*I’ve written this article for a particular social media project. Because it has captured all my heartfelt thoughts, I decided to publish it right here. You may also read my beginnings here.
My humble beginnings
I started posting and sharing content on Social media all the way back in 2010 when I was just a university student starting out on my own Blogspot site which our lecturer wanted each of us to create. It was a platform meant for us to post up our own writing assignments so that we can read and comment on our classmates’ articles.
While doing so, I came to the realisation that blogging is a powerful and engaging way to share your deep personal thoughts which probably would not have been shared in a classroom setting due to limited time. And that’s why I decided to continue blogging and sharing content. People started noticing my blog and I got invited to events. This eventually lead to me exploring other social media platforms like Instagram and YouTube at their very early stages. For me, this journey has been an exciting one as I get to see how the social media scene has evolved over the years.
Where’s the real value?
If you ask any successful creators why they decide to create content, only a handful will probably tell you that they started creating content because they wanted to monetize their content. Most of them either do it out of passion (because they are inspired by other creators) or accidentally discovered their interest in creating content.
By nature, most of us creators started creating content out of pure joy and the love of sharing ideas. As such, monetization isn’t really a thing in my journey of content creation. And I don’t see why I should capitalise on my content just so that I create ‘ad’-like content to promote a company. I am who I am and I didn’t like it for the fact that my name has to be attached to a brand. Why am I pushing sales for brands?
But these days, I am starting to understand the ‘art of monetisation’. Collaborating with brands isn’t all about capitalisation. It is about creating value for your audience. For instance, if your audience is looking for a romantic restaurant to dine with their partner, as creators, can we add value to the lives of others by recommending our favourite romantic restaurant? Once I realised this, I started asking myself, ‘how can I create content that would value-add to the lives of my audience?’, rather than ‘how can I promote a brand so that I could monetize?’.
Act like water
The future of social media is going to be even more exciting. Understanding the current and future trends is important in shaping my personal development and growth in this industry. I love how social media is in the middle of everything. It’s like the water in the river which flows and fills the ground following the natural curves and slopes of the earth. Because of that, it’s something that will never die out and it is also something which I feel will be part and parcel of my life.
Moving on, it would be really cool if I could be one of the movers and shakers of the future social media trends one day. Other than gaining more followers on my platform, I really hope to see myself grow in wisdom and gain valuable skills so that I can thrive in this digitalised world.
This industry is exciting because everyone is inspired by one another. Every new content that you see online right now is based on the existing content. Content remains fresh just by recycling or ‘upcycling’ them.
