For some time now, I’ve felt lost with my blog and YouTube channel. Although I'm perfectly happy with both of them, there was something that I just couldn't put my finger on, something that made me feel like I wasn't living up to my potential on both platforms.
Over the last few weeks everything has started to click into place due to the unexpected success of my photography video at the beginning of the month. I was honestly expecting that either no one would watch it, or it would get a ton of dislikes for being so different to my regular content, but I’m so glad I went ahead with it (shoutout to Charline for giving me the final nudge) because it’s changed everything for me. In terms of the views:likes ratio, the audience retention, the fantastic comments, and the number of new subscribers gained, it’s possibly my most successful video. A lot of people connected to it and I'm very proud of that. I felt like I'd inspired my viewers, which is not a feeling I normally get when I upload my usual beauty-heavy content.
It's not that I don't like talking about makeup - I really do, and I could do it all day. You've seen my hauls, you know I have a serious addiction to beauty junk. It's just that it's such an over-saturated topic in the blogging and YouTube world that I feel like I don't have anything original to contribute. I'm tired of my content looking the same as everyone else's. I want to be unique, and to do that I have to embrace the things that make me unique. I'm a photographer and a story-teller, and I want to make a place that people can get lost in. I want to share my world with you, and beauty is only a small part of my world.
The biggest change will probably be on my YouTube channel, which over the next few weeks is going to evolve from being 90% makeup tutorials to having more creative content - including my own personal version of vlogging, behind-the-scenes videos on my photoshoots, and experimental short films.
I want to make the videos that I didn't think would "fit" on my channel or that I thought my audience wouldn't like last year. Beauty will still have a home on my channel, but it will have a much more personal touch - think more Get Ready With Me videos and less tutorials. People frequently say that to succeed on YouTube you have to have a niche... but I've been playing by the rules for nearly a year, and now I want to try something different.
My plan for this blog is to use it as the bridge between my YouTube channel and my photography portfolio. For a long time I've felt like the two were parallel worlds, but this year I want to bring them together so that when I meet a potential client (or if I ever apply for a PhD), I can show them both websites. I'll be covering the same themes of beauty, lifestyle and photography but again in a more personal style: think less reviews, and more of a photographic diary. I quite like the way my blog looks at the moment but I'm itching for a change... something that looks less like a blog, and more like an online magazine, if that makes sense.
What do you think of the changes? I hope you're as excited for the new mix of content this year as I am. Let me know what you think!