about orchids, I’m going to have to talk about that for a long time.”

So instead, you decide to be a lifestyle blogger who happens to talk about orchids whenever it's fun.

Okay, but what is the reason that you are a lifestyle blogger? What is the value that you are bringing to people’s lives?

I was recently talking to my friendly Stephanie about her blog and we were working through this same thing.

She was trying to figure out what she brings to the table that is special.

She likes having the ability to touch on different topics and she likes the lifestyle blog. But what we figured out was that her special thing is helping younger women get through the stages of their life by having someone to look up to that has been there and done that.

Stephanie realized that there were a lot of young women that don’t have that kind of mentor or mother figure that can teach them how to do the things that she knows how to do. She wants to be able to provide that to other women.

If people understand what you’re all about, that’s a reason to follow you.

Finding a Reason for People to Follow You

With so many bloggers and influencers out there, you really need to have a reason for people to follow you.

It doesn’t have to be that you specialize in making floral arrangements out of peonies. It doesn’t have to be THAT specific.

It needs to be: “I have a reason for sharing this.”

What do you have a passion for?

Bring what you have a passion for to people so that they understand that there’s more to a specific topic. That there’s more behind the scenes than there is just on the surface.

In order to start figuring out what you’re passionate about, I want you to journal.

Get a journal and just starting writing:

  • Why would people want to follow me?
  • Why am I bringing to the table that’s special and different?

If writing in a journal doesn’t work for you, try doing a voice memo on your phone. Talk it out, have a conversation with yourself, and talk through the process of:

  • What is my why?
  • Why do I care?
  • What’s the value that I bring to these people?

Then you’re able to identify that value that you bring to people and that’ll help find your deeper why.

It helps you find the specific reason why you share the content that you share.

Once you’ve journaled it out or you’ve done a voice memo, you’re starting to hone in on your thing of what that value is.

Now it’s time to go to your people on social media and start having these conversations with them to start to have the deeper why conversations.

Your Next Steps

I want you to really start thinking about digging deep and finding that “why” again.

You found it once, so go back and find it again, really define it, and go to your audience. Bring those things to them, have those deeper conversations, look at your analytics and see what hits well.

This is what’s going to really give you the results you’re looking for.

You might find that you lose a following, but now that you’re really staking a claim in the ground, you’re going to find the people that gravitate towards you and care what you’re talking about.

We know that brands are looking for micro influencers because engagement levels are higher with people who have less than 1 million and less than 100,000 followers.

Heck, they’re even looking for people that only have a couple thousand followers because the engagement is so high and the connection is there.

I encourage you to dig deeper and find that “why” so you can move forward in a much clearer and more passionate way. It’ll be reflected in everything you do.

Always cheering you on,

Kate

Creator of the Smarter Not Harder: 3-Day Workweeks for Millennial Entrepreneurs©  Program

Owner + Founder, Kate Waldo + Co. 

P.S. Curious how you can grow your 6-figure business while slashing your workweek in half? Click here to learn about the Smarter Not Harder© program!

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