In today’s world where social media plays a big role in our daily lives, careers such as influencer, content creator, and YouTuber are some of the top picks for young people. Due to the flexibility and lucrative pay, it is no surprise that some have kickstarted their journey early.
Zachary Chiah, a first-year student at INTI International College Penang, has already made a name for himself at the age of 21. The student pursuing the Bachelor of Business in collaboration with Swinburne University of Technology, Australia, majoring in Marketing, has a large follower base on Instagram and TikTok.
He started creating content in 2020 while working part-time at his father’s friend’s gold shop. His father had suggested that he create a TikTok video to reach more customers and prospects. Though sceptical, he took the task as a challenge, never realising that it would be the beginning of his road to popularity.
Zachary Chiah’s first video was taken when he was working part-time at Masdora Gold.
“As someone who has been in business for a long time, my father saw TikTok as a marketing platform as it was new, trendy, and resonated with the younger generation. It would be perfect to promote gold products,” explained Zachary who now actually enjoys making videos for social media.
According to Zachary, it was not easy to get views and he recalled the first video he posted only garnered 2149 views and 42 likes.
“Initially, fewer people showed interest in my videos as I had used a hard sell approach. I switched to a different strategy and made the videos more fun. I think this approach is better and more people are watching and it is helping to increase sales. The number of followers have also grown,” he said, adding that his videos titled ‘The Shop Assistant’ recorded 75.5k views while ‘Kantoi’ received 21.1k views.
Christy Ng is among the big names that have partnered with Zachary for product promotion.
Being able to achieve tens of thousands of views for his videos made him happy and motivated him to produce more content. Fuelled by a passion for content creation, he expanded from marketing content to food reviews as a challenge to get more engagement from the public. As he still works part-time at the same store, his personal food reviews were for eateries in Penang such as Mr Tako, The Fat Burger, Temu Café, The Pablo’s, and The Ais.
“I forked out my own money to do food reviews and promoted it for free on my platform. It took a lot of effort to get permission and deal with people’s perception towards me because I’m a newbie in the industry and not a famous influencer when I started. I went for it anyways and it turned out the café owners were actually supportive and grateful for this boost to their business,” said Zachary who generated over 27k views on TikTok for his first food review on Mr Tako.
Social media can make a big impact on a brand or name. Zachary’s efforts have even been acknowledged by Indonesian influencer Cahaya, who had reached out to him to collaborate on a social experiment. The video they worked on together titled ‘Minta duit dari orang’ with the caption ‘Bila kita rasa susah nak cari orang baik, jadilah salah satu dari orang baik’, which gained 14.7M views and 8,104 comments, depicted the public’s perception on people who attempt to solicit financial assistance.
Zachary believes that conducting social experiments helps to create awareness, as well as spread kindness and happiness to the public.
“The collaboration with Cahaya was a truly rewarding experience. I enjoyed learning from her on how to do different content, and I started creating my own content on social experiments. It takes a lot of courage to do the recording but at the same time, it brings satisfaction to witness people’s reactions – some of which are unexpected,” he said, adding that social experiment videos provide a view of how people react to various issues, creates awareness, and can even help to improve the world in a small way.
Zachary’s hard work has made him a reputable influencer, catching the eyes of big brands like Air Asia, Christy Ng, and Quicksilver. When asked how he handles his work while studying full time, Zachary admitted that time management has been stressful, but he quickly learned that focusing on the goals and being disciplined helped him manage his time better.
“I believe that if you want to achieve something you must learn the hard way. Having good planning makes you more organised and committed in both areas – work and study. I’m also lucky I have a good support system from family and friends at INTI. They will assist me with shooting and recording,” said Zachary.
Zachary, who was raised in Raja Uda in Butterworth, Penang, mentioned that creating content allowed him to enhance his skills in video shooting and editing, storytelling, creativity, coordination, presentation and communication, all of which are useful skills for university students and offer value to graduates seeking employment.
Zachary (second from left) discovered a passion for creating content and using the content to help others.
“Learning is an endless process that broadens your knowledge while serving as an important competency asset,” he said.
One day Zachary hopes to own a production house that offers a wide range of professional services including training and platforms to create engaging content. Though he might lose out on his youth trying to chase his dreams, he said the value of the content he can produce will be worth it.