A luxurious lifestyle, free delicious food, meeting lots of public figures, free access to various luxury events, and even free holidays displayed on social media make many people tempted to become influencers.
According to Statistica data, as one of the countries with the largest economy in Southeast Asia, and with a high population, Indonesia is a promising market for influencer marketing. Coupled with the number of social networking users in Indonesia, which is estimated to reach more than 260 million in 2026, the influencer or content creator ‘channel’ marketing strategy has even more potential.
As of September 2022 alone, in Indonesia there will be at least 159 creator accounts with more than 10 million followers on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, and this number is expected to continue to grow.
Content creator as a profession choice
Sismita, a practitioner and lecturer at the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, Department of Communication, University of Indonesia (UI), revealed that the current rampant growth of influencers follows the development of the times and technology.
“Does it have the potential to become a profession? Yes, the proof is that it has now become a profession,” he told DW Indonesia.
“In the beginning, people wanted to become content creators because they had a desire to create something, especially with the existence of social media nowadays and the existence they want, so people see this as an interesting thing. People think that they can do what they like and can make money.”
The connection between the contemporary world and content creation is difficult to separate. From the various research she conducted, Sismita revealed that currently influencers have a big influence on people’s decision making regarding a product.
Formal content creator education in Ireland
Indeed, not everyone is lucky to have content that can immediately go viral. But everything can be learned. Sismita, who is familiarly called Tata, does not underestimate this profession. A content creator also requires various skills, such as research, hard work, technique, time, consistency and serious effort. There must be a struggle behind it.
So do you need special formal education to become a content creator? A university in Ireland, the Institute of Technology Carlow, has apparently opened a special department for becoming an influencer.
“We have a variety of courses on offer including creative video, celebrity studies, psychology, data analysis, podcasting and work experience. The choices are comprehensive and allow you to face the digital world,” they wrote on their official page.
Some of the courses taught include introduction to digital marketing, public relations, creative writing, new media ethics, creative digital media, social media marketing and crisis management.
Influencer pathway scholarship
Seeing the booming influencer phenomenon, since early 2022, various campuses in Indonesia have started providing special scholarships for influencers. It is recorded that there are at least 16 campuses that have content creator scholarships.
Some of them are the Telkom Surabaya Institute of Technology, Sahid University, Ciputra University, Muhammadiyah University of East Kalimantan, Muhammadiyah University of Surabaya, and Pekalongan University.
Quoting the official Sahid University website, the requirements for getting a content creator or influencer scholarship are to be active and creative as an influencer and have a social media platform (Instagram, Youtube, or Tiktok). Apart from that, there are academic requirements such as having an average grade of 7.5 from semesters 1-5, having to finish school on time with an average GPA of 3.25 during the college period.
Meanwhile, on the Ciputra University website, the influencer scholarship has requirements, including that it applies to all majors except medicine. Apart from that, prospective scholarship recipients must also upload positive content about the university twice on their social media.
“The amount of the scholarship is seen from the number of followers and also passing the review,” wrote the page.
For example, for category 1 with more than 12,000 Instagram followers, the profit you get is 100 percent of the Education Development Fund (DPP) and tuition cashback of IDR 3 million, category 2 with more than 10 thousand followers, the scholarship you get is 75 percent of the DPP.
Content creator course
How about in Indonesia? In Indonesia itself, until now there is no special major or study program to become a content creator. However, in some study programs, this course provides additional knowledge for novelty.
Responding to the phenomenon of special majors for content creators, Sismita admitted that she tended to be on the opposite side.
“This is actually positive and normal because of the newness of technology, but I tend to feel this is not necessary,” he said. He said that actually the basic knowledge to become a content creator already exists in other majors, such as digital communications, public relations, broadcast, and crisis management.
Sismita also included courses and knowledge about how the world of digital communications is currently developing and ‘grazed’ into the content creation side even though he did not label his courses as content creation.
Meanwhile, the Bachelor of Applied English Study Program at Gadjah Mada University has a digital content creation course. Quoted from the official website, this study program is offered to 6th semester students to study the stages of digital content production starting from understanding basic concepts, planning stages, implementation, to evaluation.
Apart from that, the LSPR Communication & Business Institute is also said to have courses related to this. LSPR lecturer Ricky Wattimena said that all of this knowledge was included in the introduction to digital creative production course.
“On the LSPR campus, 90% of what is discussed is new media and its development, how we can fit in with all media. That is what is being explored. How students can grow to become Content Creators, both individuals and corporations in the future,” said Ricky to DW Indonesia.
Ricky revealed that this course also teaches about content production techniques, from pre-production, production, to post-production. “Technically, social media such as Tiktok, Reels, YouTube is optimally taught in how many minutes because it will then be related to the form of content script.”
There are quite a lot of people interested in this knowledge, from individuals who are just starting out, companies to influencers who already have many followers. So, are you interested? (ae)
Source: Detik News
