We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Lydia Alty a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Lydia thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Let’s kick things off with your mission – what is it and what’s the story behind why it’s your mission?
I am an Anti Bullying Ambassador from the UK. My mission is to reduce bullying in all schools. I experienced Bullying from the age of 12 all because of the way I looked and what I did as hobbies. When I joined Secondary school the bullying turned from verbal to cyber bullying, people made meme pages of me and commented on everything I did and made fun of me. I felt so alone and nearly stopped doing my hobbies. My mission of both my company I started, Lydia A Entertainment, and my campaigns within the company are to help support all ages of children and young people and help them feel supported, whether that be online or in person. The aim of the company is to bring in small YouTubers, actors, and presenters to come join the company for free get represented by us, and get one to one support, so online they feel supported, feel part of a kind community and get opportunities as well that help them get experience in the industry. Whether your part of the media industry as a hobby like me, or a job the right support is vital both for physical and mental health.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
My Name is Lydia Alty. I run two channels on YouTube. I got into this industry when I was 13 years old. I got inspired to do my hobby that I do now, after I watched a couple of people online and thought I could do that. I started my channel Lydia A in 2016 and launched a video on it in early 2017. It started out as a drawing channel, but soon I started uploading vlogs and challenge videos with my younger brother. Now the channel boosts over 3,000 subscribers and contains vlogs and day in the life Videos as well as support videos, such as my Anti Bullying work. My second channel Royal Reporter Lydia was launched in May 2018. Being British, I had grown up watching our Late Queen on the Television. She inspired me so much and was such an inspirational women who was our head of state for 70 years. She worked everyday, even through the pandemic. She was a fantastic Queen, and she dedicated her life to serving our country and her family. She is deeply missed by us all. I started Royal Reporter Lydia because I wanted to do news on the Royals. This channels aim is to bring real news together from the Royal Family. It’s an honour to report on them all. We report on the youngest royals to the oldest royals. This channel had diversified from Lydia A. Both my channels and my younger brothers channels are all under Lydia A Entertainment which helps produce content too.
Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?
Building up a social media is not easy and it does come with a lot of hard work. Social media marketing requires skill and precision, and targeting the right audience. For my Lydia A Channel it took 3 years to build the channel to just over 1,000 subscribers. Many say after 1,000 it’s easy to grow your channel, which is completely wrong. Your content needs to be up to scratch after 1K subscribers and if your on Instagram posting reels, means you need to hop on the trends just as or before they blow up so you have a higher chance of views. It took me 4 years to build up Royal Reporter Lydia to just over 100K, which is a crazy milestone, but took a lot of hard work. Lydia A Entertainment was built up from my experiences both with bullying and growing social media. We help people recognise that it’s not easy, but we give them opportunities that help connect them with brands and if they are committed help them level up their social media presence without bots. It’s not a bot business, so we don’t get results with the click of a finger we teach people how to expand their audience and give them brand deals, even small, it gives them experience. Some of our clients do not get paid for brand deals it’s about the experience and the building of business relationships.
Any resources you can share with us that might be helpful to other creatives?
I didn’t have support, no one in my school did YouTube, or social media. Although it’s just a part time job and hobby, as I do have job aspirations, which I hope to do with my online hobbies, but anyway most people nowadays aren’t as supportive as they ought to be. Media is frowned on and that means that even those big entertainment businesses want loads of money you just don’t have as a small creator. My business is free, we get money through sponsorship and we don’t want money because we are not here to make a profit as for us it’s just a hobby, but for many who email us wanting support it’s a job and we want to help them and give them resources and teach them how to use platforms such as Instagram and Facebook effectively as well as Photoshop tutorial sessions.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.lydiaaentertainment.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lydiaaentertainment
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lydiaaentertainment
- Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/alty_lydia
Image Credits
All these images are copyrighted to Lydia A Entertainment