Following a decade in skilled kitchens, together with Michelin-starred eating places, Poppy O’Toole is attempting on a brand new apron: social influencer.
O’Toole has amassed greater than 2 million TikTok followers since becoming a member of the platform in 2020, the place her followers eat up the self-proclaimed Potato Queen’s recipes. O’Toole joined James Stafford, head of partnerships and group at TikTok, for a hearth chat with Adweek’s Rebecca Stewart throughout Social Media Week Europe. The dialog targeted on how TikTok reignited O’Toole’s ardour for meals and cooking and the way she constructed up a loyal following centered round potatoes.
Ranging from the bottom up
Like many others, O’Toole stated after shedding her job in the course of the Covid-19 pandemic, she was searching for a inventive outlet. Sooner or later she got here throughout a recipe video on TikTok that sprouted the concept for her personal movies.
“I believed, ‘oh, I can try this!’ It was simply enjoyable and artistic, and I may get out recipes I believed folks would recognize,” she stated. “Initially, it was simply folks desirous to see what I used to be consuming and what I used to be as much as, and it simply snowballed from there.”
Stafford stated TikTok’s capability to create communities round area of interest content material, similar to how O’Toole constructed up a following centered round potato recipes, is a part of its secret recipe for fulfillment.
“TikTok allowed folks to seek out pleasure in content material that they weren’t discovering wherever else—quite a lot of area of interest content material, content material from individuals who possibly wouldn’t have discovered an viewers elsewhere, had been immediately getting found on the platform,” he defined. “It was actually invigorating, and it’s very easy to make your personal content material on TikTok, that basically spurred a profitable interval of development for us in 2020 and 2021.”
Harnessing the facility of the area of interest TikTok is filled with niches, from #CleanTok to dancing, health, and #RelationshipTok; if there’s a subject, curiosity, or passion, regardless of how area of interest it’s, there are probably folks making TikToks about it. O’Toole stated as soon as she figured this out, her easy love of spuds took her following to new heights.
“You see like totally different corners of the niches on TikTok, and that’s once I went full potato—and it grabbed everybody’s consideration! It’s so area of interest that you would be able to tag your mates that love potatoes and immediately construct a group, and it retains them there and engaged,” she stated. “What’s nice about my group is that they know I’m a chef, they usually love the opposite recipes I do too, and I’ve been capable of construct up this two-way communication with them.”
Constructing lasting partnerships
Group is vital for manufacturers on TikTok too. The panelists agree that manufacturers ought to lean into the group that TikTok creators have constructed and give attention to creating long-term partnerships with them relatively than one-off transactions.
“You must actually worth folks like Poppy who’ve labored to construct a group on the platform and work with them as a associate in reaching and fascinating that viewers,” Stafford stated.
“Working with manufacturers that I do know I’ll have a protracted partnership with is all the time higher,” O’Toole agreed. “You need to construct the model with the particular person after which go collectively as one, and that all the time goes out to a much bigger viewers who’re like, ‘oh, she’s been utilizing this for years. I belief that now.’ So, it’s all the time higher to have longevity in partnership.”
