Do You Have to Show Your Face if you want to grow on Social media? No, you don’t. Whether you’re camera shy or growing a business or product face account, in this article we going to teach you a few strategies for how you can grow your online presence, whether you want to grow on Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube without needing to show your face. For people who want to grow their personal brand, meaning they want to use their authentic self-image and likeness to grow their social media presence and eventually make money. Of course, there are thousands of other strategies out there.
Table of Contents
1. Picking a Niche:
It really goes a little bit beyond that. Really. What’s going to work well for you is diving into how you can make an entire brand make sense without showing your face. Let me give you a few niche examples, and then we’ll dive into how to create a brand around that specific niche. A few industries that work well for not showing your face are gaming, cooking, drawing, or art reshare or meme accounts (Instagram has recently changed their algorithm about that) travel, book, hobby, and pet accounts.
When you have your niche or your industry picked out, it helps to create your image to be faceless or focus your brand on the industry that you’re in. For example, for people who want to grow their personal brand as a creator, we encourage them to put their face in their profile image and have their handles say something like fashion with Emily or Emily Marie shop. We encourage them to make themselves part of their business using their business name, photo, and handle to all match their brand. But when you’re faceless, what you can do instead is emphasize the focus on the topic or industry that you’re in.
You can utilize a very clear photo or logo to represent the industry that you’re in, plus having a username like @FortniteAllNight or @HiddenGemSanDiego @SomethingSweet @TastyTBR all these are handled examples that focus on the industry that it’s in. You have gaming, travel, baking, and reading. Maybe you already have a name, maybe you don’t.
2. Play with Different Styles of Faceless Content:
There are so many ways to be faceless in video content and in photo content. Obviously, right now we’re in an era where the video is the now and every platform is pushing video hard. So if you want to grow fast we recommend sticking to a video strategy. Here are seven different styles of video that you can create to remain faceless. Of course, each of these styles is going to vary in difficulty depending on what niche you’re in.
A. Stock video:
There are plenty of websites that you could go to to download videos that are already recorded and made for you. You just get to piece them together and turn them into your own story. A website that I use for this is Story Blocks. They have stock photos and video options.
B. Prop Style Video:
So what you would do in this case is your recording. But it’s not your face, it’s objects, your hands. The common use of this is in the cooking industry where people have those overhead shots of their phones, cooking, making dishes, and even doing art so those are more prop-focused videos.
C. Screen Recordings or Screen Shares.
This makes the most sense for gaming Walkthrough tutorials, where you’re showing how to do something on a computer or on your phone, or even on celebrity gossip pages. You can have screenshots of articles and simply use a voiceover talking about each thing.
D. Waveform Video:
If you’re somebody who has a podcast, you can share sound bites via short-form video in hopes of it growing as a trend. Audio. It doesn’t even have to be a recorded face version of your podcast. You can just use that audio Byte, have maybe stock video going behind it, or a blank screen with the text popping up.
E. Graphic Options:
If you’re pretty good at graphic design or have a little spare change to invest in somebody on Fiverr to make graphic videos for you, that’s definitely an option.
F. Voiceover Style Videos:
Maybe you don’t have a podcast and you just have really banging quotes that you want to get out there. It’s a fun strategy that you could use to create potentially viral audios where people are coming back to your account to find audios or creative audios.
G. Reshare or Meme account.
This is something that is not as successful on Instagram right now, because recently Adama Siri did announce that they are dialing back on pushing out content that isn’t original content. They really want their creators to be creating original content for the platform. So Reshare accounts won’t be very successful on Instagram. But you might have more luck there on TikTok or YouTube shorts.
Then the same thing with Memes. Memes can be really successful. It’s so easy to download a Meme or GIF. However, if you want to pronounce it, go into Canva turn it into a four-second video and that is your real, or that is your TikTok. Those are a few different approaches that you can have when creating faceless styled content.
3. Grow on Social Media with Quality over Quantity:
The thing that a lot of Faceless creators have in common is the quality of their videos is top-notch. And even if it’s not the best quality in the world, it is eyecatching. They’re not just pumping out content left and right five times a day, they’re taking their time to craft a really well-created, solid video. This ties into storytelling. How are you going to keep your audience from continuing to watch your video once you grab their attention? You have your four value pillars.
- Educational
- Entertaining
- Inspirational
- Relatable.
4. Study What Works:
Specifically in your industry. Look at other accounts that are capturing attention without having a face attached to their account. Even as you’re scrolling on the for you page when you are stopped. Like, what makes you stop scrolling when it’s not somebody’s face? Check your own actions as you’re scrolling on the review page. What gets you to stop scrolling? Take note of that and try to implement those strategies when you’re creating your content. We will say if you’re trying to hide your face, this is kind of like give and take.
5. Leave Your Call to Action Pinned in the Comments:
Actually, always use a call to action in the comments. Most people go to the comments before even finishing the video. We just go to the comments section, see the community, and see what’s happening there. It’s so important to pin your call to action in the comments. We think there are some rules on TikTok right now where you can’t say Follow me for this comment below this.
You can’t say certain phrases, so you just have to get creative with your call to action instead of saying Follow me. For more content like this, you can say something like, if you like the content like this, check out our page. If you like the content like this, you’ll love our other videos. Something that encourages them to go to your profile and binge a little bit more.
6. Conclusion:
It is really interesting that once they started using creators who were willing to show their faces on their profiles, that’s when their accounts really started to take off. Which makes me ask you, why do you want to remain faceless? Why do you want your page to be faceless? There’s no right or wrong answer, but just something to think about. It does help create a potential, deeper connection with your audience.
