Happy Wednesday!

TikTok TikTok TikTok! I found this on TikTok! You should download TikTok!

I have to resist rolling my eyes when someone starts talking about TikTok. The science that shows how terrible it is for your brain is evident. What’s worse is the obvious engagement farming when you open the app.

Attention’s the new economical trade.

And I sold my soul 2 weeks ago to get on this bandwagon.

I’ve been posting (and failing) to build a following on Instagram. It’s been discouraging, but my brain rotted little brother convinced me to download TikTok for professional uses.

So I caved. And I started posting everyday. And my first video has gone “viral” to 30K views in 2 days (although I think 2025 definition of viral is a little bit overdramatic).

So here’s how I did it, and how you could too (I hear a lot of these TikTok creators want to go viral so they can sell on their TikTok shop and become a TikTok influencer TikTok TikTok TikTok TIKTOK).

From my browser to yours, Aria

⏰ TL;DR

• Summer’s End Soiree held as side event for Startup Boston Week. Be there or be ⬛.

• Don’t listen to wannabe millionaires. If you start creating now, and you add genuine value with the tools I listed below, you’ll be fine.

• If people stayed in Boston, we too, can one day we the powerhouse of the cell.

🔖 Bookmarks From Mine to Yours

• Some good news for gray wolves: a federal judge in Montana ruled that US Fish & Wildlife Service broke the law last year when it denied a petition to protect them under the Endangered Species Act.

• BRIC’s Actuator is a free entrepreneurship course designed to get your tech or tech-enabled business concept ready to launch with an 8-week focused curriculum. Applications are live!

• A look into the story of the Global Director of Social Media at Duolingo, and why she’s leaving

• Brandon Smith Wrick (former Director of Partnerships at Kickstarter and Content Creator whiz) published a list of all the tools he uses for his work (he has affiliate links for some)

  • He also listed his Exit Strategy playbook if you’re interested in working on a creator business and exiting your corporate 9-5 at some point

• Boston Startup Week is upon us! Check out the amazing event lineup here

YOU’RE INVITED: Summer’s End Soirée

Unconventional meets relationship building. You're invited to a summer mixer like no other.

Join us for an evening curated specifically for the Boston startup community to build relationships, share knowledge, and celebrate wins from the season.

As an official Boston Startup Week side event (not hosted by BSW directly), this is for you if you’re looking to meet people within your industry and explore lessons learned behind closed doors. Founders, operators, investors — all are welcome.

🥙 Potluck brunch spread to warm up the day

🙌 Problem /\ Solution speed dating with pre-matched industry pairs

🧘‍♀️ Blanket-styled fireside chat (👀 speakers TBA)

📋 Celebrate wins of the season

Be there or be ⬛. September 7th @ 11AM.

Event registration here. Spots limited. Share with anyone you think would benefit (:

TikTok TikTok TikTok TikTok!

I downloaded TikTok for the first time in my life 28 days ago.

I’d always been super stubborn and reluctant to download it, but professional needs forced me to see reality for what it is.

And wow. NO APP. ON THIS PLANET. Is optimizing engagement and attention the way TikTok is (except perhaps xiaohongxu) ((which makes a lot of sense when you think about the Chinese spyware “allegations)).

At the end of this section, I share my metrics and future directions (cause at the end of the day I am still a scientist).

I want to write a disclaimer here that the principles I list here for what I learned from TikTok can be applicable to ANY TYPE of building. Building a startup, your own consultancy, your nonprofit’s messaging.

These ideas are the foundation of social media.

What’s next is to EXPERIMENT on your own and adapt what works for you to your account.

Scary f***ing things I noticed:

• A lot of people are building their TikToks off of “How to get 10K followers” so they tell you to engage from the bottom up

  • lol, so what this means is YOU need to watch THEIR video ALL the way through, share, like, follow, and comment “I want to get into the TikTok Creator Program”

  • I did some market research and there are HUNDREDS of accounts doing a 3 minute shpeel to engagement farm, increase the comments = tells the algorithm “woah this post is good!” and push it out onto more people’s feeds

• People REALLY want to be part of the TikTok Shop Program

  • which is I guess late-stage capitalism at its best.

  • (for those of you who don’t know, people with 5K+ followers can basically be brand affiliates and earn a commission on the products they review/sell on their page)

  • I read a Reddit comment the other day about how no one wants to do hard work anymore. Which I think in some veins is true. I think what’s MORE true is no one understands what hard work IS anymore.

• The brain rot is so real.

  • There is scientific evidence that shows the APP itself (TikTok) REDUCES attention span

  • I had to REALLY set up boundaries for myself, 2-5 videos to engage with the algorithm and then only being on the app to comment/message people.

Information I ABSOLUTELY ignored going into this experiment:

• Engagement farming content that exploits those who don’t know any better and are genuinely just sheep unfortunately, just trying to find a way to live a better life

• Taking time to discover your niche, do research on what other people are doing, and NOT create content (spoiler alert, failure breeds success).

Here’s how I grew to 1.2K followers/21K views organically with 14 videos

• I posted a 1.5min - 3min video EVERYDAY. NO MATTER WHAT!

  • I watched a couple of videos to figure out hooks/what the meta was for ensuring your viewer stayed for the first 2 seconds

  • I noticed longer videos w/ less views did better than shorter videos with more views (engagement/comment wise). Which makes sense because I was asking them to comment a word for me to send them a lead generation page. So if they stayed longer, they found the content valuable and would comment.

  • ALSO, I invested some money in purchasing the pro version of CapCut to edit videos. This has saved me SO much time.

• I used this hook in EVERY VIDEOS: Clickbait hook + qualification + education

  • I am educating in all of these videos. But what got them to stay past the 5 second mark was being relatable and telling them WHY they should listen to lil’ ole me.

• My first few videos were only doing around ~1K views (which is good for TikTok standards), but I wanted more engagement. The algorithm LOVES comments, so if you can get more people to comment, you can get more qualified leads.

• So this is how I thought of doing a series. Because people will follow you to follow the series, and if you’re providing real value, they’ll do everything they can to stay up to date on what you’re posting.

• I paid attention to what times my posts were getting attention. 10AM vs 7PM. STARK difference.

• One thing I did listen to from the TikTok brain rot was this new feature called “Creator Search Insights”

  • It showed me that I could go to this feature (type it into the search bar)

  • Click View

  • And scroll to the header that says “Content Gap”

  • APPARENTLY (don’t shoot the messenger), if you post videos within these Content Gap topics (they will show you if it’s 10% in demand, 100%, up to 1000%), your video will be pushed out MORE by the algorithm

• deleted a vid at 5 views at hour 6, reposted, 10K+ views in hour 24

The golden goose that got me my first “viral” video at 30K in 3 days

I still cringe saying viral, but that’s what all the TikTokers are saying and apparently newsletters are telling me a video is viral if it has more than 10K views (Do y’all remember viral meant all the news outlets were talking about it? Like the ice bucket challenge?)

I posted the FIRST video of my 7 part series at the usual time I do that has generated ~1K views.

I usually SHUT the app for at least for 3 hours and do not open it again. When it was time for me to open and engage back with my commenters, the post was only at 6 views.

WHAAAAAT?

This video was pretty good, but it had 1 thing I could change in the beginning that may have been impacting it.

I had recorded myself setting the phone down for a second before talking to make myself more personable and less scripted.

So, to fix it, I edit that second out so the first second is me talking. WHAM BAM!

3 hours later. 2K views. 300 comments. 500 likes. 200 new followers. (roughly)

IMPORTANT: Views =/= Conversions

I also don’t think TikTok is the best platform to start a consulting business because they don’t have the UI that allows people to easily navigate to links.

From the 1.2K followers and 800+ comments asking for the resource they wanted, I have only gotten 146 people to go to this link, and 86 people to put in their email (60% conversion isn’t bad I think, someone smarter than me needs to let me know).

These people who submitted a comment weren’t MY qualified leads. The EMAIL conversions were qualified leads.

QUALIFIED is the key word, nobody cares how many views you have if they don’t convert (unless you’re TikTok Shopping)

That’s my biggest takeaway. My second biggest takeaway is someone needs to make a ManyChat version for TikTok (MC doesn’t work on TikTok right now).

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve sent “Sent! Check your inbox (:”

Future Directions

From my engagement, I’ve booked 1 call so far (it’s tomorrow). I’ve learned a lot from this experiment, but it couldn’t have worked this well if it weren’t for my other ventures.

I learned A LOT from building my consulting firm for nonprofits (LUNEAERA) like lead generation, providing education/value first before selling, etc. etc.

And then with jadewell, I’ve learned how to talk to people transparently and authentically.

All my experiences have built me up. You have to tap into that if you want to build something bigger than yourself.

I’m going to continue sharing my insights and grow my page. If you have a question about this journey, please feel free to reply to this email.

We’re going to do some experimentations like 30min consult giveaways at XXXX follower goal, and some livestreams where I answer people’s questions on the spot and sell what I’m selling within that livestream.

Let’s see how wild this experiment can get.

Boston Creator Economy Mixer Recap

If you’re still reading, congrats! You do not have a TikTok brain rotted brain.

I wanted to hold some space in this newsletter to show my deep appreciation for Lindsey Gamble and Courtney Duffy for hosting an amazing creator economy mixer. When I say I haven’t felt anything like this in Boston, I seriously mean it.

The energy. The AUTHENTICITY. People were genuinely there to connect and make connections FOR you. It was truly amazing.

One big thing I yapped about with my new bestie I met here is how we as Bostonians (and my other newsletter readers geograph’d elsewhere not in SF or NY) NEED to keep this energy going throughout the year.

Boston has MASSIVE potential to become THE connection incubator of North America.

We have some of the best universities in the WORLD. The best MINDS.

Deep tech meets innovation.

THAT’s the future of Boston.

But right now, so many people I know are moving to SF or NY for the resources that already exist there.

What if we stayed, and built our own ecosystem?

📰 Random Recommendations

• Really funny comments on this post in r/LinkedInLunatics

• If you like science fiction and television, I highly recommend The Sandman. The cinematography is beautiful. The plot lines feel so… original? And the characters are just so fun to follow (especially if you’re a mythology nerd).

Powering down, Aria ✌️