The importance of content has risen manifold through the years. Social media has added to its value. Everyone invests in content creation, from a start-up to unicorns, because the right content helps you reach the right audience. Many are lucky to get the appropriate knowledge to survive in this content world. But many are still struggling to understand the know-how of the content-creators community.

C3 (Community & Cold Coffee) is a step from our side to make it easy for all those community builders trying to grow their community. C3 connects various community members with content creators to talk, chat and learn the hacks of the content creator world. We discussed the topic "Content meets Community" in our first Episode. Looking at Episode 1 success and how well the audience reacted, we came back with Episode 2.

C3 for Creators Episode 2 was a roundtable conference with Vineet and me as hosts. As for the special guest, we were fortunate to have Shraddha Bhalla. Many of you may know her from her Instagram handle @soda.pop.love. The topic for this session, "How I became a Content Creator?", focused on social media and its use.

How I became a Content Creator?  - Ft Shraddha Bhalla

The story of Shraddha becoming a content creator is really interesting. The term interesting is used here because of how often one sees the birth of a content creator due to the deletion of a social media platform. That's right, her journey started from deleting Facebook. Shraddha wanted to focus entirely on her exams which made her delete Facebook. But she wanted some other thing for some distraction. That's when she downloaded Instagram.

Instagram was a new world for her. She found everything fascinating there. The travel pages and drone shots attracted her the most. It felt like this was something she could do with her whole heart. There was not a fixed term or job for content creators those days. Shraddha decided to move forward with her medical career and save money to travel and create content.

Shraddha managed her orthodontic career with content creation for nine years. The constant grind reaped sweet results for her. Soon, prominent brands started approaching her. She had the privilege to work with Hindustan Times for a podcast where she interviewed many personalities. As her career took off, she left her dental occupation behind and invested fully in content creation.

Shraddha Bhalla is now a full-time content creator with over 43k Instagram followers. She started taking on clients to guide them about the content world. She took a one-year hiatus in between. But she's back and ready to share all her information and understanding of content creation.

Noteworthy Tips

The interactive session with Shraddha had many points that a content creator could jolt down and use for developing their brand. As Shraddha is an Instagram content creator, Instagram had the limelight in the discussion. But content creation works the same for everyone across platforms. Let's take a look at what our special guest said, hoping that the session helps you in any way :

• The Algorithm game - "When Instagram initially started, it was simple. Once you post, it appears in everyone's feed. But today, it's entirely different. Whatever you like comes first on your feed page. The algorithm game is evolving every year, and no one knows how it will take a shift in the coming years. If one wants to stay relevant, the first thing they have to do is start showing up in feeds."
• How to be seen? - " It's easy to say that one needs to be seen in feed, but how? That's the most critical question. Instagram could be messy sometimes. You may not know what will make you viral. You have to put yourself out there to stay relevant. Make reels and trending content. Give space to people where they can be independent and free. And most importantly, post content that feels relatable."
• Relatable content- "Posting relatable content as a content creator can do wonders. There's a reason why stardom is falling in previous years. People talk about celebrities and movies stars, but the coffee and chai conversations cover names of only the social media content creators. There's a simple reason for this, which you and I everyone know. They post content that the audience can relate to, they talk about the struggles of our lives, and they seem normal human beings like us."
• Keeping things short - "The habit of watching reels has made people's concentration power short. They don't want to read long posts and captions. They want something brief and simple. If you have content for long seconds, try to attract attention in the first few minutes."
• Educational or Entertainment Content - "What type of content you will post - educational or entertainment? Education has an informative touch to it, and everyone needs it. But entertainment has its own value. Most people want to escape the real world, and that's why they are on social media. The entertaining content helps them in doing so. Content can be either, based on your choice or comfort. But remember that the quality of content matters."

The Con Side

The above points may help you reach your desired audience. But with pros come cons too. Shraddha talked about those too in the meet.

"Many a time, I have been subjected to trolls and creeps on social media. And that's just a start to the negative side of content creation. One becomes too judgmental and self-obsessed over time. There have been days when I have doubted myself and questioned many things. I am still getting hang of it all."

What's ahead?

Understanding the origin of a content creator is the way to understand where to get from there, be in a specific platform or a niche. The next step would be to understand what kind of content creator do you wish to be and explore various content styles and experiment as much as you can