How To Become A Content Creator
I received a DM (direct message) on instagram a few months ago from a follower who said she had followed me for a while and loved the content I created and wanted to ask how she could become a content creator too! I remembered her from my page & knew she was being genuine so when she asked me to help her, I was happy to!
Now, while I may come across self important & perhaps overtly confident on my socials, I am in fact quite a down-to-earth, humble gal. It’s true I have not yet amassed an eye-wateringly huge following, but I have still secured countless paid and gifted content creation work for a number of years now. As I write this, partway through 2022, I am even employed by an Australian brand as their in-house content creator on a part-time basis, which is perfect for me because it gives me the time to juggle motherhood with my freelance clients too.
Without harping on much more, let me share with you what I think you need to do to succeed in the industry. And, importantly, I am HAPPY to share with you what I know. I DO want to see you succeed too - I believe there is more than enough to go around and there’s plenty of room for all of us.
So here’s what I talked about with my follower friend:
STARTING OUT AS A CONTENT CREATOR
Pick a niche. Something that you’re MOST interested in as well as good at. My niche is sustainable fashion brands, vintage hauls and beauty/makeup. My friend wanted to focus on homewares and home styling.
Buy the products that you love and purchase from the brands that you one day want to work with! And start today, creating content that you think they’ll love! How are brands going to book you for jobs if you have nothing to show them? If you don’t have the budget for brand new things, start by using things you already have at home or shop on Facebook Marketing place etc. You need to practice and have some content on your feed that you can show to brands to demonstrate what you can do!
Find some editing and design apps that you feel comfortable using as these will make your life a heck-of-a-lot easier & help you stay organised and your work look professional. The apps I use are listed at the bottom - some of them are paid and some are free
Nurture you existing audience and make sure you’re building a genuine engaged community. This is key if you are wanting to convince a brand that they should work with you - delete any bot accounts and people that aren’t really interested in what you do and be sure to spend time liking, commenting and interacting with the remaining people that you have!
STUDY
She also asked me what my background was and if I had studied anything in particular before I started. I must admit, I have spent a lot of time learning marketing and I am a published creative writer and trained copywriter. I also grew up in the modelling industry at a young age so I’ve seen the process of marketing a product and selling from a number of different perspectives - the designer or brand, the Marketer and the customer. I recently completed an online course in video editing by CinemaThom too which I found really thorough.
Having a copywriting background was key when it came to choosing ‘hooks’ for my reels and wording captions and understanding the psychological reasons behind why a person buys a product, ‘the buyer journey’ and a number of other things.
APPS I USE EVERYDAY
Canva
Flick Hashtags
Google Drive account and WhatsApp
Preview scheduling App
The Right Fit and #Gifted
To be successful in content creation, you need to be creatively-minded, naturally, as content creation is all about thinking of new ways to engage an audience and sell a product. You’ll want to spend time learning social media platforms such as tik tok and instagram so that you can create content best suited for that platform too.
I hope that helps, let me know if you have any questions in the comments below!
X Bec
