Who are you and what kind of content do you create?

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My name is Amina Sheikh, I am also known as Amenabeauty. I am a very proud Mum of 4 beautiful children. I was born in Banaadiri, Somalia, and moved to U.S Utah in 1998. I'm currently based in the UK, (Everything in the UK is tiny compared to America). Coming back to England, my focus was to become a midwife or an entrepreneur/businesswoman. 

I had the opportunity to either go to college to continue with my studies to become a midwife or skip and start building a business marketing platform for my upcoming cosmetic products and merchandise. I have decided to go with the second option to become a businesswoman. As a mother, I have found this option to be more suitable for me and the benefit to work from home is a bonus. My Youtube Channel is Amenabeauty and I make makeup tutorials videos, product reviews, ethnic culture food. I also talk about weight loss, health, and fitness in my mother tongue, and sometimes I vlog as well. But I mainly focus on makeup products.

I’m still working towards my dream. It keeps my mind busy and focused. I have learned a lot about the makeup products industry. I don’t consider myself a full-time creator. I upload videos once a week or sometimes two videos a week on my channel depending on the mood I am in. I also open product boxes to review. Sometimes I get requests from my fans to talk on specific products. I do a lot of research before I explain it to my fans. 

I’m one person-army pushing my brand out there and building marketing for it. I believe nowadays everything is done digitally. YouTube and other social media platforms have opened a door for me and a great opportunity to build a market for my brand, give my brand identity, and to be recognized. 

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Meet my husband Mohammed and he goes by the name (MSBgraphic).
He is a digital visual graphic designer and web developer. Where would I be without him? He has been supporting me with my brand and the YouTube channel. 

I knew nothing about computers or social media marketing. He has taken the time despite his busy schedule to walk me through everything from setting up my social network accounts to learning how to monetize my google analytics, SEO keywords, to video editing. I am still struggling with Photoshop but I’m getting there. He has been there consulting me and helping me with my research. He is the only team I have.

At first, I have been struggling to come up with a name for my brand that’s going to be used on all my social network platforms and for my cosmetic business as well. I was looking for something unique eye-catching and it took me days if not weeks, so when I asked my husband about it, he asked me a few questions about my goals and objectives. His own words were “Since you’re going to be making makeup videos, cosmetic products and reviewing products why not name it after yourself Amenabeauty”?  I didn’t mind it at all. The name is memorable. It took him about a week to come up with a bunch of different unique concept designs for the logos. All of them were nice. When he explained to me the logo I’m using right now, I have fallen in love with it.

Mohammed explained to me why he made the logo so bold, it had to look good in all sizes printing. The logo itself was inspired by a butterfly shape and turned it into a (B) with a lowercase (A) and crown to represent I’m his queen. When you rotate the logo or if you flip to the left or right you will have a butterfly shape or a heart that represents beauty and love. It’s perfect for my slogan “Always stay jabiiba,” which means beautiful.

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How do you brainstorm ideas for your content and your advice in getting the creative juice flowing?

Most of my creative ideas come while I am in the kitchen listening to loud music and cooking at the same time. I sometimes record myself while I am cooking with no plans, just freestyle.

When I get ideas, I quickly grab my camera and start recording and schedule my videos in advance. I upload about 5 to 15 videos of product reviews mixed with other entertainment videos to give me a break and free time to create another unique content. Some of my content is based on research and reviewing products. It takes me a week or two to test the product to confirm if it’s good and worth your money or not. 

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There are times where my family and friends ask me to cook ethnic culture food. 

I use these opportunities to also make video tutorials on how to cook Somali food. I share it with my viewers. My objective is not just to market my brand but also to bring valuable content to the community that can benefit from it and learn something new. I'm all about positive vibes. 

I personally do not use any sort of software for brainstorming but I know a guy who does. 

And I think you know who that guy is, my husband Mohammed. When I get ideas on just about anything, I run to him, he helps me around and does all the magic stuff.

What were your fears starting out? How did you handle it? 

I was nervous and scared when I recorded my first makeup tutorial video. I couldn’t even speak straight. I kept messing up. I literally forgot how to speak my own native tongue in my first video. I keep mixing English and Somali, it was just so bad. That's how nervous and scared I was.

I have received a lot of negative comments and no support from friends and family at that time. I have been told to quit making videos. The negativity list goes on, but I had a goal, and quitting was not one of them. For me, YouTube was a marketing tool for my business strategy. No matter what others are saying about me, it just encourages me to even go further to prove them wrong and Insha’Allah, it’s going to happen! I’m not too far away from my goal.

However, when it comes to my husband, the negativity comments just never get into him. He always says, “People don’t know it. Just focus on your goals.” And he always makes me feel proud of myself and that I am doing something great to the community. They just don’t know it yet. He always says to me it’s worth trying so I shouldn't give up on my dream. I have nothing to lose. I am here, zero investment. There are those who will judge you whether you’re doing something good or not, it makes no difference. People will always have something to say. 

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How did you build your brand to where it is now, take us through your process.

The whole YouTube thing was for me to start an online business, selling woman clothes and cosmetic products. I understand that I’m taking a big risk and a big investment. I have decided to take a break from it and start to market my brand first and it just happened. YouTube was the perfect tool compare to Facebook. I actually started on Facebook first and the traffic was moving slow and my brand wasn’t getting noticed. I have decided to try something different and that’s how I ended up on YouTube. 

I have taken full advantage of my husband's skills to build my brand. I have only invested my time and ideas on creating content. I was consistently uploading every week. Not much support from friends or family, they wouldn’t even share my videos which made it even harder for me. Maybe they were scared that I was going to make it and successfully meet my goals and achieve my business plan. Who knows? The one who is closer to you turns out to be the ugliest one. 

I have managed to push my brand and nothing stopped me from trying. 

However, the hardest part wasn’t creating content but getting people to click on my videos especially when I’m speaking in a different language. I was focusing on my Somali audience, one community group that had just made it super hard for me to be recognized by other audiences.

In early 2017-2018 my subscribers didn’t even budge. I was stuck on 100-200 subscribers. 

My views were stuck on 20 views or 100 views per month. I was really working hard to reach for the 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch time. I have tried to follow every YouTube tip guide I could find in books, good thumbnails, titles, tags, descriptions, on Facebook groups, Snapchat, and Instagram. None of them was working for me. I couldn’t understand what was I doing wrong, I was following every tip, every guideline on YouTube.

Then it clicked. I wasn’t been goofy. I made a few funny videos on my TikTok, Snapchat Instagram, (Subscribe or Follow Amenabeauty.) I started to share small funny clips on my social media platforms to build an engagement with my audience and I started to see results on my YouTube channel. I finally unlocked the YouTube monetization in July 2018. It has been 3 years since I have been creating content for my channel. 

I'm very grateful for the support I have been gaining from my Somali communities and other viewers' fans as well. Without their support, I wouldn't have made it. Now with over 92,500 Subscribers on Youtube, 46.2KFollowers, TikTok, 25,498 Snapchat, and 24.6k followers on Instagram. I can't wait for my Silver play button and I am so excited. If you have reached this far reading, congratulations, and please go to my YouTube channel Aminabeauty and Subscribe! Be The One Who Makes The Big Difference. 🙏

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For someone who wants to get into content creation, what is your advice?

What I have come across on YouTube videos that tend to do well, is you have to be loud and funny, wild and crazy. Pranks or fake news videos turn to go viral. And I advise not to try clickbait. It's a bad practice and you will lose views.

Have a passion for what you’re doing, be patient, have faith in yourself, just believe in your content, and consistently keep uploading. Never give up and never surrender.

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What are your marketing strategies to grow your brand?

I honestly don't know how to answer this. I usually ask Mohammed for advice even though when he tells me what to do I just can't follow up with his plans or strategy. I like to freestyle everything. I never bother to hire anyone to handle the market for me. Why bother when I have Mohammed? I’m getting a lot of feedback from my content nowadays and a few of my fans do share my videos depending on the video. I haven’t done a collaboration with anyone yet but I am thinking of doing a series of collaborations with some makeup artists.

How do you handle brand deals and sponsorships?

I usually get contacted by brands. And to be honest I keep my email short sometimes. I just reply with “I would love to” if I like the product, that is just simply answered. I don’t bother to write a long email, like, who has the time to read all that. I only accept certain brands. Some of them are fake companies who just want to collect personal info data about you. You got to be careful with those ones. I also try to help small startup ladies’ businesses as well. I do the marketing to promote their products on my platform, not necessarily big brands.