“I usually write about productivity, but now I also want to write about relationships. Should I start a second account?”
No. No, no, no, no, no. All this niche marketing talk has twisted your perspective. For individuals, artists, writers especially, this is not how branding works.
You’re not BMW. You don’t manufacture one-off, interchangeable, everyday items. You don’t need multiple product lines. You’re a person. Every article you write is the result of everything you’ve ever felt, done, and experienced. You can’t segment that. You can’t focus-group yourself. You also don’t have to.
By and large, but on the internet in particular, people follow people — and humans are multi-faceted.
Your readers don’t just read. They do other things, you know? They might go fly fishing in their spare time, work long hours at a desk each day, and really enjoy their kid’s Little League game on the weekend. Their lives are full, just like yours! They won’t mind if you disappear for a while. They’ll appreciate if you tell them a new story. Show a new side of yourself.
You’re not author #7 they read online. That’s not how we remember folks. You’re Nik. Or Devon. Or Sarah. You’re their friend, and you don’t just offer them advice. You offer them a relationship. That relationship is built on the same elements as your other “more real” relationships: trust, connection, emotions, and expectations.
One of those expectations is that you’re more than a shoe in a box. Readers don’t try on your writing and decide if it fits them once and for all. Their relationship with it changes, as does their relationship with you — and it should.
You can, will, and even have to reinvent yourself in front of your readers. If you only talk about productivity for 40 years, you’ll be an expert, but you’ll also be boring. That’s how you alienate readers. New ones will find you, listen to your message, and move on after you repeat it for the 17th time.
Now, imagine the opposite: Instead of the next Pomodoro technique post, you decide to write about your vacation. You explain how being productive has helped you spend meaningful downtime. You share some photos, you show us the amazing valley you went to, and, how, in a moment of youthful spontaneity, you decided to try fly fishing. Guess who’s heart lights up right now? The fly fishing aficionado just reaffirmed to himself: You are my friend.
You are a writer. Branching out shouldn’t feel scary. It should feel exciting. Most of your initial branch-outs will be in topics that are related to your main topic anyway. I went from productivity to motivation to psychology to philosophy. I never felt like I “jumped.” Like I was leaving folks behind. I sure lost some along the way, but others grew ever closer.
In the end, however “irrelevant” what you want to talk about today may seem, there is one element that ties together all the gifts you give to us: you. Life is too short to split yourself down the middle. You’re a human being. Thousands of thoughts run through your mind each day. You take hundreds of micro-actions every hour. You’re allowed to think, live, and act in and with the entire world, not just a small part of it. Just like we, your readers, are allowed to be curious about all of it and to skip what doesn’t interest us.
Of course, there are scenarios in which creating multiple writing personas makes sense. If you fear for your physical safety because of the sensitive nature of the information you’re about to share, you might want to stay anonymous. If you’re working towards a picture much larger than yourself, an avatar, brand, or symbol may carry it better than you can. Think of Batman or Anonymous. You might also just run an experiment, like Shaunta Grimes did.
In most cases, however, the urge to compartmentalize and distribute your writing across a variety of separately branded channels is born out of fear or delusion.
If you think you’re good enough to rise meteorically on two, three, four, five different platforms or accounts at the same time, I have bad news for you: You’re just not that good. No one really is. When you dig deeper into the story of people with big followings across social platforms, usually, you’ll find they were all-in on one of them, exploded at some point, then brought some of their followers over to another. They didn’t go from zero to one million followers in five places at the same time. Just like you, they weren’t that good.
If you’re worried about losing whatever readership you have and want to present yourself to them like a set of neatly arranged cutlery, I have more bad news for you: You’re not that interesting. You won’t find thousands of people who care about how you do your nails and nothing else — unless nails are your life’s primary concern. If you’re lucky, however, a few of us who care about your publishing advice will also care about your nails. Talking about your makeup routine might create nice little moments between you and us, your existing fans. But you definitely won’t lose us. Worst case, we’ll wait for more great authorship talk from you. That’s fine. We’re busy too.
Don’t be Voldemort. Don’t split your soul into too many parts. You only have one. You’re one human. One life. Your greatest art will flow from the totality of your unique perspectives, emotions, actions, and experiences. It takes all of them to be in it for the sum to be larger than its parts. Please, make the sum larger than its parts. If you do, we’ll follow you wherever you go — and we won’t care what it says on your profile.