Vi Luong transformed from a marketing professional to a successful content Creator by using her college coursework as a testing ground for social media strategies. Today, with a massive following across platforms, Vi is all-in on digital content while advocating for Creator rights and original content.

Turning Education into Opportunity

Vi’s content creation story began in an unexpected place—a university classroom. “I was taking this social media marketing class at night for my business degree,” she recalls. “I had never been able to pay attention in class, so I spent the whole class time applying what I was learning to my social channels to test and see.”

Despite her early start in content creation, Vi maintained a strategic approach to transitioning from corporate life. “I didn’t quit my full-time role until I had a million followers on social media,” she explains. “I think that’s conservative. I don’t know; maybe other people have different standards for that.”

Three key factors influenced her decision to pursue content creation full-time: “The money I’m earning from sponsorships and ad revenue greatly surpassing my corporate salary… when I felt like I wasn’t growing at my corporate role anymore… and I just wanted to have the space to experiment without necessarily having to go up this whole corporate chain of command. I just wanted freedom.”

Discovering Purpose Through Content

While Vi initially focused on photography and styling content, she found her true calling in personal development. “I branded myself as TikTok’s digital big sister,” she shares. “People ran with that because I started with photo content, but it was under the umbrella of self-improvement and finding yourself, loving yourself, and pursuing everything under the sun.”

Her first viral success came unexpectedly. “The very first video that ever went viral has nothing to do with what I do today,” Vi says. “I posted this one jeans hack… I went to sleep, woke up to 11 million views.” This experience taught her a valuable lesson: “I think there are things that you feel are self-explanatory to you, but then you put it out and realize like so many people benefit from this. And that’s the concept I took with me throughout the rest of my videos after that.”

Strategic Content Development

Vi approaches content creation with both spontaneity and organization. “I keep a Google document with a list of all my ideas,” she explains. “The night before I go to film, I’ll plan a few filming days. I don’t wake up and film every day. I’ll maybe film two or three days a week and try to batch a couple of videos.”

Her creative decisions stem from genuine interest: “Every time I look at my list, I think, ‘Which one of these jumps out at me today? What excites me today?’ That’s my metric for whether or not to proceed with an actual video idea. Do I feel something from this? If I don’t, it won’t translate, and I won’t do well anyway.”

Vi finds particular satisfaction in crafting narratives. “My favorite part has to be the scripting,” she shares. “I love the challenge of how to get a person to not scroll on me in the first three seconds and keep them going on the next 10-15 seconds. Finding ways to do that, whether combining clips of other videos to keep retention going or scripting or hooking people throughout the whole thing through writing and scripting—that’s the most entertaining part to me.”

Multi-Platform Strategy

Vi creates content across Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, and TikTok, each requiring distinct approaches. 

“Snapchat is its own thing,” she explains. “I think about TikTok first because I started there. I think, ‘Okay, I’ll craft this video for TikTok, and if it does well, it will perform on every other platform.’ TikTok is where people are the most sensitive to distractions. The attention span is the shortest.”

Since beginning her content creation career, Vi’s approach has significantly developed. “One thing I’ve always done is I try to create serialized content,” Vi shares. “Now I’ll try to come up with many long-form series that are part of a bigger story and break them up. I would do the same thing back then in just 15-second formats.”

Adapting to Audience Preferences

As social media trends shift, Vi stresses the importance of flexibility. “Stay as flexible, and what I say is to stay as ‘Plato’ as possible,” Vi advises. “The moments where I lost touch with either where everything was going in the video sphere or what people were saying when I was stubborn in that, okay, this is how things worked in 2021. I’m going to apply it to content in 2022. Of course, it doesn’t work because the landscape has changed so much.”

Vi notes how content preferences have shifted since her early days: “In 2020/21, things were more Instagram-trained. People were still more used to the more curated highlight reel; things look nice, and it’s not messy,” she reflects. “Now I still think my content looks presentable – I love aesthetics – but I’m not afraid to make things messy. I tell all my friends to make things look crunchy. People don’t care if your intro looks pretty. If anything, it makes them scroll. Make your intro look crunchier and crustier, including more of the human element, struggles, and humanity in general… it’s a lot more work but a lot more fulfilling.”

Advocating for Creator Rights and Protecting Original Content

As an early TikTok Creator, Vi has encountered major challenges with content replication. “I’ve had experiences before where my creator IP has been compromised, and it’s affected me deeply,” she reveals. “This is a very personal job for Creators. When something like replication happens, it affects us deeply. I know it made me feel like it wasn’t safe to put out content anymore because there was this idea out there that others would take.”

These violations impact the broader Creator community: “Unfortunately, I’ve seen a lot of really brilliant Creators who go through stuff like this, and they feel emotionally unsafe. They stop posting; they stop putting great, original ways of doing things into the world,” Vi explains. “So it feeds back to the whole bubble of people doing the same stuff. Because these brilliant Creators aren’t motivated, they feel unsafe putting themselves out there.”

To safeguard her work, Vi developed innovative approaches to making her content distinctively personal. “I started injecting a lot more of my own experiences into my storytelling,” she explains. “That’s something that no one else can replicate—like no one else can replicate your story or specific examples.”

She’s also implemented subtle protective measures: “I’ve started using a lot more of my vernacular in my titles and hooks,” she shares. “And people could look at that and be like, if they saw the same thing, they’d be like, ‘Oh, that’s weird, I just saw that and no one else talks like that.”

These experiences not only shaped Vi’s approach to protecting her own work but also solidified her desire to guide other Creators in navigating similar challenges while building a supportive, collaborative Creator community.

Future Perspectives

Vi sees promising developments in platform policies and industry shifts. “I know platforms are now introducing some measures. I think TikTok or Instagram recently announced that they would prioritize original content. If they notice people reposting or ripping off other people’s content, they won’t monetize it or give that plagiator the incentives.”

For brands collaborating with Creators, Vi suggests implementing verification processes: “Before working with a Creator or interviewing or working with them in any capacity, look at some of their videos, titles, hooks, and concepts. Plug it into the TikTok, Instagram, or Google Search functions. See if the same idea or similar idea has been done before or if the format has been done before, and kind of backtrack and put dates to things.”

Lessons and Vision

Reflecting on her experiences, Vi highlights relationship management: “I would have been much more careful with who I chose to align with, whether professionally or personally,” she reflects. “In this career where this is almost like a reflection of yourself, this is such a personal career; it’s not as easy as separating my professional life from my personal life. Those things ultimately ended up positively or negatively impacting me and affecting my earning potential or confidence.”

To aspiring Creators, Vi offers direct advice: “Avoid the for you page as much as possible. No one was there when I started, so there wasn’t this thing of going online and getting inspiration. As you scroll subconsciously, much information just starts impacting how you go about things, and it gets a little messy.”

In 2025, Vi envisions expanding her digital mentorship role: “My goal is to evolve her into this more grown-up version where I’ve gone through more life. I know more and have more to share,” she explains. “I can include more of the human experience in it and have it resonate with more people versus earlier. Now, I’m in this different area of life where it’s so much deeper. There’s so much more connection.”