Kendel Kay’s love for taking photos and making videos inspired her to post content on Instagram. Her profile blew up after uploading sorority content, and today, her online fame has gained her over 500,000 and 435,000 followers on TikTok and Instagram, respectively. 

About Kendel Kay

Originally from Puerto Rico, Kendel Kay is a lifestyle influencer creating content on self-care and feminine energy. She loves taking photos and making videos for fun and then uploading them on Facebook. When Instagram came out, she decided to use the platform to share her content, and everything blew up from there. 

Kendel shares, “I realized that I could do it [content creation] as a job, so I quit my job. I was working part-time in college to make some side income. When I graduated, instead of using my career, I decided to pursue content creation full-time.”    

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This decision led Kendel to move to Los Angeles.

Coming up With Content Ideas

Kendel strives to create content that aligns with her lifestyle at the time. She has been using the same technique for years, even when she was still in college. 

“When I was in college, I was creating a ton of sorority content around college life. And then now that I’m out of college and I’m at home, living with my boyfriend, I create more home and cooking content because that’s what I like doing.”

Kendel says that creating content based on her lifestyle doesn’t feel like work, and filming this type of content makes her happy.

As part of her content creation process, Kendel also listens to the suggestions of other people. She takes time to read comments on her social media and uses that information to determine the type of content to make next. 

She explains, “So when people on my TikTok videos say, can you post a recipe for this? Or can you share your skincare routine? I take that into consideration; I let people tell me what they want and go from there. 

Best Post and Content Choices

Kendel has been in the industry for five years, and when asked what her favorite post is, it’s a TikTok video that earned over 12 million views and gained about 18,000 comments. She shared that this video, along with other videos that got millions of views, were all the life of a stay-at-home girlfriend.

Since Kendel has been creating content longer than most influencers, she can already tell which type of content her followers find interesting. According to her, “Videos about me and my relationship with my boyfriend seem to be very interesting content for people.”

Kendel has been dating Luke Lintz for over a year now. Luke is a Canadian businessman and entrepreneur who develops his social media branding projects by collaborating with celebrities. 

Challenges as a Content Creator

Kendel’s years of experience as a content creator didn’t immune her from challenges. In fact, she continues to experience a handful up to this very day.

“I would say probably the hardest part is when videos go viral, and content reaches a large audience, and people tend to make these assumptions about me and oftentimes, leave very aggressive comments.”

Kendel has her fair share of receiving hateful comments across her social media profiles and trying to navigate those comments has been the hardest part for her. She is still working hard to ignore those comments and not let them get into her. 

Measuring Success

Kendel uses the number of views as her metric to assess how successful her content is. For her, the more views a video receives, the more the content resonates with her audience. 

She continues, “The numbers say it all. That’s how I gauge how successful it is and how well I was able to create it.”

Based on Kendel’s metrics, it’s safe to say all of her TikTok videos were a success. Browsing through her profile, all her videos gained a couple of thousand views — no single video has views less than 20,000. 

Brand Collabs

Kendel has done a ton of brand collabs since she started and added that this is the reason why she has a steady income. When it comes to her favorite collab, Kendel has this to say:

“I love working with any health and wellness brands. Currently, I’m working with Water Drop, a drop that you put in the water that helps you stay hydrated and has a bunch of vitamins. I love creating content for brands like that because it coincides with my lifestyle.”

One of Kendel’s most trending videos with Water Drop gained over 9,000 heart reacts and more than a hundred comments from TikTok users.  

Growth as a Content Creator

To stay inspired and continually grow as a content creator, Kendel doesn’t limit herself. 

“Not putting myself in a box is a huge thing because my content has evolved so much over the five years, and not feeling confined in a certain niche or style. Just letting myself grow and explore different areas help me stay inspired.”

Best Part About Being a Content Creator

Kendel’s answer to this question will inspire others to dive into the content creation space and is something other influencers can attest to.

“I would say the best part about being a content creator is the freedom that comes with it and being able to live my life. As a content creator, I can design my own schedule and choose exactly how much effort I want to put into things, and the amount of effort I put into is equal to how much I get out of it.”

And Kendel isn’t the only creator loving the independence she is getting now. In fact, according to the Content Entrepreneur Benchmark Research in 2021, the biggest reason people take on content entrepreneurship is to regain their independence.

What’s Missing in The Content Creation Space

Kendel admits that things move so quickly in the content creation space that it’s hard to identify what’s missing. But as someone who has been in the industry for years, she wants to see how the competition plays out between new and established influencers.

She explains, “I’m seeing more opportunities for influencers and brands looking for influencers to promote their products. So as creators and influencers, we’re getting more opportunities, but at the same time, there’s more competition. I’m interested to see how this will play out.”

Instead of fearing or worrying about how fast the content creation space changes, Kendel loves to roll with the opportunities that come her way and try to move as fast as the industry does. 

As for her future as a content creator, Kendel wants to create her own personal brand and start her own company of some sort today. She doesn’t have any concrete plans as to how, where, and what, but that’s the direction she has for herself professionally. 

Tips for Aspiring Creators

For Kendel, consistency is everything. She encourages aspiring content creators to post consistently to whatever platform they choose to get better and create more content. She believes that everyone will have their moments, but not everything will go viral.

She adds, “Eventually, once a video or photo does reach a wide audience, they’ll be able [viewers] to come back to your page and see all the other content you’ve created. So I think being patient and persistent is the number one tip I would have for anyone getting started.”