Finding Your Niche and Personal Brand
Choosing what you will make and for whom, and expressing a consistent, authentic identity: self-inventory, audience research, niche validation, positioning, content pillars and series, voice and tone, visual identity, boundaries and privacy, names and brand protection, measuring and evolving a brand, and a complete brand plan.
CRE-110 Year 1 3 credits 12 lessons · 4 h 57 min
Offered by HSM University · Content Creation
This is the Canadian version of this course. See the American version.
What you'll learn
- Define a niche by topic, audience and purpose, and explain how personal brands work as promises built on trust
- Complete an honest self-inventory of skills, interests, energy, values, story and constraints, and generate candidate niches
- Research an audience with listening, search data, surveys and interviews, and build evidence-based personas and jobs to be done
- Validate niches on demand, competition and viability using a weighted scoring matrix and a planned publishing test
- Write a positioning statement, map competitors and choose meaningful points of difference
- Plan content pillars, purposes, formats and series that fit real production capacity and multiple platforms
- Describe a brand voice with a voice chart and adapt tone appropriately across situations
- Design an accessible visual identity with a palette, typography, thumbnail templates and a style guide
- Set boundaries for sharing, protect privacy and safety, respect others' privacy and disclose sponsorships and AI use honestly
- Choose and check a name, secure handles and a domain, write bios and media kits, and take basic legal steps to protect a brand
- Measure a brand with brand metrics and NPS, recognize when to evolve, and manage expansions, pivots and rebrands
- Assemble a coherent brand plan, one-page canvas, ninety-day plan and risk register
Course content
12 lessons · 4 h 57 min total · final exam
- 1 Niches, brands and why they matter 25 min · quiz
- 2 Starting with yourself: the self-inventory 25 min · quiz
- 3 Audience research: who you serve and what they need 24 min · quiz
- 4 Validating a niche: demand, competition and viability 25 min · quiz
- 5 Positioning and differentiation 24 min · quiz
- 6 Content pillars, formats and series 25 min · quiz
- 7 Voice and tone 25 min · quiz
- 8 Visual identity 25 min · quiz
- 9 Authenticity, boundaries and privacy 25 min · quiz
- 10 Names, handles, bios and protecting your brand 25 min · quiz
- 11 Measuring and evolving your brand 24 min · quiz
- 12 Your brand plan: putting it all together 25 min · quiz
- E Final exam 20 questions
Requirements
Recommended background. You can start any course at any time.
Description
Choosing what you will make and for whom, and expressing a consistent, authentic identity: self-inventory, audience research, niche validation, positioning, content pillars and series, voice and tone, visual identity, boundaries and privacy, names and brand protection, measuring and evolving a brand, and a complete brand plan.
Part of the Film & Photography stream, typically taken in year 1.