A food lover’s passion to profit digital exploration to showcase the pride of Surabayan cuisine
Dimas Angga is a Surabaya-based food blogger that created a culinary platform to showcase the food and beverage experiences in Surabaya. His channel was established in 2018 on Instagram, and is coming into 3 years now on TikTok. With 78.8K followers on Instagram, Dimas has given social media exposure to thousands of Surabaya Food and Beverage brands.
The name “Njajan” itself represents the middle-low class and it was made to help his friends from other parts of Indonesia to explore the local culinary scene in Surabaya.
Why did you decide to become a content creator? Tell us a little bit about your story and expertise.
To be honest, I never expected to become a content creator. I just happen to love culinary & social media, and I decided to create something new with my passion. It’s actually a funny story too because I got persuaded with “if you can become a content creator, I’ll buy you a camera” – I mean who doesn’t want that? Haha. I didn’t expect my content to go viral and big. At that time, I only thought of tasting the culinary options around my campus for my friends. I never thought that I would receive endorsements or gain so many followers. Back then, posting a picture and writing a review for culinary was good enough, so that’s what I tried on my Instagram account. As time went by, I realized that my followers weren’t just my friends and there are a lot of new people who started to follow and engage with me through comments and DMs – asking me to review their suggested culinary venues. Knowing that my content was useful to others, I decided to learn more about content creation all by myself, by observing other content creators, and in my case, I picked 10 of my favorite influencers. I observed their methods – from scheduling to dubbing and what to put in the content, and then I picked the ones that I can adapt to my content. By 3000 followers, I started receiving endorsements! So I’ve been learning by doing, and honestly becoming a content creator was by chance, but I did it with consistency and joy, it allowed me to learn about culture, and even now I’m still learning something new every day.
You are being able to analyze, perceive the nuances of social interaction. The key is to develop an understanding of, deep respect for the differences. Not just hearing but you can adjust active listening. Active listening doesn’t mean that you have a lot of time to listen to other people but you have to accept, respect the feelings of others such as not involving interpretation in a conversation and being tolerant of other people’s perspectives. Sometimes, you don’t realize other people’s thoughts that you think are different from your perspective. You must pay attention. It can improve your social skills and understanding other people to create empathy.
What inspires your content ideas? Please share your creative process
I don’t really have a role model in Surabaya, but I do have one content creator who really inspired me, her name is Ria SW and she’s known on YouTube. What I like about her is that she teaches us to be ourselves even though not explicitly but she put quotes in her content while showcasing her culinary interests. Also, she doesn’t really follow trends, instead, she reviews what she really wants to review, and she sparks curiosity and drives a new trend. And she doesn’t need to find an audience, the audience will find her because even when she’s on hiatus, people still wait for her.
If you only want fame, it’s going to be harder because there are always new competitors. My creative process is pretty long, I like to map out my ideas, and create concepts and scriptwriting is a must, but I have this Venn diagram-like thing that I make–the left circle is what I want, while the right circle is what the audience wants, and then, I combine them and pick the circle in the center–why? Because when we want to create something successful, we always find that circle in the center. And for the practical process, I do read up on trends, but I don’t follow trends because it’s tiring. I’m more interested to read about what content would my audience like, and what they truly need. In the end, when we integrate what we want with what the audience wants or needs, it becomes more fun and effective.
What is the biggest challenge that you face as a content creator?
For a lot of people, money and tools are the biggest challenges. And there are also a lot who think that trends, insight, and competitors are the biggest challenge, but actually, the biggest challenges are desire, intention, and consistency. Because when you desire to grow, you will have great intention, and you will naturally do it consistently, then other aspects will follow. Everything begins within you and the biggest challenge comes within yourself too.
Do you have any advice for your peers who want to succeed in content creation as a career?
Desire, intention, and consistency is key. Most people nowadays like everything instant, like buying followers which I do not recommend. It’s okay to grow one follower per day or week, you ARE growing and that’s what matters, but there are still a lot of people who don’t appreciate the organic process. If the content does seem not good enough, then re-evaluate them, and that act in itself is a sign of growth. And always be yourself, while having a role model is good – don’t let yourself be someone else, because you will never be them. Everyone is unique, and so are you. Also, don’t listen to people that say that you’re not growing, because creating content itself is already a process and people don’t know what you’ve been through to get to the point where you can post that content.