Life with a Landcloud: From dog videos to mental health advocacy

By Ashley Meza

Charishma Cohen didn’t intend to become an influencer. However, the success of her “Life with a Landcloud” content has granted her the opportunity to become a strong mental health advocate in her community.

What started off as fun videos of her dog Boomer to make followers smile turned into a successful career through social media. Her blog began as a separate account from her personal page for Boomer-related content. Over time, @LifeWithALandcloud has grown into what it is today.

Cohen started out on Instagram, but things really took off when she opened a TikTok account.

“(The account) really blew up, and that’s when I was like, ‘OK, wait, something’s happening here,’” Cohen says. “It was not planned. I had no experience in making the videos before. I did grow up watching a lot of YouTube videos, but I never thought that I would become a content creator.”

Cohen is originally from Bangalore, India, and moved to Illinois in 2009 for school, where she received her Ph.D. in engineering. She continued to work in the engineering field until 2022, when she quit to manage her account full time. Cohen started the channel after moving to New York from Illinois and has since relocated to Playa Vista.

“Life with a Landcloud” has over 400,000 followers on Instagram, 1.3 million subscribers on YouTube, and 3.3 million followers on TikTok. The majority of her followers are millennials. There’s about a 60/40 split between genders, with those who identify as women being the predominant audience. Almost her entire following is based in the U.S. The majority of her followers are from New York and the West Coast.

She went on to explain that her username, “Life with a Landcloud,” is due to Samoyed dogs breeds like Boomer are often referred to as “landclouds” because of their fluffy appearance. “Boomer the Landcloud” was actually the first iteration and showcased her life with Boomer.

Over time, though, Cohen’s content shifted from videos of Boomer to advocating for mental health.

“I love sharing videos of Boomer, and Boomer has had a huge impact on my mental health,” Cohen says. “I was sharing snippets of (mental health advocacy) with regular Boomer content, and people really appreciated it. I think it’s because they found a connection, they found a real human moment.”

Boomer is still very frequently featured throughout the platforms. Instead of completely flipping the script on the content of her channel, Cohen has incorporated both aspects to appeal to her still-growing audience.

“I think it’s more about sharing our life together, how he’s impacted me and the things we get to do together,” Cohen says. “He’s still a big part of it. It’s just a little bit more about both of our life together.”

Cohen shares that she has struggled with some mental health issues of her own in the past and realized that there wasn’t much content that truly spoke up about it.

“People were always very positive and happy on social media, and it made me feel like I was very alone in my struggles,” Cohen says.

Realizing this, she took it upon herself to start spreading awareness and being transparent about her own mental health journey. Cohen’s goal is to provide people with a real perspective of life, not from the viewpoint of an expert but from someone who is going through the same type of struggles others may be experiencing themselves.

“I really enjoyed connecting with people and talking through some of these struggles, and I realized that there’s so much value in that,” Cohen says. “I almost feel like my purpose in life.”

One frequent struggle that social media users find themselves going through is comparing oneself to others, and it’s also common among content creators.

“With content creation, I think a lot of us struggle with the comparison game,” Cohen says.

That’s something she faced switching from cute dog videos to mental health content.

“I think now that I’m trying to change to have it have a little more value and a little more humaneness behind it, it’s not as, like, catchy or trendy. So I think there’s a little bit of challenge with that,” Cohen says. “But I’m OK with that. Because I know that ultimately, that is what I want to be doing. And that I feel like is what will be helpful for people.”

She also finds that using audience feedback is the most helpful tool in creating content for her channels.

“At the end of the day, it’s about who is viewing the content. It’s not so much what I want to share,” Cohen says. “There has to be kind of like a marrying of the two things.”

Along with content creation online, Cohen has started hosting live and virtual events in her community to meet and connect more with others. She shares that it’s been tough to meet new people since the pandemic, but also because of how spread out people are in the Los Angeles area.

“This year, I wanted to try to leverage the social media following to try to form real-life connections,” Cohen says.

She has mainly held meetups for women to connect with other women. Events that she’s hosted include a virtual beach hangout, a sunset walk, a Galentine’s crafts day, and a sunset paint night at the beach.

“It’s just something that I would enjoy doing, and I think a lot of women do, but it’s just tough to do by yourself or to find a group to do it. So I’m kind of facilitating that,” Cohen says. “I think community is such a big factor into our overall happiness, so I’m happy that I’m taking charge of it and helping people also form connections.”

Cohen shared that she does limit the amount of people attending these events so that everyone can have the opportunity to have meaningful conversations and connections. She talks about having larger events in the past but how they ended up feeling like networking events with multiple short conversations, rather than talking on a deeper level.

“I wanted to make sure there was enough of an opportunity for people to be able to express their thoughts on things,” Cohen says.

In addition to hosting more events, Cohen is working on a “Life with a Landcloud” newsletter for her followers. She hopes to cover more topics on mental health, traveling and Boomer and also have more community events listed.

“I’m very excited to launch that very soon,” Cohen says. “It’s easier for people to sign up for things and also get more direct information instead of relying on the social media algorithm to get the information.”

She expresses how happy it has made her to share mental health advocacy content, as well as how the stigma surrounding it has changed on social media over time.

“I think there’s a lot of room for it to grow,” Cohen says. “The shift of the content towards (mental health) I think kind of fits where I am in life.”

Cohen and Boomer can be found on any social media platform @LifeWithALandcloud.