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How An HR Professional Turned Gardener Pursued Her Passion And Bloomed As A Content Creator
Hi! I am Swati from Bangalore, India. I am a Psychology graduate with an MBA degree and an HR professional turned gardener to pursue my hobby. I am a proud mom of my 8-year-old son. I have worked with IBM and Accenture in HR in the past, but due to family priorities, I left the job and continued my passion for gardening in my spare time - and that is how I started my channel.
I create videos related to gardening, home décor, DIY tutorials, tips to prepare the soil, hand pollination method, and basically a complete guide to growing vegetables right from sowing seeds to harvesting.
I shoot, edit and upload videos by myself. Sometimes, my husband helps shoot the videos for me. Since I grow all the vegetables and fruits in my backyard, hence, I decided to keep my channel’s name as BACKYARD GARDENING.
I am fond of gardening since I was a child. I remember spending time in the garden with my grandfather, and that is how my interest in gardening developed, I guess. I used to save money from my pocket money, and bring different types of plants while coming back home from college. Even during my job, I never stopped decorating the corners of the house with green leaves and plants.
I have more than 200 varieties of plants including houseplants, herbs, vegetables, and fruits, among others, in my backyard garden. So I thought, why not share to other people how to grow and take care of plants.
I grow flowering plants in my front garden and a variety of vegetables and fruits in my backyard. Over time, the produce became plentiful and I started sharing them with my neighbors. Because of this, a few of my friends suggested that I start a gardening channel. I thought of experimenting with my hobby, thus, I started my Youtube channel back in 2017 and started creating gardening-related videos on YouTube. I posted videos in English first. Later after 2 years, I created another channel for Hindi viewers.
I get a lot of my video ideas from video requests of my subscribers. Also, whenever I grow any vegetable, I shoot a footage video of all the stages right from sowing seeds to harvesting. For growing vegetables, I post videos based on their growing seasons. Whenever i plan for any decorations or makeovers for my home, I shoot a video as well. I noticed that people love that content so I continue doing it. Sometimes, my son and my husband suggest topics for video content, too.
For shooting videos I use iPhone and Canon DSLR depending on the scene, location, and lighting. Additional accessories include Gimbal, Tripod, Lights, etc.
I edit my videos in iMovie and use music from the YouTube library. You can connect with me on Facebook/YouTube/Instagram 👇
Backyard Gardening(130k Subscribers)
Facebook page Backyard Gardening (241k followers)
Backyard Gardening Hindi(165k subscribers)
My Vlogs Channel(Backyard Gardening Vlogs)
I started this channel and basically created content on plants to pursue my hobby. I never thought that I will turn into a Content Creator. It all just happened while pursuing my passion for plants.
I always try to create content that is of high quality, informative, crisp, and above all, the content should add value to the viewer’s time spent watching my videos. This led to the organic growth of my channel. It usually takes 45-50 hours of effort every week to research, organize and create content.
Just like how I built my channel, and my brand, strive to always create high-quality, informative, crisp, and content that is worth watching. Be consistent in posting videos. Post videos that interest you.
Do it regularly. Don’t give up, and most importantly, follow your passion.
A good number of views on my videos and the increasing number of subscribers motivated me to continue posting on YouTube(both channels). Slowly, I started getting sponsorship deals for my channels, and later I decided to connect with people on Facebook as well. Apparently, it worked.
At some point, my videos were not doing great. I lost focus and became irregular in posting videos. But then during the pandemic, I noticed people were really enjoying my old videos from the channel. They were rewatching them. So with that, I decided to engage myself again in growing lots of vegetables. I thought I must share such videos more often to help people learn how to grow their own food, as well as to spread positivity during those tough times. Then, I started posting 2-3 videos a week on both my channels. Since then, I have been quite regular in posting videos on a weekly basis.
In the few years that I have been a content creator, I have had a number of milestones in this journey. For one, I was very happy when several companies started approaching me for sponsorship. Companies such as Flipkart, Nurserylive, Amazon, Wooden street, Emma mattress, and many more. Another one was when I got YouTube’s Silver Play Button award for my channels. That was very exciting for me!
Also, it was important for me when ThebetterIndia.com approached me for an interview which was published on their web page. With this opportunity, many of my acquaintances and friends saw my interview and shared the article with us. It was a really precious moment. People in my neighborhood and friends of friends and relatives started recognizing me because of my channel.
Initially, I started by sharing my videos with my friends and relatives. Eventually, it picked up on its own. So basically no such marketing strategy so far.
Various brands approach me for promotion. I look at their product quality and then decide if it fits my theme and only if I really like their product do I endorse it.
It varies every month based on channel performance, though, it's good enough to keep myself motivated.
