BE YOU!

This week, we heard from content creator, TV personality and actor, Nneka Elliot. After years being a news anchor on TV, she left to find herself and followed her true passion of digital content creation. Nneka shares her inspiring story of taking a chance and what it’s like navigating a new online environment.

Currently, Nneka manages a YouTube channel, website, newsletter, Instagram, blog, acts and appears on television on different talk shows to share her beauty tips. With so many channels happening at once, Nneka recommends planning your content seasonally rather than weekly or monthly. This way, you can take one day and write out all of the filming and writing ideas you have for that specific season and then include space for spontaneous content as well to give your content a good balance. As we have known throughout this semester, authenticity is the biggest advice we can get from all content creators, but when you have to juggle so many aspects of your life, by-yourself mind you, planning ahead will always be helpful in the end. I think this is specifically important for platforms such as YouTube because there is room to be both authentic and polished in the same channel so planning ahead will be a great tool. 

Nneka mentions that for channels such as Instagram, there is more of a need to be polished. Although you may want to plan all of your content prior to that season, if you are just taking photos all the time, as long as you maintain your quality and aesthetic, these posts can be just as spontaneous. 

One channel that I am unsure of is the newsletter that she was promoting to us. I personally don’t think that I would ever do a newsletter because I immediately associate that with businesses. If I went onto someone’s account and they told me to “sign up for my newsletter!” with a focus on having relatable content, I would be completely thrown off and would be confused of where their values lie. 

Lastly, the main reason Nneka left her job with CP24 was to find herself. She advises that new content creators should find their purpose and to follow through with content that YOU feel is best. Don’t be afraid to be broad in your content at first even if all you hear is find your niche. Content creation is a journey so just be yourself and do what you love! 

These are all great pieces of advice I will be taking into my post-secondary career as I have always seen myself in content creation. One day I hope to create my own channels and will think back to this course and all the great insight we have received.