She got her biggest meeting from a 3,000-view TikTok video
Welcome to the first edition of #ForYou, From Them, a new monthly Q&A series spotlighting individuals who are building smart, scrappy, sometimes chaotic online presences that open real doors. Kicking it off: a screenwriter who landed her biggest meeting from a 3,000-view TikTok and built a Substack-powered community along the way.
Now, let’s get into the interview [conducted by Kait Richmond]…
Not everyone building their personal brand on social media is doing it to become an influencer.
The reality is that being a creator, even with a small audience, can be really helpful to your career if you know how to leverage it. And while we talk about this a lot with executives, it doesn’t just apply to them.
Meet [Kristen] tepper, a screenwriter who also does social media marketing for film and TV. She’s built an audience of 45,000 followers onTikTokwhere she talks all things Hollywood and marketing. She’s since expanded to Substack where she publishes Movie Industry Musings with Tepper, and has recently started a podcast.
What I love about Tepper is her commitment to her goals and the many avenues she’s taking to get there. She puts a lot of time into her writing [that includes a script on the 2022 Black List], but she’s also got her day job, she’s making videos, and she’s facilitating meaningful community [more on what I mean by “facilitating” and the nitty gritty of it all below]. And she’s not doing this in hopes of giving it all up to be an influencer; she’s doing it to get ahead in her career.
“Even if a video doesn’t get a ton of views, it only takes one right person seeing it,” she told me. “The video that got me my biggest producer meeting? It had maybe 3,000 views. But he was one of them, and that’s what mattered.”
Our conversation left me feeling inspired to stop worrying about what people think because if it will help get you to your end goal, who cares? It’s not about wanting attention, but about leveraging your personal brand to get more opportunities.
[This interview has been edited for length and clarity!]
M.T. Deco: You’ve been working in social media for awhile, so when and why did you make the decision to start creating content for your own accounts?
Kristen Tepper: I was doing a lot of social media work for production companies and films, and when I was home in Chicago during COVID, I tried to make my own TikTok. I think I started and stopped pretty quickly; I wasn’t sure I understood the app or what I really wanted to say on it.
Then I started getting more marketing jobs, which gave me the confidence to think, “Oh, I guess I do know what I’m doing.” I kept getting hired by big companies to work on major movie campaigns, which felt a little silly but also validating. That made me want to share what I knew. When I was starting out, I didn’t know anyone, and I would’ve loved to hear someone talk about all the different jobs you can have in the industry.
So I began making TikToks about marketing, with a little bit of “by the way, my big dream is to be a writer” mixed in. My TikTok presence is nothing like those creators who go viral overnight; mine has been a slow burn and very niche, but I’ve really appreciated growing it.
The people who followed me honestly made me want to keep going. They’d say things like, “I don’t know anyone in the industry, and you convinced me to write a script” or “you inspired me to go get an internship at Lionsgate.” And that’s amazing.
The rest of this interview is exclusive for paid Substack subscribers. For more on how Tepper has built her small but mighty digital community, head here.