Kelly, known as @thevacaygirl on Instagram and @kellymssoliveira on TikTok, is a travel & fashion content creator based in Ontario, Canada. She loves sharing her life on social media, she shares shopping hauls and travel vlogs. In this article, Kelly shares everything about creating travel content and how she manages to be present and balance her 9-to-5 with content creation.
I have always been obsessed with taking pictures and videos. I always loved capturing memories that I can look back on. I am a very nostalgic person. I literally just started taking pictures and videos and posting them online. With that, came this whole new creator space. I started some new opportunities come up with that and I started getting better and better at creating content and creating a story behind the photo. Now, it is easier to tell a story with short-form video, especially on TikTok.
Creating your first post is the hardest thing to do, but once you get started it goes hand-in-hand with everything. I love doing it and it is my creative outlet for sure.
I have been taking it a lot more seriously over the past couple years. But I have been creating content for the past 7 years. It was here and there, I would do it for a couple months and would forget about it.
The biggest advice is to forget about everybody that would have an opinion about what you’re doing. I know a huge thing with getting in the creator space is worrying about being judged. Forget about everyone and just post for you, do what you want to do and forget about everyone. As long as you are happy with the content you are creating, it doesn’t really matter what everyone else is thinking.
I do not do content full-time. i have a 9-5 corporate job and do content creation part-time. My goal would be to do it full-time eventually, but I feel like a lot of people are all about forgetting 9-5s and doing content full-time. Which is totally great, but then you lose the stability of getting a paycheck and being solid financially. I’ve been seeing on social media a lot of people going back to the corporate world to get that financial stability. So, it is interesting to see the benefits on both sides. So, we’ll see what happens.
I am very lucky my boyfriend is a photographer and filmographer. Ever since we have been dating, he’s been taking my photos. It happened organically and we started this partnership. We travel together everywhere so it is easier in the sense that I always have someone taking my photos. But I would plan out where we are going, trying to get places or hotels that have nice views or backgrounds. I will get inspiration from Pinterest and plan out areas, poses, vibes I’m going for. I’m very into tropical vibes, so I’m always looking at different poses for that.
I am also always trying to not put much pressure on myself, because I want to be present and in the moment. So even though I pin a lot of inspiration pictures, I won’t be constantly looking at them, they are in the back of my mind and when we get to a place to take pictures at, it happens organically. Once, that’s done, I will forget about the photos. I usually don’t post right away while I’m on vacation. I post after the vacation.
Before covid, I would be going on trips and my main focus was creating content. After the trip, my boyfriend and I realized we didn’t even enjoy our trip because we focused so much on content and didn’t take in where we were or relaxed. Over the past two years, we have taken it slower and have been grateful to be able to travel and see these different places in real life. Once covid hit, we definitely went through a big change, which allowed us to slow down and take it in.
I communicate with brands via email. And then I use Klaia to organize the partnerships. It is so helpful to have everything on Klaia – when things are due, what are the details, etc. I also organize the content that I create on a hard drive. I create folders for each brand that I work for in the year and I add all the content I ever done – including raw photos that were never posted.
So, I organize the content in those folders in the hard drive. I use Klaia to organize all the details and due dates, and email to communicate and plan brand deals.
It is hard, but when you love what you’re doing, it makes it easier. So, I work my 9-5, but after 5 the social media side begins. After work, I will be editing, engaging on social media, replying emails, etc. During the weekends I batch create content. I give myself a couple hours to relax, but now that I think about it, I am working constantly. So, if you’re having fun with it, it doesn’t feel like work. I am not sure if I’m balancing it the right way but it’s working for me. So, as long as it works for you, that’s the way you should go about it.
During Covid, I had to be really creative. So, I started creating content about things to do in Ontario, places to go around here and found that a lot of my audience enjoys that. I am trying to motivate people to do staycations in Ontario. And obviously I would slide in fashion content.
I used to be a competitive figure skater for Canada and with that, I became a very perfectionist person. I thought I would leave that behind once I left sports, but it stuck with me, so with content creation I became very critical of myself and it was very hard for me having that athletic background to kind of not be so critical. Sometimes you get to a point where you forget why you started in the first place and you’ll be so obsessed with getting the perfect content every time and with the numbers to be where you want them to be. You forget the love you have for it. So, I wish I knew that it would be hard at times, harder than I thought it would be, and that I would kind of lose myself sometimes.
