With a Twitter following of over 83.7 thousand, Azola Mlota has done what most try and fail to do.
He has built a career using social media.
The 24-year-old social media influencer is from Elliot, which is a small town near Queenstown in the Eastern Cape.
Azole built his career by making use of his P.R skills to promote brands and events using social media.
He has worked with major brands such as Trace Mobile and is currently the head of P.R for the Mzansi Kwaito & House Music Awards and has previously worked with the Golden Bean Music Awards.
Azola says that his secrete to having a successful and lucrative social media presence, is knowing how to communicate with each one of his followers.
He always dreamt of working in the media industry, and one day being on TV.
That dream became a reality last year when he was interviewed about his work on the SABC 2 breakfast show, Morning Live.
“When people saw my hype on social media, that is when I got all this attention,” he said.
Azola says all of this began while he was studying at the Tshwane University of Technology.
He remembers being resentful because he was doing a course that wasn’t in line with his dream.
“I blamed God because I was doing something not related to media. But then I realized that students communicate on a day-to-day basis on social media,” he said.
He then began taking social media seriously.
He created a professional bio, picture and graphics.
“God showed me that I am destined for P.R and to capitalize on social media,” he recalls.
He says the most challenging moment of his career was when his Twitter account was hacked in 2016.
Someone logged onto his account and changed his credentials.
Fortunately, he was able to recover his account.
His advice to aspirant social media influencers is to be as active as possible.
“We live in a world where social media is the in thing, so be active, it opens the world,” he advices.
He also says that the most important thing is originality, because you can’t portray something you’re not.
Azola says the power of social media has allowed him to be independent, to live out his dream and for that he thanks God.
“Everything happens in its own time, I give glory to God”.
