[Case Study] Social Media Creator VeganTechNomad—70K Instagram Followers In Two Weeks
How This Creator Went Viral And Hit 70K Instagram Followers In Two Weeks
Hello, introduce yourself and briefly share what you do and your work
Hello! I’m Jennifer, also known as VeganTechNomad on social media. I’m based in Vancouver, Canada. In December, after going viral three times, I organically grew to 14,000 newsletter subscribers and 70,000 Instagram followers in two weeks.
I usually publish random posts about my life. But, people call me “the unhinged productivity girl” because of some of the stuff I post, I guess people call it unhinged. The videos that went viral were about life tracking and documentation. But I think people say I take it to the next level.
TikTok’s algorithm helps me find the winning version of a video.
How were you introduced to the social media industry?
I’ve always used social media, but when I got my current job as a Growth Marketer at EntryLevel, an education startup, I wanted to make TikToks for work. And I went viral for some work TikTok videos. So when I went viral on my personal account, people commented, “Hey, it’s the EntryLevel girl!”
My first video was really bad, but since I was posting five times a day, I improved quickly.
So, I got better at making videos and being on social media. When I was doing it for my personal account, it was just copying and pasting a very similar style and process. I also run and write the newsletter at work, so after perfecting that process, I implemented it for my own newsletter, which grew to around 10,000 subscribers, all from my Instagram posts that went viral, which I had forgotten about. Thanks to the SmartLink in my bio, I was able to capture all those emails. I was so glad I set that up.
It’s the same when it comes to analytics. Every month, I had to look at them and see what was doing well and what wasn’t on every platform—social media and website content. So, having to check the analytics and understand them at work has taught me the skills to do all that on my projects.
How would I know that Instagram was where my audience was if I didn’t post everywhere?
Which social media channels have you had the most success with?
I started with TikTok, but then I just repurposed the videos to my Instagram, which is where I initially went viral.
Most of my videos are now optimized for Instagram, but I film them and then schedule them on all of the video platforms using Metricool. Some videos are random, and I need to give them the best chance of success by putting them everywhere.
There was one video where I was talking about lettuce, and it was so random. It didn’t do well on Instagram, which makes sense because I’m known for productivity there. On TikTok, it also didn’t do well because it’s like, who would care about lettuce? However, on YouTube Shorts, where I can also schedule with one click, I got about 15K views and lots of comments. And I was like, yay, I got more subscribers and people that now know me.
This might be one of my social media hot takes. When you’re starting, most of the advice you read says to focus on one platform. And that’s what I did. I focused on TikTok. I posted every day there for about a month or two, but then I didn’t take off. It was only when I started scheduling my TikTok content across all of my other platforms on Metricool that things started taking off, and I started going viral.
How would I know that Instagram was where my audience was if I didn’t post everywhere?
It’s not hard to post everywhere. Some people advise focusing on one platform because you’ll be too busy and stretch too thin. But you make the video and then schedule it. It’s not that much extra work for me.
I even keep the same caption in all of them. It’s just faster that way, and people understand that everybody else is repurposing posts. So if I’m saying, “comment this for the link” or “link in bio” or something that works for Instagram but doesn’t work for TikTok or elsewhere, people understand, I think. So it’s not that much extra work for me.
I didn’t have too many followers across these different platforms. Nobody will notice this one small caption in one post out of so many. I need to focus on what matters, which is consistency and posting across these platforms regularly because that’s how I’m going to grow and improve.
What would you recommend to someone who wants to become a social media professional?
I always tell everyone that consistency is the most important skill to develop. On my work social media account, we have around 50K followers on TikTok now, and we made a lot of money from the videos that I made because I use TikTok to test the video hooks.
I use TikTok to post them all at the same time. It’s the exact same video, but the text on the screen is different. One of those videos got over 500K views, and the others only got a few thousand. And the only thing I changed was the text on screen. TikTok’s algorithm helps me find the winning version of the video. Then we ran that video as ads, generating money for the company. I wouldn’t have gotten to that video unless I was consistent in the first place.
My videos before were really, really bad. They were so awkward, but then I kept trying month after month. And then, eventually, things started picking up. Some of the videos were just my face with random texts on screen, but then I gradually moved to talking and showing how the platform worked, what our courses are like, and what you learn. And it ended up doing a lot better.
I went through the same process with my personal account. I used to post content on my personal account daily, and it never really took off. But that helped me get into the habit of making videos. You can really see a big difference in terms of quality and in how the script and editing were more engaging video editing.
So I took everything I learned from that consistency and eventually went viral. Now people enjoy my videos, and they’re always telling me they like my edits and how I do that, but it’s just the result of posting for months without seeing any results.
The other thing I’d like to mention is that I actually enjoy making videos because I think some people don’t like making videos and force themselves to, but they really like writing better. You shouldn’t force yourself into making videos if it’s painful to you; instead, lean into what you like, so if you go viral for it, that’s what you can keep doing what you like instead of always trying to force yourself to do something.
I’m lucky because I enjoy both writing and making videos. So I kind of have two separate brands: one on text-based content on Twitter and LinkedIn, where I talk about my creator business, being an influencer, and behind-the-scenes stuff. The other one is my actual social media, my creator business, where I publish mostly videos.
That TikTok hack you mention sounds pretty amazing. Could you elaborate on how that actually works?
Yeah, sure. I haven’t seen anyone doing it. I got the idea from website A/B testing, where you test the headline, picture, and other elements. I knew social media hooks are super important, so I thought I might as well do the same thing.
Everybody wondered if posting the same video at the same time wouldn’t be bad because followers would see the same thing, but that’s why I use TikTok for testing. It’s not your followers seeing this; it’s usually just random people. Then, I post the winning variant on my Instagram, or it gets used as an ad.
A few people have asked me about this, so I created a video explaining my system.
I need to focus on what matters, which is consistency and posting across these platforms regularly. Because that’s how I’m going to grow and improve.
Are there any brands or accounts that you love and feel are nailing having a unique, interesting voice online?
Answering this from the perspective of marketers that I admire or a brand’s marketing I like. I love Mala the Brand, which is a local candle company. They’re always coming up with very creative marketing campaigns, and they have a strong community, but they’re a small business. I really like their marketing because I’m usually in startups and tech, and it’s something completely different. Their marketing is just genius sometimes.
I also like Tushy. They’re always so funny and have the weirdest guys, but you can’t take yourself too seriously when you’re selling bidets.
Same with Duolingo, it’s unhinged, which I love, and it’s always so funny.
The other one I recently found is called The Best Marketing Strategy on Instagram. And it’s this character Nicole, the intern, and she’s a genius. I noticed the amazing storytelling elements she uses because once she reached a goal, she had to hit 500K followers or something, but she reached the goal. Then there was a new villain because they were like Instagram bots trying to sabotage her, and she couldn’t grow anymore. There was also a new goal, so her boss set something else, and then she had to accomplish that.
The engagement keeps going, there’s a story, and you’re cheering for her. It’s very well done.
I did see a few videos go viral before, like “Day 2 of proving to my marketing teacher that this video of a dancing raccoon is better than his entire marketing strategy.” I think she got inspiration from those viral videos and then applied it to her job. But here, she’s trying to prove her boss wrong, so there’s a common enemy, and you’re cheering for her.
What are your favorite tools for running your creator business?
I have a whole list of these tools, and I also made a video of all the tools and how I use them. Check out the video for a deep dive into them. Right now, I’ll talk about the main ones that I find the most helpful.
Of course, Metricool, with scheduling and analytics, is the best that I’ve found. I tried Hootsuite, Buffer, and all the other tools, but they didn’t make it as easy as Metricool because everything was in one place. It was the analytics, the scheduling, and the fact that you can customize each platform in one place and then edit the caption and stuff.
LinkinChat for Instagram DM and comment automation. That’s an underrated tool because everybody uses ManyChat, but you can’t schedule posts with ManyChat. I want to use my Metricool to schedule my posts. With ManyChat, you have to set up the automation and then post it. With Get Link In Chat, all I have to do is put the instructions in the caption, and the AI reads them and automatically sends stuff.
GummySearch is a good tool as well. It allows me to find content ideas from Reddit. For people starting out, if you want to make content that people are actually searching for, then GummySearch is where you find it.
Audionotes is a good one because sometimes I’ll go for a walk and pull up audio notes, which are like voice notes. It transcribes all of what you’re saying, provides a summary, and then you can chat with the notes. I like using it a lot better than ChatGPT because the UI is much better, and it organizes everything for you.
I use Beehiiv for my newsletter; Microsoft Clarity for analytics because it’s essentially a free version of Hotjar, and Mida for A -B testing.
I’m Canadian, so when I take payments, I use Wise because many people do US bank transfers. I don’t have a US bank account, so I had to get Wise and use it as my US bank account.
And last but not least, where are all the places people can find you?
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: @vegantechnomad
- YouTube:Jennifer | Newsletter + Creator Monetization
- Twitter: @jenniferchou25
- TikTok: @vegantechnomad
- Pinterest: @vegantechnomad
- LinkedIn: Jennifer C.
- Productivity newsletter: Vegan Tech Nomad
- Creator business newsletter: Chaotic Creator
