Today we’d like to introduce you to Caroline Balbuena
Hi Caroline, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
I’m from Brazil and moved here with my husband in 2019 because he was transferred by the company he works with.
Initially I had a hard time settling in because it was right before the pandemic started. After some time I tried a couple different things like babysitting and gaming live streaming. I have a degree in psychology in Brazil so everything felt all over the place but I was really trying to find a new career path since the degrees are different from the two countries.
In 2021 I got pregnant and my daughter was born in 2022. I always wanted to be a mom but it was kind of unplanned for the time. It threw me off since I was starting to get really successful at the gaming livestream and had to stop that.
Being a new mom without any family around was hard and I had the most challenging year of my life when she was born. I started to think of ways to start another gig while still being a SAHM. So I started a content creator page – @thisgirltest where I share my favorite beauty products always with real skin (no filters, no video treatments). This has helped me on my journey to find myself again after motherhood, since I kind of abandoned self care for a while just for being too overwhelmed and busy.
Since then I started to make new friends in the same business, learned and still learning a lot about filming and editing videos and trying to understand more about UGC – User Generated Content, to improve my skills and my page.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
It’s been definitely a crazy ride! I had zero knowledge in filming and editing when I started so I had to learn everything from scratch.
Content creation seems easier than it really is. There’s lots of factors to consider like lighting, sound, storytelling and a good script and point of view. I’ve struggled to develop each of these, specially having a toddler around and other responsibilities being a SAHM.
I had to figure a schedule to record, at the beginning each video took me forever and I’ve felt like I would never get better at it. There’s prepping to do before each video, like the script or what do you want to achieve with the content. Plus getting ready and looking presentable and making sure everything looks good when shooting. After all of this there’s still editing and posting.
I still struggle a lot to be honest, but I try to keep a positive mindset and always look to improve myself and get better at all these challenges.
I’m a very detailed oriented person so I put a lot of pressure on myself to get better and have good quality content. But I know this is a big learning curve for myself so I keep going even when the struggles overwhelms me. I think it’s these same struggles that makes you grow and growing is already better than never risk anything for fear of failure.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I do content creation for my social medias and for brands. I specialize at beauty product reviews, mostly skincare and makeup. I showcase the product on my videos: the texture, the results, the packaging details and swatches.
My page is focused on beauty reviews, and I’m proud of doing this showing my real skin – with no filter or any image editing.
I’m passionate about inspiring others to start/keep a self care routine and hopefully help them choose the right products based on my reviews.
Are there any books, apps, podcasts or blogs that help you do your best?
I’ve been learning and got inspired a lot by other content creators. Using the social media to search for UGC and looking at other successful pages to get inspired by the type of content they produce.
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