Now, social media have become an inseparable aspect of people’s lives all across the world. Furthermore, it has become an important aspect of how brands connect with their target audiences. Social media networks such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest are gaining new users every day. The majority of these people will continue to be users who share content on occasion, but a minority will choose to become content creators or ‘influencers.’

What Is An Influencer?

Influencers are persons who have the power to influence a significant number of potential consumers, subscribers, users, and so on. Typically, these influencers use social media channels to review and endorse items or services.

If you think about it, you’ll come across an influencer’s content in just a few minutes of browsing through your page or over time. Think about it: they’re all over the place! That witty comedian whose Instagram reels are pure gold? They’re almost certainly a power player. For this Sunday’s lunch inspiration, remember that beautifully filmed, bite-sized recipe video you saved on Instagram? Most likely, it was also shot by an influencer.

Influencers As A Career Option

According to the report, 65% of Indian marketers and strategists believed that collaborating with influencers helped to increase brand awareness and recall. It helped manage brand reputation and sentiment, according to half of the respondents, and it effectively targeted new audience groups, according to roughly 47%. 

All of this simply means that there’s no better time to start if you want to be an Instagram influencer than right now!

And if you don’t know how to become an influencer in India, Rohan Virdi, a choreographer, filmmaker who gained fame as a YouTube vlogger and have more than 580K subscriber on YouTube has shared how he started his YouTube journey and become a full-time influencer in India and America, on the Ask Avi Arya Show. 

Read this article till the end to find out how you can become a full-time influencer in India in 2022. In this article Rohan has shared how storytelling and his passion helped him to become an influencer on YouTube and other social media channels.

How Storytelling Helped You To Start Your YouTube Journey?

Avi Arya – How does storytelling play such an important role for you to connect with your fans and grow your subscriber base?

Rohan- To be very honest, storytelling is very easy when you keep things simple rather than complicating them and try to make your own story. So, if I go out somewhere and feel that the place is very good, the first thing that comes to my mind is my family. I wish my family is here with me, my mom is here with me so that I could show her and tell her that, “mom! look how good these fountains are, how good the place is’’. She would be very happy! 

This is how we used to shoot a video before. It kind of became storytelling, recreating things in front of fans like we would talk about from where fountains used to start and end, people who used to come to watch these fountains. And just like these, I kept sharing my stories and as days and months passed by, the comfort level between me and my audience and my youtube fans whom I consider as my family has drastically increased. 

Whenever I post something on youtube or Instagram, many would appreciate me wholeheartedly which has motivated me all this while and this is how it all started for me when it comes to storytelling.  

You Don’t Need Expensive Gadgets To Become A YouTuber!

Avi Arya – Is youtube very expensive when it comes to starting a journey as a Youtuber considering the expenses of cameras and the kind of gadgets used or can we use basic smartphones to start telling the stories?

Rohan – Absolutely!! There is this youtube channel called Travelling Desi, they shoot 70-75% of their videos on the phone. I can make out the quality of the video and as a filmmaker, I can easily find out the portions that are shot on smartphones and the portions that are shot on DSLR. 

The major issue that arises here is the microphone that is used in normal phones. Generally, with the professional mikes, you don’t hear the noise and it cancels out the background noise and the sounds which helps a lot. 

For my creator friends or the ones who are watching this and want to create videos, a good microphone along with a smartphone isn’t a bad option in this day and age.

Avi Arya – Could you give us some valuable tips on how to build a story?

Rohan– Look you need to have a subject when it comes to storytelling. I always find a subject in my story before storytelling and if I have to talk about my Vlogging career, there was never a part for storytelling to date.

I always had a subject with an apt title. The last video which I shot was Christmas celebration in America because I stay in America and till the time I stay here, I can talk about America. So, I went to a Christmas store where you find a lot of stuff related to Christmas celebrations wherein talked about the things that you find there. Pallavi and Reshma stay with me, so I talked about them as well and that’s it! 

I shot the entire thing in a cinematic way and what I generally do is that I shoot videos in a cinematic way when I can’t tell a story out of it. A few days back I went to sip a cup of coffee and made a vlog out of it and usually I don’t share such stories with anyone else but I still want to share it today.

We were all set to drink coffee and I just kept my coffee mug aside and took the camera out and started shooting a video. Now, what happened is Pallavi spilled coffee accidentally, so I said to her that ‘’No issues Pallavi, it’s just a coffee and we will get a new one’’ but at that time I felt like I could have created an entertaining moment out of it and again told her that “Pallavi get another coffee for yourself, drop the cup down and we will start fighting” by handing over the camera to Reshma.

 It’s the storytelling that keeps the audience binged to the screen and sometimes storytelling is very very important. Similarly, there was this video of mine ‘Cost of a Haircut in America’ which crossed around 1.6 million views for the very first time. So what I did was, I called this hairstylist 2 days back, thanked her for the haircut, shared this moment, and invited her for lunch/dinner whichever she would prefer. Now I shot all these in a cinematic way right from the haircut to the thanksgiving which in itself is great storytelling. 

Takeaways: How to create stories in your vlogs?

How To Start A YouTube Channel?

Avi Arya – How to start a youtube journey?

Rohan – If I have to be very honest, I didn’t start this journey yesterday or today rather have been shooting these videos since the year 2010. My first phone was the iPhone 3G, so I bought that iPhone and went back to Punjab as I had two months off and shot a video song there, edited the video on the same phone, and posted it.

Basically, a creator needs to have a passion in him rather than being greedy for money. Passion is something wherein you create a video on a single phone, make all the color-corrections on the same phone, edit it, and then post it on the same phone keeping it as a memory with you and showcasing it to people. That’s when people start appreciating you and then you will grow.

This isn’t something like a Saloon Business where you invest in an expensive hairstylist and you know that you are gonna reap rewards in terms of Return on Investment, unlike an influencer’s journey which is rather tough at times and easy as well. If you have the luck favoring your side and you have all the right talent, you can grow.

Despite all these, I have seen many talented people who fail to reach where they want to. But you need to make sure that you keep making, keep fighting, and hustling and then one day you’ll see the results favoring you. If you work hard, you will succeed.

Today people visit my channel and watch my videos and the reason why they watch my videos is because I have been doing this for years and not because I have shot the video today. They think that he must be a creator and that’s the reason they make an effort to watch my other videos. Meanwhile, if they like my videos, they will like and share my videos, subscribe to my channel, and hit the bell icon and then they will become a part of my family.

To all those creators who are watching this, I wish you all the very best for your future endeavors but at the same time, I request you to have patience and fulfill your passion for making films and carry that with you as a memory.

Today there maybe 10 people who would be watching your videos and tomorrow there might be 10,000 people, but the fact that remains is you need to learn to appreciate those few people as well who are watching and reliving all your memories. 

When you have a look at all these 10-15 years down the line, you will have a sense of satisfaction. If everything clicks, then you make money out of it and there are other benefits too that could come your way as a creator and to earn money as a YouTuber, one needs to have a lot of patience and it takes a lot of time to grow financially as well.

How To Start A YouTube Channel? Step-By-Step

Avi Arya – Are there any instances where you found that you are getting more views and clicks on your previous videos because your present videos are getting more clicks. Have you come across such instances?

Rohan V – Correct!! Now, you answered your own question.

Let me take you through an incident. I had shot a video on ‘Nightlife in America’ back in 2019 in Newyork and even now, I get clicks and views on that video along with the videos that I keep posting on youtube. The key here is being consistent. 

Avi Arya – Now how does post-production works right from editing to uploading the content?

Rohan V-  The Creator has to learn and know how to edit. It isn’t like you have an iPhone 12 max pro, you shoot a video, cut it into four halves, and post it. Nope! Editing is a must. Right from tags to thumbnails to keywords everything is important. It didn’t take me a lot of time to learn to edit because I’m from a film background but the rest of the things I learned from youtube. The best way to learn and create youtube videos is youtube. You get everything on youtube

Avi Arya – How to gain that confidence for making youtube videos?

Rohan V – Fitness is a key in building that confidence! When you are on screen you need to make sure that you set the right example and you need to have that self-confidence that you are looking good. As this a show business so for that, you have to be fit. You need to work out, eat healthy food, avoid junk and take care of your throat. There are many people whom I know aren’t into this show business but still want to keep themselves fit because the cleaner you eat, the cleaner you become, and the cleaner you think. It takes time to build that confidence but the time will eventually come.

Avi Arya – What has been your motivation from the time when you had fewer subscribers, to this time where you have enough subscribers?

Rohan V – When there are fewer subscribers, you don’t have much tension and there is different happiness and motivation when you see your subscribers increasing slowly and steadily. But now at this point in time, there is a different pressure and you feel like you have to make it and you have to do it at any cost.

Before it used to be a passion, love for filmmaking and you want to grow in life, grow on youtube and that was my thing but now the passion to succeed in life has grown even more and there are a lot more responsibilities.

Avi Arya – In the next two years, where would you see yourself stand? What are the milestones that you want to achieve?

Rohan – My milestone would be to achieve through youtube and for youtube and if I want to see myself in the next two years as an influencer, then I would see myself being a good influencer, who has influenced a lot of people for the good things. If I can teach people to become successful in life, then that would be a great thing for me. Moving forward, if I have enough money, then I would open a small influencer school where I would love to talk and teach about storytelling and how one can make simple things look interesting which is very important.

Avi Arya – What sort of a camera, lens or equipment do use for video shooting and editing?

Rohan – There are a lot of people who ask me about the kind of camera, lens, video editing software that I use. Just to answer them all, I use sony A73 which is a very good camera. I use a 16-35 f4 lens, 20mm f1.8 lens, 35mm f1.8 lens, 85mm f1.8 lens and the software I use is final cut pro x which runs on MacBook. Before I wasn’t using all these and to be very frank I don’t need all these but the passion in me to learn and grow has made me use all these.

Avi Arya – What would be the message that you want to give to all the students and entrepreneurs out there?

Rohan – Be Passionate! Whatever you do in life do it with a lot of passion.

With all these being said, you also need to know your family values too. You have to give your work and family the same amount of time and that is what I would suggest to you.

Well! People this is how Rohan Virdi started his YouTube influencer career and you can too start your career as a full-time influencer easily by following his footsteps. Or if you have already started your YouTube influencer journey, share in the comments, how is it going.
What are the points that you love about it, where do you want to improve more?

However, if you feel that you need support and guidance to start your influencer journey, join our Internet Moguls Of The World School, a school where we help people to set themselves  up for success, learn the key digital business concepts to thrive, and build an online business so that you can have more time for your family, more peace, and more financial freedom