Even at the tender age of 12, Dallas-Fort Worth resident Hector Guerrero knew he had a passion for content creation.
It was at that age that his parents gave him a gift that would be the foundation of his current career path as a professional content creator — a cell phone with ability to record video.
“It looked awful. It looked like a potato pixel,” Guerrero said. “But I had so much fun creating with my friends.”
Now 28, Guerrero keeps tens of thousands of followers up-to-date on the latest in North Texas news across his social media channels.
Growing up in Oak Cliff, Guerrero, now 28, says he lived in a “rough” part of the neighborhood and recalls incidents of violence and drug addiction. For him and his friends, writing and recording sketches for YouTube became a creative outlet that unlocked their creativity.
In one such video, Guerrero and his friends parody exercise infomercials.
“A lot of my teachers found out about it and was showing it all around, so that was fun. It was a sense of virality before that was a thing for the internet,” Guerrero said.
In his early 20s, Guerrero founded Tiger Teeth Creative, a production company that aims to help content creators with behind-the-scenes production. While not a significant money-maker, Guerrero says he used production work to sharpen his own content creation skills.
Then, in June of last year, Guerrero started making videos for himself again.
“It turned into, ‘oh, I forgot I love this,’" Guerrero said. "I forgot about the 12-year-old Hector who did this for community, for creativity, for a safe place to just be me."
@hectordaily Murals all over Dallas are commencing. Let's take a tour!#dallas #hectordaily #dfw ♬ original sound - HectorAlexGuerrero
A few months later, his following has grown greatly. Guerrero has almost 50,000 followers on TikTok, and nearly 45,000 on Instagram. Most of his content is unapologetically Dallas-centric, with a focus on local news. A recent TikTok video on the covering of the Whale Mural in Downtown Dallas has more than 60,000 views, 3,000 likes and 400 comments.
While he acknowledges he often frames what he does in a journalistic context, and that he has great respect for journalists, he does not consider what he does to be journalism. For one thing, he says he doesn’t hold himself to the same standards.
“In Spanish it’s called being a chismoso — a little bit of a gossiper,” Guerrero said.
Even so, he says he does his best to be respectful to the subjects he covers, especially when it involves crime or other sensitive subjects.
Journalism or not, he’s earned enough influence to be profitable — but notes the payouts from the social media channels themselves can be fickle.
“Last year, TikTok was able to bring me in like, one-to-two grand a month," he said. "This year, I get maybe 100-to-130 bucks a month."
As glamorous as a career in content creation may seem, Guerrero warned that the life of a content creator — especially in the news niche — isn’t for everyone. Since he runs social media channels by himself and has two other jobs, keeping a reasonable work-life balance can be challenging. For those who would aspire to be content creators themselves, he says to be successful, you must be honest with yourself on how much you’re willing to sacrifice.
“Are you administratively strong enough to respond to multiple emails while you're trying to create videos, when you don't have a team and it's just you, and you're editing at 2 in the morning, and you've got to wake up at 6 because you have to go to your job. Can you do all that?” Guerrero said.
Guerrero's not transitioning any time soon. He believes social media's influence will only grow as it continues to compete with legacy publishers for audience attention.
He says with today’s technology, your ability to earn money off your creativity it limited only by your imagination and ambition.
“You can just film vertically something 30-60 seconds and it can change your whole life” Guerrero said.
William Padmore is KERA's afternoon newscaster. Got a tip? Email William at wpadmore@kera.org.
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