Hello! Right now you’re reading “The Creator Confidential”, a blog where famous YouTubers share their stories and tips they have for growing a YouTube channel. Over the past week, I had the pleasure of interviewing Vanessa, and here is the finished result. Enjoy!
Vanessa Tiiu started her channel back in highschool. Today, she is in college and has over 90,000 subscribers and 8.2 million views. She’s worked with brands that we’ve all heard of and known, and one of her videos got over 2.4 million views! This is her story.
"Share what you want and what you enjoy."
What inspired you to create your channel?
As a 14/15 year old I loved watching YouTube and creators of the community. I think people like Kelsey Simone and Aspyn Ovard really inspired me to want to make my own channel and start sharing my own creativity and content on YouTube. I've always wanted to be able to inspire others. It slowly grew into just wanting to share my life and things that I love, and that's what continues to inspire me to create videos.
Do you think your family or background/where you grew up influenced your content? Can you talk about how your parents affected your YouTube channel?
I have cousins that do YouTube, though we make nowhere near the same content, so YouTube was always accepted in my family because of that. In the beginning, my mom was supportive but very weary of me being so young and posting on such a platform. When I first started I didn't share my Instagram or any other platform. My dad was and is always just supportive of what I want to do. I think that my mom was overbearing in the sense that she always made me think twice about every single video I filmed and whether it was okay, or sharing too much, or etc. She's not like that now and watches all my videos in support, she loves my content now.
What's your favorite video on your channel? Why?
I love all of my vlogs because I think they're so much more personable than other videos, but I also love the college outfits video that I made back in November. Personally I want to start filming more fashion and fitness related videos and had started focusing on that more last year. I'm very passionate about both of those topics and so videos with that topic overall are more my favourites.
Top 3 tips you would give to small YouTubers trying to start a successful YouTube channel?
Don't be in a rush to grow, take time to connect with your audience and really build a community. I feel like I gained a whole bunch of subscribers at once and due to that have subscribers that don't often watch my videos or connect with me. I see some YouTubers have such a great community of people and you can tell that they really took the time to connect with their audience. I'm so grateful for the people that I was able to connect with but definitely don't take slow growth for granted. I feel like I work so hard on my videos and sometimes they don't get the results that I want, but I keep pushing through and finding inspiration to create more.
Share what you want and what you enjoy. There's often a pressure to share what's more popular or what will get more views, but I'd advise against doing that all the time.
Lastly, be consistent, make yourself a schedule of creating content and stick to it! Consistency is always key!
How do you balance school/life with your YouTube channel?
To be honest, I've never found it that hard. Growing up I've always had to balance a lot, whether it's sports or my own fitness with school and my health and a job and then YouTube and a social life. YouTube is typically the first thing to go when I start getting stressed. I find time management, making to-do lists and keeping track of everything is the best way to balance YouTube with school or school with a job, or school with anything for that matter. If you keep yourself accountable and make time slots for things as well as be efficient in those time slots, everything is a lot easier to balance,
How do you find new opportunities with brands? Do you reach out to them or do they just email you? What is one of the best opportunities you've gotten from your YouTube channel?
I was very lucky to have been approached by a management team earlier in 2020 and they now take care of everything on that end for me. But before brands mainly contacted me, I would reach out to the odd one, but I definitely was very unaware in that area. I wish I had done more research into things. But now I am very thankful and grateful for my management team. I've gotten to work with a lot of brands like Casetify, Princess Polly, NastyGal and DoYouEven; those have probably been my favourites!
I saw that one of your videos, the Extreme Bedroom Makeover, got over 2.4 MILLION views! That's amazing! Was this success overnight? What was your reaction?
Haha yes, thank you! It definitely was a longer, over-time exposure and is still growing every day. I figured that the video would do fairly well since I have a few other room makeovers on my channel that have also done decently well, but I was not expecting how many views it has gotten. It really is amazing, like you said!
What do you think is the #1 factor that contributed to your successful YouTube channel?
Consistency, being true and real to my subscribers, and honestly just loving what I do and what I create. It really shows if you're creating it for the views or if you're doing it because you love it. I love creating content and want to do it for as long as I can.
What is your experience with hate and how do you deal with it?
In the past with people that I know personally, or just at school I never had hate. Everyone that knew about my channel said they liked it or thought it was cool that I had a channel. It actually wasn't until this year that I found out someone was shading both my channel and my Instagram behind my back. This didn't really phase me as I knew this person to be fairly judgemental of others and what they do, taking it upon themselves to judge what is right or wrong. Honestly, the best thing to do is just to ignore it. Luckily I have great subscribers that are supportive and I don't get hate very often. But when I got hate comments when I was younger they used to really bother me, I would comment back trying to defend myself. Now I don't give them a second glance, the people that hate are doing it for a reason: they're either insecure about themselves or just want attention from others and don't realize that what they're saying does affect a real-life person. There's absolutely no reason to spread hate. If you're ever thinking something that isn't the nicest, it doesn't need to be spread or said, and that rude opinion does not need to be heard.
Thanks for reading! A huge thanks to Vanessa for taking the time to answer all the questions. Here are the links to all her socials:
Instagram: @vanessatiiu https://www.instagram.com/vanessatiiu/
Twitter: @VanessaTiiu https://twitter.com/VanessaTiiu
YouTube: Vanessa Tiiu https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC63MviKbxyCP7Yw6wxW5JAw
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