While most social media influencers try and leverage their follower base to move up into acting roles in web series, television, music videos or movies, Sameeksha Sud did the opposite. “I myself didn’t believe that being a social media influencer was a job”, says the former television actress who started out making Musically videos in between takes on set. That was three years ago. Today she has 18.6 million followers on Tik Tok, brand deals with Pepsi, Lays, Redbus and several others.
Though Tik Tok as a platform is often shunned for its content, one cannot deny the mass appeal it enjoys with over 120 million active users in India. The Bytedance-owned app lets users create 15-second videos and has surpassed Whatsapp, Instagram, and Facebook to become the most downloaded app on iOS and android.
Sameeksha, who posts about seven or eight videos on a daily basis with two other group members, Bhavin Bhanushali and Vishal Pandey, says that this mass appeal comes from more relaxed regulations and a more informal space compared to the ‘classier’ and “more selective’ Instagram. The trio also has a Youtube channel with 6,95,000 subscribers.
When it comes to translating Tik Tok fame onto other platforms, Samiksha says that posting content on a consistent schedule is key. Apart from that, keeping an eye out for trends and tweaking them to suit your target audience will work as well.
But at a time when trends are so fleeting and social media is almost saturated with content creators, how does one manage to stay relevant? “Figure out what kind of content you want to create and be consistent in putting it out. On Tik Tok, I spend almost four hours watching videos to understand what trends are working and how I can use them in my own videos, for example, if I had to make a video today, it would be centred around Valentine’s Day and the Pulwama Attack, or any festival because we have so many of them in India”.
If you’re a college student looking for more social media traction or just an active user looking to transition into that ‘social media influencer’ space, now you know what to do.
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