3 execs who use social media to turn their side hustles into money-makers
Whether you’re a small business owner or a corporate 9-5’er, we know it can feel like a lot to even think about your digital strategy, never mind execute on it. That’s why we’re introducing you to three incredible creators who also just happen to have, you know, jobs. We’ve picked a favorite from each of the best platforms - Instagram, TikTok, and LinkedIn - and dug in on what’s working for them, strategically and tactically.
Before we get into it, let’s talk about what these three people have in common: they are consistent. Through regular posting - typically daily - they have built their platforms from scratch and turned their side hustles into big money-makers because of it. This may sound like a daunting task, but the tips below will set you up for success and hopefully even teach you how to enjoy the process.
The beauty of these tips? They mix and match. While they are specific to each platform discussed, many of the same rules apply to the others, with a bit of tailoring. Our advice on getting started is to pick one platform that feels natural to you, and find ways to build posting into your daily life, whether it’s with a quick and dirty Instagram Story or taking time to share a short text post on LinkedIn.
Happy strategizing!
If you’re not familiar with Eva Chen, now is the time to follow @evachen212. She gives a master class to her 2.2 million followers every. single. day.
Eva’s day job is Director of Fashion Partnerships at Instagram, so it’s not really a surprise that she knows the ins and outs of the platform so well, but she started building a following before she actually worked there. As a longtime magazine editor working in fashion and beauty during the rise of social media, posting looks was a natural way to get started, but Eva knew that she needed to stand out from the growing crowd. Enter the #EvaChenPose.
The snaps have become iconic to Eva’s followers: a photo of her shoes, next to her bag and a piece of fruit, in the back of a New York City cab.
"It was something I knew I could do every day in a very manageable way,” Eva said in 2014, before she worked at Instagram and had around 249,000 followers. “I take a cab to work almost every day, so basically, I was like, 'Oh, these are the shoes I’m wearing.' And, it just started happening more and more."
Key word: manageable. Picking a part of her daily routine that brought her joy, and sharing it on Instagram, became an easy win. When she went as far as to brand it, her followers were inspired to share their own shoe snaps, and now the Eva Chen Pose regularly happens in cabs all over the city (check the hashtag for proof).
This method of working your digital strategy into your day is just one lesson to learn from Eva, so here are a few more of our top takeaways:
Show your face: If Instagram is your chosen platform, posting images of you will almost always perform better. A quick scroll through Eva’s profile will show that the majority of her in-feed posts include her face, although she does mix in other fun, colorful images.
Post to Stories daily: Eva posts a lot of her day-to-day life, especially with her husband and kids, which is a great way to build interest for another audience that is important to her since she’s now the author of several children’s books.
Use video: So many people loved Instagram for its focus on images, but like it or not, video is here to stay. Sure, Eva works at Instagram, but she’s still done a great job at evolving with the platform - check out her first #EvaChenPose of 2023!
P.S. If you have a video you want to share to your feed but don’t think there’s a strong thumbnail in the video itself, you can upload a separate image as the thumbnail, which Eva does regularly.
When it comes to branding, Erika Kullberg is a pro.
She’s an attorney who has taken off on social media, especially over the last year on Tik Tok, where she has 9.1 million followers. If you’re a chronic FYP scroller like us, you probably know her tagline by heart - more on that in a second.
Erika spent years working as a corporate lawyer representing Fortune 500 companies, and went on to start a company that seeks to make legal more accessible for online business owners and entrepreneurs. We don’t see much of her day job on TikTok, where most of her content is about legal loopholes that help consumers, even if most don’t know they exist.
What’s noticeable about all of Erika’s videos is that you only have to see a few before she gets stuck in your head. Most of them star Erika in two roles: as a consumer, and as an employee who assumes that the consumer doesn’t know the loopholes that will save them money. At the end, the “employee” asks, “Who taught you this?” The “customer” says, “Erika taught me! She’s a lawyer who reads the fine print so I don’t have to. That’s why I follow her!”
Besides the tagline, she’s often wearing branded shirts that say, “I read the fine print” and also started her own podcast called “Erika Taught Me,” which she posts video clips of to a TikTok account with the same name. She even brings in the occasional guest to help recite that tagline, like U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.
We’d say she’s doing an amazing job building a brand, but let’s be honest, with 17 million followers across all of her social platforms, she’s way past the building stage. With that said, take all the inspiration you can - she’s only been on TikTok a little over a year!
Here are a few other tips from Erika’s feed that will be helpful in planning your TikTok strategy:
Repurpose what works: Erika has had a lot of success with her videos about travel hacks and loopholes, and will repurpose those videos to get even more out of them. Here’s an example where she also uses smart language that encourages new viewers to follow her.
Don’t try too hard: Although plenty of research goes into Erika’s videos, they still feel like a low-lift, which often does well on the platform. There are no fancy transitions or complicated shot setups, just backgrounds that probably come from Google Images, plus the occasional wig or costume to keep it fun. A tutorial will teach you her basic editing tricks!
Title your videos: Almost all of Erika’s content is something you might want to reference later, and she uses the text-on-screen option in the TikTok app to add short titles to her thumbnails (like “Get money from airlines” and “Free Nike shoes”) for easy reference when people visit her feed.
With 1.3 million followers on LinkedIn, Austin Belcak is one of the platform’s most popular creators.
Austin started his career with a job he hated, and when he tried to pivot, he realized he’d have to get creative when going after jobs in new industries. Eventually, he landed a job at Microsoft and, on the side, started sharing what he learned from an exhaustive job search. Joining LinkedIn was a natural next step and with consistent posting, he began to build an audience.
Posting multiple times a week like Austin can be a daunting task, but he has a secret we love and practice at MTD: batch writing, which he explained last year on the Creative Elements podcast.
“I sat down and I said, here's what I'm going to do, I'm going to sit down, I'm going to write LinkedIn posts, and I'm not going to publish them, I'm just going to sit down every day, I'm going to write a post, I'm gonna save it. And I'm just going to build a massive backlog of content. And that's what I did. And I basically built out like 30 to 50 posts, I don't remember the exact number. And then I said, Okay, if I post a couple times per week, I basically have several months of content here. And if I can write one or two new posts every week, that backlog is just going to keep extending, and hopefully that gives me enough runway to figure this thing out. And that's exactly what happened. I started posting semi weekly, I had the backlog, I dedicated time every day to writing and that clicked. And that eventually worked for me.”
That strategy is what helped Austin build his business, Cultivated Culture, and eventually leave Microsoft to work on that full-time. He’s since expanded to Twitter, where he has over 60K followers and repurposes some of his threads as LinkedIn content, and also has an owned platform, a newsletter, with 120K subscribers.
Here are a few more takeaways from Austin:
Perfect your hook: In the Creative Elements podcast, Austin talks about how he tracks the performance of all of his posts, and says the most important element is the hook, which is those first few lines before you have to click “...see more” to read the rest of the post.
Here’s the podcast transcript - he talks about hooks and tracking performance around 30:06.
Mix in newsworthy content: Evergreen content is great, but it’s important to not let relevant trends pass you by. Austin recently added posts on layoff news and ChatGPT into the mix.
Just start: Austin’s profile is a great example that you only need your words on LinkedIn. It’s great to experiment with tools on the platform, like polls and newsletters, but the subject-matter and audience don’t need anything fancy.