Influencers are the new social media managers.
That belief has been adopted by brands like Nerf and Olipop, who have hired digital-native creators to run their TikTok accounts. Both companies have seen encouraging results from this experiment. Nerf gets millions of views on videos that feature its Chief TikTok Officer Sophie Lightning, and Olipop saw its TikTok follower count go from 1,000 to 34,000 six months after it started working with two creators on its account.
Lightning was a Nerf enthusiast before she ever started working directly for the company. The Mainer has accrued millions of followers by sharing her love of Nerf guns, and one of her fans is the brand itself. Lightning now appears in most of the uploads on Nerf’s official TikTok account, and she helps the toymaker stay up to date on the TikTok “meta.” This is a primary advantage of the creator-as-social-media-marketer. It’s possible to comment on current trends without eliciting cringes among your viewers.
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@nerf Did we do this trend correctly??? #Nerf #fyp #viral ♬ original sound – Nerf
Creators can help partner brands get hip even if they don’t have huge follower accounts of their own. In fact, more prominent influencers are less likely to accept a day job in social media, since committing to a specific company limits the number of deals they can accept.
For the likes of Olipop and the Los Angeles Times, hiring a creator to run socials is an updated version of microinfluencer marketing. Those companies give creators steady salaries instead of paying them for one-off campaigns. Olipop keeps creator Sara Crane on retainer, and she gets assistance from fellow TikToker Diana Rondi, according to Fast Company. For the Times, a new unit called 404 has emerged as a compelling hybrid of short-form video and journalism.
Beyond the above examples, delivery service GoPuff and food company Simulate have also given creators the keys to their TikTok accounts. Fast Company noted that these moves have seen “varying degrees of success.”
