You know how much I love TikTok!
Pretty unsurprisingly, I’m a fan of Chris Olsen. He’s loved my many on TikTok, and I’m one of the many!
So, anyway, someone made a Chris filter!
Here’s the part I thought was most interesting about that. If you follow Chris, you definitely have some familiarity with all the ‘Chrises’ of the filter – the coffee-giving Chris, climbing Chris, sobbing Chris, and on and on. There are lots of Chrises. They’re all unique. And they’re all familiar.
And I feel like Chris embodies some things we’ve been talking about these last handful of days – and even something I haven’t!
1) Most people say you have to ‘niche down’ for TikTok – pick one thing and really go with it.
I don’t really feel like I want to have truly only one niche. I like to do a lot of different things, and talk about a lot of different things. [That’s been an ‘issue’ with the blog too – not a huge issue, as I’ve just, in many ways, treated this as a journal and not tried to monetize it or worry tooooo much about followers, for the most part.] But yeah, it’s hard to figure out where you fit if you do too many things.
BUT Chris has VERY successfully made a huge following off of basically just being himself. He has so many different things he does, that someone made a whole filter that cycles through a ton of them! And yet, he still has 8 million followers. Didn’t seem like he had to niche down.
2) Chris REALLY successfully made a giant pivot – like making a whole new life/chapter/’brand’ whatever. Originally, he was known as one half of Chris & Ian. Their whole thing was being on relationship TikTok, and making cute/funny TikToks together.
It was probably really hard and scary to wonder how to completely pivot to doing your own thing. And he handled it like a pro – to the point that ‘relationship Chris’ isn’t even in his filter! (And I think(?) it hasn’t even been a year since they’ve split…. Okay, I just looked it up. I’m nothing if not a curious woman for the people. It was January.) And I’m drafting this in August. So, it didn’t take too long at all for him to really find his whole own thing on TikTok.
[And I do understand perhaps the person making the filter just thought it would be cruel to bring that old Chris into the picture, as opposed to him truly having shed that version so much it wasn’t even thought of. But still!]
I guess, in conclusion, I’m really happy for Chris. He is truly doing TikTok (maybe even life) right! I’m sure there are plenty of lessons to be taken away from how he’s owning that app and is becoming like the best friend of TikTok!