If you look at the social media of Sonia Basil, you might find storytelling content. Apparently, the cake maker and founder of Cakeology and Keku cake shops has gone through a lot of experiments to find the type of content that suits her business and herself.

“I tried various types of content, such as transition and tutorial content. Then, I found a pattern that on a social media platform specifically for videos, people tend to look for entertainment or educational videos. They want it to be like when they watch a video, they can learn and it's not too heavy. The point is, it's something light," said Sonia.

During a recent conversation with TFR and Google, Sonia said, “From there, I also learned from other creators. I've seen a video that is also about cakes by a foreign creator. I found this creator from YouTube Shorts because I really like watching it.”

“They also showed the process of making a cake from start to finish, but not a tutorial. They are more like storytelling, telling the process behind the cake. In my opinion, it's really interesting because I, as a baker, can learn while watching the cake-making process until the end and it's also satisfying," she added.

Sonia was then inspired to not only create content that was entertaining, but also educational. She said, "Every piece of content must not just be a story, but there is always a lesson that I get from this cake and that's what I want to share with my friends out there."

When she first created storytelling content, Sonia didn't use voice-over. As an introvert, she preferred to use text to share the cake-making process. 

"It's just that when I position myself as an audience, it's a bit of a hassle. We want to follow the story, but we can't just watch it because we need to pause continuously to read the text," she said.

Learning from that experience, Sonia knows that every content has its advantages and disadvantages. Finally, she tried to get out of her comfort zone and slowly started using voice-over instead of voice effects.

“For a long time, I felt like if we are not confident in ourselves or in what we make, we can't expect other people to appreciate our content. If we are not confident with our own content, how about other people who can feel the energy from the content," said Sonia.

Sonia then gets more confident and does voice-over with her own voice. She is also getting bolder with new challenges to keep learning and sharing her experience with the audience.

"I'm starting to have the courage to accept challenging content, like the one that went viral recently, the cake is clear. In my opinion, there are many replicas of cakes covered with fondant, but people never make the clear ones. So, this is something new and it doesn't hurt to try and accept it and think about how to create this one cake,” Sonia explained enthusiastically.

She did not expect the content to go viral. She just wanted to share the process of making the cake, starting from the problems to the lessons learned and the solutions.

Even though she has gained 453,000 followers on YouTube and one of her videos on YouTube Shorts has more than 2 million views, Sonia said that not all of her content go viral or get a lot of enthusiasm from the audience, and she thinks it's a natural thing.

"Algorithms fluctuate, but I think it's okay because there's nothing that always goes up," she concluded.