Content creation tips from DD

We all know that if you are looking for your business to thrive in the digital age, learning how to create content on the various platforms and speak their language not only gains favour with the algorithms but gives people reasons to follow and engage with your content is key.

However, this is one of the areas that businesses tend to struggle with in the Caribbean: content creation that fits their brand, educates their customers and gets engagement.

We have some amazing creators from all walks of life in Trinidad and Tobago. There is no shortage of creativity and people who have figured out how to build a name for themselves and somehow never seem to miss any of their posts.

One such creator is Danielle Samlalsingh – her friends call her DD.

Danielle blew up over on TikTok during the quarantine times of 2020 and hasn’t looked back since.

Her TikTok account currently has over 248,000 followers and over ten million likes accumulated on the platform. Likes aren’t everything and she has built a highly engaged community.

The global average engagement rate on TikTok is currently at four per cent of your audience. You get your engagement rate by dividing the number of likes, comments and shares by how many views you get. Danielle has a very high engagement at 11 per cent.

So I caught up with Danielle and I asked her to give us five tips to help us with our content creation. Here’s what DD had to say:

1. Find your niche.

2. Hone in on your niche and make it different from everybody else.

3. Be entertaining.

4. Use basic equipment.

5. Be yourself.

Find your niche

"Find your niche and think about what makes you unique, and what makes you stand out.

"Think about your hobbies or personality traits. Make sure it’s something you are good at, because this is what people are going to come to know you for and end up searching for and begin to follow you for.

Hone in on your niche

"Once you find what makes you stand out, hone in on out and figure out how you can make it different from everybody else.

"At the beginning of my TikTok journey, I was doing all of the trendy dances, but then I wanted to start using the app that would make me enjoy it more and make sense to me.

"I started thinking about ways that I could be niche, unique and stand out from all of the other generic videos that were out there.

"My sense of humour and my love for acting are two strengths I began leaning on. Talking with my cousins, we started talking about funny comparisons of school between Trinidad and American schools. I started taking these real-life situations and turning them into skits and the videos took off from there.

"Recapping what worked in those videos allowed me to hone in on my niche of content.

Be entertaining

"Once you figure out your niche, what makes you unique, now you want to be entertaining. You also need to know who you want to target.

"I decided to target Caribbean people with my content.

"The content needs to be entertaining to grab people's attention and be engaging. I find that short videos help people escape and allow people to watch your content all the way through.

Use basic equipment

"Start with what you have. Folks think you need all the fancy equipment to make videos, and you don’t.

"I have a cellphone with a good camera, and natural light and on the off times, I might use a ring light, but that’s rare.

"Once you have yourself, the sun and your cell phone, that’s all you need to create epic content.

Be yourself

"As cliched as it sounds, be yourself. Once your audience gets to know you, sees your heart and can connect with you both online and offline, people will come up to you and let you know how much your content resonated with them.

"Share who you are, your struggles, and your triumphs and I promise you that you will touch more people than you realise.

"I’ve spoken about my mental health, battles with physical health and (because I am) letting people in on my life, people see that I am human too.

"That’s the core of what makes your page you: just being yourself and sharing yourself with everybody, once you choose to do that."

You heard it, folks, from one of the top content creators out of TT, Danielle Samlalsingh, aka DD.

I hope her tips gave you a lightbulb moment and a bit more confidence to start creating content.

Start with what you have, and where you are, have fun, educate, entertain and just be yourself!

Keron Rose is a digital strategist who works with Caribbean businesses to help build their digital presence. You can learn more tips at Keronrose.com or check out the Digipreneur FM podcast available on all podcast platforms.