Get started as a UGC Creator. Find out what you need to set up, how to structure your video, and how to edit to create perfect UGC content.

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The Creator Diaries: Glam Squad

Join Klara McDonnell on her incredible journey from overcoming breast cancer to becoming a niche influencer through user-generated content (UGC). Discover her tips, tricks, and inspiring story in The Creator Diaries. Don't miss out!

Hey there, Nomysh here! Welcome to a brand new series called The Creator Diaries, where we go deep into the lives of content creators, exploring their journey, tips, and insights. In this episode, we have the incredible content creator Klara with us. Klara is originally from Dublin, Ireland, and has been a musician, actor, and social media manager. She has also documented her journey of overcoming breast cancer on social media, inspiring and helping others along the way. Recently, she stumbled upon a new opportunity in the world of user-generated content (UGC) and is excited to share her experience with us. Let's dive in and learn more about Klara's story! INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPTIONhello everyone this is Nomysh and my name is Maxi and we are excited very very excited to announce this brand new series called The Creator Diaries this episode in particular is called my niece crush and this is where we take a deep dive into the life of a content creator you know the tips and tricks you know their journey of how they got started all the insights everything is going to be incredible and what better to start off the series of incredible content creator named Klara how are you doing today hi very happy to be here amazing so um if people didn't know could you just like run us down with you know who you are where you're from and like what it is that you actually do okay so I'm from Ireland originally from Dublin but I'm living in Carlow and Ireland and I'm 41 I'm old enough to remember Myspace bibo and the very early days of YouTube and YouTube was where I got my first taste Taste of being a content creator and I had a couple of videos maybe 16 years ago that did really really well like 800 000 views 600 views and I got really freaked out so I then held back on creating a lot of content for a while and then dipped my toes back into it again um I work as a musician and an actor so I've always found social media great to get myself out there and get more work and in the last few years I've also had social media clients so two years ago I worked for St Patrick's Festival in Ireland and I've also worked for other Arts festivals I was at the social media manager for a very well-known Irish actor don't know if I can mentioned them they're a little bit older um so I've been kind of involved in all different areas of this um social media world three years ago I was going through chemotherapy I was diagnosed with triple negative breast cancer and I decided to document my journey back to health um on social media initially I was a little bit scared about doing this because I thought I'm self-employed and I still want to work and this was just before covert really hit the world before the first lockdown so I was like no I want to work I don't know if I want to put this out there to the world but I did and it actually helped a lot of people I had women contact me that told me that they got their breast cancer diagnosis through my videos through self-checks and then going to their doctors I also had other women tell me that my videos my tips and tricks of me going through chemo what helped me help their recovery so that meant a lot to me and then um with ugc I just accidentally fell into that last year I had somebody actually from the UK a guy from Scotland emailed me and I thought this has to be a scam because I've never heard of ugc I'd heard I suppose a huge user generated content as in like the fans and just real people doing reviews and then companies repurposing that but I didn't know it's another way that me as I suppose I'm quite a niche influencer I didn't know it was a way that I could make money wow wow that's incredible like the journey from you know how you've gotten started and all of the people that you've influence and you know how you've been able to you know turn something like breast cancer and you know help other people you know uh deal with you know what they're going through which is you know it's really incredible so just a bit more on that what I wanted to know is what are the kind of like challenges that you face because you know when people are trying to get started into content creation they're riddled with maybe fear anxiety you know being in front of the cameras and everyone's comfort zone so for you what what made you have that leap to decide that you know I need to show people my story or be in front of the camera like what were what was that for you I think initially it was um I said 41 so initially it was Myspace and there wasn't much content creation on MySpace I think you're probably too young to really remember it some people try to mess around with their backgrounds that was kind of as far as it went but a lot of musicians were discovered on it and I put some music up on that not much happened with it back in those days but I made a lot of friends and contacts even from back then and my space kind of made me feel like I don't know it was just amazing buzz like the world is so much smaller through social media and I just really wanted to put my songs out there and then um my first YouTube videos which I've actually deleted they were so cringe um they were so pretentious but they were meant to be talking cheek they were called video diaries of an artiste like horrible um and it was just me talking really fast and as you can hear I talk very fast um because I didn't know how to enter back then and I would just talk really fast to the camera and say about like going to auditions what it was like as a struggling jobbing actor that sort of thing and people were commenting some people are really connected with it but I got a lot of trolls and that's the thing that stops a lot of people from putting their self out there you know yeah that is really important ignore like you know it's really difficult when you see like 800 000 views like that is a lot of people to be you know watching your videos so talk us maybe go a bit deeper in that like what was that like you know I know it must have been really nerve-wracking like he was saying to see so many people watching your videos and I'm sure you probably got an array a mix of comments so uh a lot of like young creators growing up are like really struggling when it comes to like mental health and there can be a lot when it comes to you know people's impression of you especially online so maybe how did you deal with that how did you deal with like that constant kind of presence on you I think I was very lucky because um when I started doing those videos I was 24 I wasn't in school or college um I'm very lucky that when I was in school the phones were quite primitive back then not everybody was able to really film each other or upload videos and there's so much of that even without people's consent you know somebody can take a photo of you or film it just upload it and Anything could happen that's quite scary um but there was crazy trolling because if you have a video that has 800 000 views I think it was I think the reason I was getting so many views is because nobody was really doing what I was doing so it was like what is she doing so some of the traveling was that I was too thin or that I was too fat I was 24 saying that I looked 50 some people said I look 12. do you know what I read so it's like one extreme to another so really it was just trolling for the sake of trolling and a lot of the time it says more about the person that's typing this especially when it's Anonymous it's crazy you know and but I have talked to much younger people that are in school in college and they said to me oh I really want to post videos too or I want to post videos more often but I'm scared of what you know they're scared of what their peers are going to think about them and I tell them just do it you know do something small and especially I now do a little bit of consultancy and I talk to small business owners and if they don't want to put their face on camera maybe they're comfortable enough editing a video a few little Clips you can add it easily on calculate or in shot and doing a voiceover you know there's different ways that you can create content you don't have to be the face and The Voice right and you know what you made an interesting point there because you've said that you've done ugc you've done acting you've done consultancy your day must be crammed of so many different Avenues and different kind of things that you're doing the day so when it comes to content creation like how do you make the time to you know sit down and obviously you know if you want to lose natural lighting for example you know the sun's going to go down a certain time or if you're not feeling motivated how did you manage to fit that within your busy schedule oh I'll be honest I don't it's that in itself is an art form I'm trying to get better at it and I do try to do content days and I've done that for clients as well where I will batch tray things and then edit them at a later time so I mean I try to be as as real as possible on social media on my own social media and with ugc as well um but it's hard you know sometimes no a lot of the time actually I don't post things in real time you know I do vegan food reviews as well and I will post that maybe like a day later a week later when I have time you have to not put too much pressure on yourself but there is a little bit of a thing with ugc there's deadlines and um you know a lot of Brands a lot of agencies they like somebody that's used to you know dealing with a fast turnover and um I actually got my last UGC gig was through one of my acting agents and this was a bit weird um they said somebody has pulled out at the last minute we know you do ugc can you do this for us and it needs to be on a five o'clock today and I do a little bit of working at events am I just like no I can't do this I'm working at the event right now I won't be home till late tonight and they said if you get it into us early in the morning so I had two hours to fill up five separate videos different backdrops and different outfits and I also didn't love the scripts so I had to say to the agent this is not ugc it's very heavily scripted and too prompty to the audience from the beginning that people are going to scroll and those first two seconds are so important your hook on ugc is so important so I had to do some script rewriting costume changes and everything within five hours and slight edits and get them off wow that that sounds intense so what I want to ask you just to round off one last question is you know you've been talking about how you know you've started during Myspace and now you know we're in an era of like Tick Tock and you know loads of different new social platforms that come up if you had to give yourself like a love letter or like one final note that you can remind yourself and tell yourself from the beginning of your kind of career until now what would you remind you know the old Klara from back in the day what would you tell her that you've learned from that whole experience now in some words of advice or some you know some comforting words oh oh it's hard to be brief but they explored a huge thing that I've done and I'm sure other people do is talking about things you know I've got to do this I'm gonna do that without actually doing it and you need to take the first step and if you fail so what you'll learn from it and then another thing was me being too afraid when I started to have lots of views I was too afraid and I pulled back and it's much harder to get views on YouTube now YouTube shorts that's a whole other story but uh yeah I don't know I think stop telling yourself I'm going to do this I'll do this when I'll do this if just do it you know and I'm a massive believer in um you know your thoughts great things manifestations that sort of thing but you need to take a step of inspired action so you need this spark of something and if there's fear you know just go with it you know that is incredible so you know I think it's really you know what you've said today and you know this this conversation I'm sure has inspired a lot of people so um just to ground off I want to say a massive thank you to you you know this has been the Creator diaries with the incredible Klara thank you

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From Breast Cancer to UGC: Klara's Journey as an Inspiring Content Creator!