A 25-year-old content material creator turned a layoff into a possibility: Now she’s an influencer on LinkedIn, and says the platform will be extra worthwhile than TikTok

• Valerie Chapman, a 25-year-old LinkedIn content material creator, says the platform will be simply as profitable as TikTok—although many nonetheless see it as simply “a place to apply for a job.” Influencers can construct a private model, create digital merchandise, and set up model partnership. 

Influencing is a crowded market, with hundreds of thousands of creators pushing merchandise and collaborations throughout TikTok and Instagram. However they might be overlooking a platform that one influencer says is an untapped goldmine. 

“For me, LinkedIn has just as good, if not better, of an infrastructure for creators to make money than TikTok,” Valerie Chapman, 25, a self-employed content material creator and inventive company co-founder, tells Fortune.

Chapman, who had beforehand labored in promoting and content material creation, says her LinkedIn profession is why she not holds a company job. Two layoffs impressed her to pivot. And fortuitously, she introduced some expertise along with her to the platform, as a earlier social media administration employer had requested her to turn into a LinkedIn thought chief with a view to usher in gross sales. After she was let go in October 2023, LinkedIn influencing grew to become her new hustle. She now has over 16,000 followers on the platform, with posts that reel in 1000’s of likes.  

“We’re in the creator economy,” Chapman says, including that individuals are utilizing AI to assist scale content material to their particular person communities. “None of that was on my radar until I got into the world of LinkedIn, and really started investigating how other solopreneurs were leveraging their personal brands and monetizing.”

Whereas content material creators can construct their model and following on any platform, Chapman says the skilled social media platform is especially rife with alternative. Influencers who flip to it might rating large bucks amongst a brand new area of interest viewers—and extra individuals are catching on, with LinkedIn even creating its personal “Top Voices” class for probably the most influential creators on the platform. 

“I would actually say LinkedIn is the most powerful in terms of monetizing your personal brand. No one’s talking about it in that way,” she says. “I just think that right now, so many people see LinkedIn as [just]…a place to apply to a job.”

LinkedIn is being neglected—however it may be extremely profitable

In contrast to TikTok, LinkedIn doesn’t pay creators for the way a lot engagement they get on their posts. However there are different methods to money in on the platform, Chapman explains. 

“There’s no creator fund, but there’s other ways to monetize, like digital products, which I’m working on. Right now my primary income streams are brand partnerships, primarily with tech companies,” she says. “If you put on a sales hat, there’s tremendous amounts of opportunity on LinkedIn, especially because of the video feature that has just been incorporated in the last year or so.”

Chapman has developed a consumer roster by cold-calling manufacturers to be integrated into one in every of her LinkedIn movies—together with her “Gen Z Woman in Business” sequence. She additionally says creators can construct programs and different digital merchandise—like enterprise workshops or E-books on their space of experience—that, as soon as distributed, can usher in passive earnings.

And when shoppers do take curiosity, there’s a possibility to set increased charges.

“You can actually charge more in brand partnerships on LinkedIn than other platforms, because your audience is a bunch of professionals—oftentimes CEOs and founders,” Chapman says. “So you can charge a premium for that kind of audience as well.”

After 4 months of onerous work rising her presence on-line, LinkedIn seen her, and invited to go to the corporate’s NYC workplace. She toured the workplace and had conversations with LinkedIn’s crew on the way forward for work and digital affect. Receiving that recognition was a robust signal she ought to preserve going.

Chapman says she’s since made important headway as a creator who can now help herself, incomes about $10,000 a month by meting out recommendation and suppose items on private manufacturers and AI to her 1000’s of followers. 

“I will say it took about three or four months to really build an infrastructure where the deals were coming in. It wasn’t like, ‘You got money right away,’” she says. “Once you start emailing people and you have an audience, then you can get to closing a brand partnership fairly easily, if you really dedicate your time to it.”

This story was initially featured on Fortune.com