Pilot to Social Media: Why Did I Start Doing It?

Recently I got so many questions about my social media life, how I started it, why do I do this and what is the key to my success? In this article I will try to tell you about my story of how I became a social blogger and why are you following me.

JOURNEY

Interest in photography and passion in aviation made me start something called social blogging.

As a kid, my passion was aviation and everything related to that field, and I always encouraged to talk about aviation, share aviation topics with people. It took hours to talk about my passion: planes, traveling… So when I became a pilot, I was active just on Facebook and shared stories and pictures only with my friends and family.

However, everything changed in December of 2015 when I got my first GoPro Hero 4 and started to take pictures inside the cockpit. I was so impressed by my friend’s pictures inside of cockpit, skies, clouds, scenery that I decided to myself to share this kind of images with people, tell them and share my passion with them. Well, at that time I didn’t have a clue how to use Instagram, but I had a goal, and I had to achieve my goal. So I LEARNT…

I started social blogging and became so lucky that I was one of those rare pilots who got noticed in social media. I aimed to INSPIRE, to MOTIVATE, to instill love towards aviation and flying somehow, to show what is like to be a commercial airline PILOT. So I took my camera wherever I went, took pictures on each flight whenever it was suitable to, however flying and flight safety was, is and always will be my top priority. Posting these pictures and videos gained such interest around the people that I started getting followers; at first my target was to gain just 1000 or 2000 followers, but I achieved these numbers so quickly that I set a new goal and started working hard for that. Eventually, I was getting the numbers that I set for and noticed that most followers are the young generation which is dreaming of being pilots or work in the aviation industry.

SOCIAL MEDIA BECAME AS MEANS OF TEACHING ABOUT THE FLYING FOR ME

These young people gave me an idea to use this platform for teaching them. As there were not a lot of pilots at that time on Instagram, I became more popular and became an ‘influencer.’

I HAD CHALLENGES TO OVERCOME

Any journey has its challenges. So I faced so many problems on my way, it was the challenge of being one of the pioneers as a pilot, the challenge of content that will allow you to be recognized around the world, and the challenge of communication with different cultures, nations, mentality. These challenges gave me the knowledge of what to focus on and what to ignore, what are my weakness and strength.

I surveyed, I asked, I listened to different opinions about these challenges. People, sometimes even very close to me were always kept asking me why I do this, what are the benefits of it, maybe I do it because of the money? I always told and told them that I do this out of passion, love, sharing information and knowledge but not out of money.

The language was a challenge too, but I like to take positive criticism and always work on improving it.

Social media life is an ongoing process, so you have to be ready to have up and downs, days that you just do not want to do anything, days that your post is a failure, days that you are going to have boost, days that you are tired of this, days that you want to post and post and post…

BENEFITS OF SOCIAL MEDIA IF YOU HAVE THE RIGHT ATTITUDE

Social blogging is helping me to communicate with so many people, and it gives me a chance to change opinions, to inspire people to become pilots by seeing inside of the cockpit and make to believe in themselves and that everything is possible if you have the right attitude. And every time I see that someone became a pilot because of my motivation, it touches my heart and tells me to continue this journey. Social media taught me to accept and be accepted, to treat the world as one big family.

DONATION AS A PART OF MY JOURNEY

At the beginning of this year I together with my social media team started a DONATION project that was all about giving and sharing, making a someone’s dream come true. This was a great experience to see the people who trust you and believe in you without even knowing you in person help you to help others by purchasing T-shirts that were designed for this propose. This was successful for me.

Everyone has a different approach, and some people will try to criticize you negatively, some will try to encourage you, so you have always to take them positively and move forward; otherwise, you are going to stop on a very first day of your social media life.

Moving up is not easy at all, so you should work hard for it.

Until next time my aviators and as always “We Speak Aviation.”