The "It" Factor

      Today in class we talked about Chapter 9 of "Social Media for Strategic Communication", and it stumbled upon the idea of one of my favorite things to talk about. It all began when a slide came up that talked about how each social media brand or influencer should have one "it" factor to their social media and use it as the fuel to fire all of their content. Then, our teacher told us about a story who has half of a million followers on TikTok because of the way she takes notes. That's right, you read that correctly. Apparently, she incorporates all of these really interesting, unique doodles into her note taking and puts them on TikTok for other people to copy, and they love it. Thus, bringing me to what I love talking about which is that "it" factor. I think a lot of people think that it is some brilliant idea constructed over thousands of hours of contemplation. Yet, often times I believe it just comes from what people are passionate about. A great example I can think of is people who have gaming channels on YouTube. In fact, one of the most, if not the most, popular channel on YouTube started out as a guy playing video games. You may have heard of him. His name is Felix Kjellberg, also known as PewDiePie, and he currently has 102 million subscribers. Yet, he obviously did not start out that way. He has discussed in many of his videos that he started making YouTube videos of himself playing video games because he loved it. It was something he enjoyed and was passionate about. Now, he has turned it all into a multi-million dollar business over the course of nine years. This wasn't some brilliant plan hatched over years of thought and preparation. It was something he genuinely enjoyed doing, and happened to find success in. The moral of the story is, do what you are passionate about and success will find you along the way. Don't go looking for the secret ingredient, or the "it" factor when the truth is that it doesn't really exist. So, whether you want to play video game for a living or post videos of yourself taking notes, just have fun with it.