The creation of a content creator

2009

As an introverted young boy I spent a lot of time at home on my computer. In the later months of 2009 I discovered YouTube. After a while, I took it upon myself to begin creating content on the platform. Toying around with a few channel names and content approaches during the entirety of 2010, I finally created my current channel in January of 2011. The channel has since then become a personal blog of sorts; posting video content related to the hobbies I am most passionate about during different periods of my life.

2012

Being a creative-minded kid who is interested in all things digital, while looking for a photo editing application for my new android phone, I stumbled upon a newly released app in the Google Play store called Instagram. After mindlessly creating an account and having spent 5 minutes drawing on my hand in class, I uploaded my first Instagram in-feed post in the summer of 2012 after taking a photo of my artwork. This marks the beginning of my exploration of Instagram as a social platform.

2013

Diving deeper into YouTube, I started off with videos about fingerboarding (miniature skateboard for your fingers) and building an audience who is as equally passionate and interested in this hobby as me. Naturally progressing from fingerboarding to skateboarding. This was a very smooth transition as I kept up with both hobbies simultaneously and my audience were also doing the same, from what I was able to gather as the content creator. Unboxing videos were becoming very popular on the platform, which lead to me joining the trend and making some unboxing videos for my audience. After creating and posting some very high energy and, for a lack of a better word, crazy unboxing videos in 2013, the channel really gained some traction.

During 2014 and 2015 I was riding the wave of popularity on the platform; doing everything I could to optimise my strategy and utilising the platform to the best of my ability. I was funneling my viewers to my Instagram profile and working on building a following on there too. Throughout this period, my efforts were largely focused on learning how the platform works with the aim to further build and expand my reach and engagement.

2016

Spending the majority of 2016 pursuing the dream of becoming a "YouTuber", I was able to organise my life around the creation of content for YouTube. Using the knowledge I had gained during the last few years, I had created an optimum schedule that meant I was able to get on with my college work, enjoy my personal/social life and hobbies while creating content for my YouTube channel. However, stumbling upon automotive vloggers on YouTube threw a wrench in the works. Indulging in this new genre meant that my background interest in cars, driving and modifying them now became something I actively pursued as a hobby.

Transitioning into making videos about cars was difficult as the budget required to create car content was much further out of my reach than I had realised. Spending a lot of my time researching and learning about cars meant that I was not making the videos that my audience was expecting and in turn lost the momentum I had gained on the platform. My engagement figures were dropping which lead to huge discouragement in continuing to make content at the same rate.

2017

At the end of 2017 is when I began my undergraduate degree in Media, Industry and Innovation at the University of Brighton. After finally getting my hands on my first car in the final month of the year, I created a new channel that would be solely dedicated to building a new audience - a group of viewers who would be interested in cars, the same way I was. My desire for a refined audience also lead me to deleting about 80% of the following I had accumulated on my personal Instagram due to them being "inactive", which retrospectively, was of course a mistake.  Working on the new channel showed me my inability to afford a consistent flow of fresh car content and in turn meant that the channel ended up becoming more about recording my experiences, rather than a pursuit for expanding and gaining more traction on the platform.

2019

About a year or so after booting up this new channel of mine, I was fortunate enough to meet some wonderful industry professionals during my internship at Keko London - a creative advertising agency in Central London. Coming into Keko London as a Social Media Management intern gave me the opportunity to get to know the ins and outs of all the line managers' roles; Producer, Strategy, Client Services, Marketing, PR, Creative and Design. A couple weeks into my placement I was set the task of putting together a small Valentine's Day Campaign for the Porsche GB Instagram account. With the help of the Porsche social account manager I learned the internals of Instagram as a platform and how to create a successful campaign.

Later on in the year, I went back into Keko London for another four weeks of internship where I worked solely on the Porsche GB instagram. Some of my time there was spent working closely with the social manager and other staff to plan, create and schedule infeed posts to go public on the Porsche GB Instagram throughout the entire summer. During one of the weeks, the team was at The Goodwood Festival of Speed creating content on the ground while I was on stand-by, back at the office, ready to help with any spill over and watching their strategy in action. After gaining the professional perspective I lacked, I decided to scrap my new channel project and simply continue uploading all content on my original channel from 2011. The reasoning behind this decision was purely based on the fact that I no longer desired to be an "influencer" or a "YouTuber". The channel is now effectively a genuine public display of all the things that I have been/ get up to involving my hobbies. 

2020

In the early months of 2020 I got the opportunity to do a week of industry placement at the Toyota GB head office in Epsom with their lovely social media team. There, I was assigned the task of analysing, comparing and suggesting improvements that can be made to TGB’s YouTube channel. While working on this task I was shown some of the team's strategy in larger scale community management and was also allowed some hands-on experience with Falcon – a social media marketing platform. After conducting a formal presentation about my findings during the week and receiving overwhelmingly positive feedback, the current idea for my Live Project was born.

Since then, the social media team at Toyota have also agreed to be full partners in the project. In addition, resulting from my week with the TGB social team, I was given the opportunity to write a blog post for their 'Toyota People' section that would highlight the story of owning the Lexus I owned at the time. The creation of the blog post involved me organising and conducting the photo shoot for the car and also writing the entire body text of the blog post itself. Ultimately, the blog post was a successful with accumulating over 500 hits in the first week. At some point in the early spring, I took on managing a personal car/ automotive Instagram account. The purpose of which was purely to keep a record of my adventures with cars over the summer, also instinctively employing social management techniques I had previously learned and aimed to further broaden my understanding of the platform and its algorithms.

2021

Being able to combine all my knowledge and experience from within the field has lead to my ultimate decision to pursue corporate social media management as a profession. Working on my personal social channels will now solely be a pastime.