@kalitaku on how mixing multi-day series with everyday moments grew her audience

@kalitaku's Top Tips for Creators:

• Embrace and show the messiness of the creative journey
  I want to show people that you can just try things, and it’s okay to mess up. Not every DIY is going to turn out perfect. That’s also something my audience knows now from my platform, but I think they appreciate the honesty of showing the behind-the-scenes, the messiness and the chaoticness of DIY projects.

• Post a mix of serialized and casual content
  I post a mix of long form and short form videos. So for people who want to see the whole behind-the-scenes process [of my DIY series], my thought process behind it, the ups and the downs, and the challenges, they’ll watch my longer videos of like a minute and 30 seconds. And then for people who just want the end results or the little 10 second life updates, they’ll tune in for that.

• Leverage all the tools at your disposal to build community
  Replying to comments is a huge one, because that’s like the most immediate kind of interaction you have with your community. Creating inside jokes with your community is also really important. I also like to utilize stories. It is the perfect, more intimate way of interacting with your community. I always like to post silly little pictures of my day or little videos and just keep it very real. I occasionally respond to DMs as well.

Kalita Hon is a NYC-based fashion creator known for making jaw-dropping DIY looks. From playing cards, to balloons, to cake, no material is off limits for Kalita, and no outfit is too much. Hon makes her outfits by taking audiences on a multi-day journey in which they see all the behind-the-scenes moments, no matter how messy, to bring her creative visions to life.

We met with Kalita to learn more about her evolution from thrift tycoon to DIY queen, how she uses Instagram to build community, and why embracing the imperfect is often the most powerful thing a creator can do.

How did you get your start as a creator?

I graduated from Wesleyan about three years ago. I moved in with my grandma in Los Angeles, and the only thing that I really knew how to do was thrift. I did that all throughout middle school, high school, and college. I used to be a verified Depop seller. That was how I supported myself through school, and I immediately jumped into that right after college. I just started posting style bundles on my Depop and seeing if anyone would buy them, and luckily, I made a couple sales, made some videos about them, and it kind of just took off from there.

Then it reached a point where I was overworking myself. I was thrifting for maybe eight to 10 hours a day, and it got really overwhelming, so I decided to make a shift in my content and focus more on the creator side of it. Last Coachella was the first ever DIY outfit that I ever did, and it went extremely well. People were really receptive to it, and I made a whole series about it. That’s when I really, really delved into the DIY aspect, and I’ve just been doing crazier and crazier DIYs.

When you made this shift and before you knew it would resonate with audiences, how did you work through any uncertainty or doubt to get your creativity out into the world?

I think it honestly just took a lot of experimentation. There are so many other people who are not trained and want to try DIYing, so I wanted to show the nitty-grittiness of the entire DIY journey, show that I do mess up, I make mistakes, I have to backtrack, and that sometimes I'm on the brink of giving up and then I have to rethink the entire plan.

“You can just try things, and it’s okay to mess up.”

How has posting Reels allowed you to express yourself and bring these DIY projects to life?

I have a very specific way of posting on Instagram. It's a whole series. I start from day one to day two to day three to day four, and then so on and so forth. I call it a mini TV show where people tune in every day on my page. And usually when I do my DIYs, people will be refreshing my page every day to see if there's a new reel that I posted. So I love using a platform where people can just easily see it’s, okay, this is day one, this is day two and follow along like that.

What other tools or features on Instagram do you use in your content strategy?

Recently I’ve been using the broadcast channel. That’s one of my favorite things to use on Instagram as well. Because, it’s a perfect way to have this group chat with your audience. And so sometimes I’ll post like little sneak peeks of DIYs that I’m doing on there. Or I’ll just ask, hey everyone, like how’s your day? Like, what’s up?

How do you balance giving your audience the existing content series they know you for while trying new things and experimenting with new formats?

I don’t want to always make the same videos and have people get bored. I want it to be fun, and it loses its charm if you overpost [the same content].

I like to keep the rest of my content a little bit more casual and less planned out because my DIY series are so highly edited and documented. So for my other series, I like it to just be a face-to-face talking video of me putting on a weird outfit or going to get my nails done.

I like it to be a little bit more casual and laid back to diversify my feed, so that people don’t get sick of the same format.

Let’s say that you were talking to a young creator that has all these reels in her drafts. She doesn’t really know or she’s a little bit too afraid to post them. What advice would you give her on just taking the chance to just post the reel and get her content out there?

One thing that I tend to forget is that you never know who’s gonna stumble upon your videos. There is a place for everyone on Instagram. There’s a place for all types of videos.

You have to block out that noise, and if this is something that you really want to do, you just have to keep going and not listen to all those outside voices. I think once you kind of persevere and get over that first bump of being embarrassed and ashamed of it, things will really start working. But it definitely requires a lot of perseverance and consistency. But I love it. It’s great.