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| Nixon, a UMM student who now has thousands of followers on Tiktok. (Photo: Istimewah) |
Starting from his hobby of creating comedy content, Nixon Farrell Mahatma, a student at the University of Muhammadiyah Malang (UMM), managed to tread the path of becoming a Tiktok influencer. As he is usually known, Nixon said that he started creating his first Tiktok content when the app was still not as popular as it is today.
“In 2019, Tiktok is a new social media application. So, I created comedy content on Tiktok just out of curiosity to try the app. I never thought that the content would be watched by many people and entered For Your Page (FYP),” said the Communication Science student.
Furthermore, Nixon shared that his TikTok account grew when he began to focus on creating review content for cafes and foodies in Malang City. The last four children said that his move from comedy content to review cafes and foodies was also a coincidence.
"When I was still making comedy content on Tiktok, I also did an internship as marketing at a cafe in Malang. To save money on promotions, I used my Tiktok account to introduce the cafe to the public. The review content went viral and entered FYP Tiktok many times," said Nixon.
After some of the review content went viral, Nixon began to focus on introducing Malang cuisine to the broader community. He has 64.3 thousand Tiktok followers and more than five thousand followers on Instagram. Nixon revealed that he could make two to three reviews of cafe and foodies content in a day. "Besides introducing Malang culinary to the public, I also want to help Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (UMKM) in Malang promote their products with this content creation. That way, I can also provide benefits to others," said Nixon.
Despite being busy creating content, Nixon never puts his education aside. He admitted that implementing online lectures because of the pandemic helped him organize his schedule. He can do college activities anywhere, even when he creates content. He also fills it with lessons or doing assignments.
"The risk of going to college and creating content is the lack of time to rest. Even so, I'm happy with it. I'm also fortunate to have a white campus ecosystem that cares about influencers like me. UMM provides many places for me to be creative and network with other influencers at UMM," said Nixon.
At the end of the interview, Nixon hoped that the pandemic could end soon so that MSMEs and Malang tourism could bounce back. "Besides that, I also hope that other campuses in Indonesia can synergize and help young influencers grow in the creative world and encourage them to help the development of many sectors," he concluded. (cdr/syi/wil)
