A Conversation with Alex Lopez: On Growing a TikTok Following, Pivoting Your Strategy, & Staying True to Yourself
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This is the 18th post in the “A Conversation With” series, where I interview smart humans about their experiences in communications, social media, and content creation. You can read past features here.
This month, I interviewed Alex Lopez, a writer and content creator who has grown a large following on TikTok over the past few years. In this blog post, we explore tips for going viral, pivoting your TikTok strategy, content creation as a career path, and more.
When did you get started on TikTok? What inspired you to start sharing content there?
My initial entry point to creating content on TikTok was sharing short stories, poems, and TV shows I liked. During the Stranger Things craze, I pivoted my focus to pop culture.
During that time, I began making connections with publishing houses and media companies who would pay me to promote specific shows or send me free products with the hopes that I would review them.
It was a really exciting time. My channel was featured in Fortune Magazine, The New York Post, Refinery29, The Daily Dot, Yahoo Finance, and more. I quickly began to see how many opportunities there are to get paid doing what you love.
When did your content start to take off?
My channel really took off in October of 2022. That month in particular my channel gained over 20,000 followers. It was wild!
How have you shifted your strategy throughout your time on TikTok?
This year was my biggest shift, moving toward advocacy content. Film and book reviews are still at the heart of my channel, but I’m working to more actively raise funds for humanitarian organizations and lend my voice to causes I care about.
Did you have specific goals when you started? What are your goals now?
When I first began, I was going through a really tough time mentally. TikTok was an outlet to escape my situation; I knew that I healed best when I kept busy. Pouring my anxious energy into the platform truly changed my life. It’s strange how quickly things can happen.
My goals now are mainly rooted in advocacy work. I’ve been partnering with Friends of the Congo, a non-profit that works directly with journalists, educators, activists, and community members on the ground around the DRC.
The genocide there has taken the lives of over six million people, and so few people talk about it or even know it’s happening. I like FOTC, because they directly rescue and rehabilitate children from the brutal mining conditions, provide medical and infrastructure support to the Isangi region which floods regularly, and provide all sorts of mentorship, education, entrepreneurship, and arts programs.
How do you decide what kind of content to create? Where do you get inspiration?
When I first started gaining traction, I was looking at analytics and trending things and seeing where there was overlap. When House of the Dragon season 1 was airing, my account became “heated”--meaning TikTok was automatically amplifying my channel. This lasted for a period of 60 days when I posted 20 videos per day.
Every day, I was receiving between 2 and 12 million views. It was an insane amount of traffic! It wasn’t tons of labor because I’m a huge Game of Thrones fan, so I enjoyed dissecting every moment of the season.
I wanted to do this for every show I liked. I’d consider what shows were trending and review the show episode by episode. My channel has over 5,000 videos now. At that time, I was very focused on growth. It was fun but unsustainable. I’ve totally changed my relationship with the platform since then.
Now, it’s whatever I feel like talking about that week. I follow whatever my interests are. I’d never advise anyone I work with to do the things I do with my own channel! But I was craving freedom, and TikTok is where I can thankfully be myself and connect with other like-minded people.
Lately, I’m guided a lot by activists I admire, people like:
Joshua P. Hill, a prominent Jewish activist I love, who is big on Twitter and Substack
@ReadingAfricana on TikTok who speaks often about the situation in DRC
@SimplySimone on TikTok, who is one of my go-to creators for everything
And of course, my best friend Ayanda who, along with my parents, my sister, and my brother, Dave, are my guiding lights and north star in everything I do.
Do you have a target posting frequency?
I’ve had periods where I try to do 5-10 videos per day. Now I’m so busy with my day job that I don’t have time for that. I don’t put a number limit on it now that I’m more focused on advocacy work, but I do begin to feel an itch if I don’t post at least once a day.
How do you find time to create content on top of your day job?
It’s a tough balance. What works best for me is setting aside thirty minutes or so early in the day and posting at least one stream-of-consciousness, low-effort video. It takes a bit of the pressure off, so in the evenings after work, I can post a few more if I’m feeling up to it, or let my daily stream-of-consciousness vlog serve as my offering for the day. It's hard though, I always feel like I can and should be doing more.
What’s one of your videos that you’ve made that you’re most proud of?
I had a video go viral about community love and support that generated so many fascinating stitches and comments. A lot of people shared stories about the people in their lives who showed up for them. That week was so memorable. An outpouring of good news and sweet messages, every time I looked at my phone.
What makes TikTok different from other platforms?
TikTok is one of the first spaces that’s not full of people you know in real life. More people have joined the platform now, so there might be a bit less creative freedom. But I can be who I am and no one from my real life will see it.
The algorithm creates alignment – people are following you because they actually want to be there. You feel more surveilled on Instagram, and you always have to be on.
What helps a video gain traction and start to go viral?
It’s about brevity first and foremost. People’s attention spans are short. I try to have an engaging image, question, or text in the background that is informative and will teach them something.
It’s best to edit out unnecessary pauses and have the same level of diligence you would have with a writing project. Asking: Is this sentence necessary to the story or can it be cut?
Shorter is always better. You only have about 1-2 seconds before someone scrolls away, so you need to give them something quickly.
What misconceptions do people have about content creators?
People assume that it’s impossible to make good money on social media, but it’s not as out of reach as you might imagine. So many give up or burn out before they blow up, but if you stick with it and stay uber-consistent, the potential reward is financial freedom.
I have creator friends who are making upwards of five hundred dollars a day, just from posting videos on TikTok! You do the math. It quickly can rival the salary of a desk job. However, the money becomes inconsistent the moment you do. You have to keep a steady pace of output. This is really hard for many, myself included.
How do negative comments and the endless pace of content creation impact your mental health? How do you avoid burnout?
My advice is to build a life outside of the internet that is so loving and full that you can live without the online world. Also having really strict personal boundaries. No amount of money is worth your mental health.
What advice would you give to someone just getting started on TikTok?
The internet tries to make us into so many different things; it’s hard to disconnect from all the different stimuli and say what you actually feel. But people are seeking authenticity and want to feel connected to real people. Talk about what makes you happy. And I guarantee you’ll find people that love it.
What was your career path like before you became a TikTok content creator?
I’ve been a storyteller since I was very young. I was lucky, in my early schooling days, incredible women supported me and championed me, people like Lisa York, Hope Bordelon, Erin Smith, and Yalanda Bell. They saw that I had a facility with language and encouraged me to combine my love of storytelling with my passion for advocacy work.
This led to an internship at the United Way, where I worked on a team responsible for providing resources to unhoused community members in Atlanta. I learned so much during that time about the vital role that aid organizations play in our communities and how storytelling can galvanize fundraising efforts.
The following year, I matriculated at Dartmouth. I was lucky to be accepted into a competitive scholarship program with the Dickey Center for International Understanding. Dickey became my home on campus, and Amy Newcomb, the head of student programming, became a mentor and lifelong friend. Amy completely changed my life and is one of the big reasons for my success today.
Almost every insanely cool thing I’ve ever done has been because Amy championed me, connected me, advocated for me, and guided me through the experience. She also has introduced me to so many of my lifelong best friends.
That scholarship took me to Mpumalanga, South Africa, where I worked for ThinkImpact & IDEO and had the opportunity to blog and report on environmental and educational projects. My team was particularly focused on water sanitation and waste management and brought together coalitions across class, gender, and race divides. That experience was among the happiest and most rewarding of my life.
I began exploring other opportunities to work outside of the United States and partner with meaningful organizations. I studied at the University of Hyderabad as a gender studies scholar, worked in Mauritius with the US State Department, collaborating on local upcycling initiatives, and had the joy of working as a communication fellow at the United Nations in Rome. There, my team was primarily focused on West African deforestation, food deserts, and sustainable insect farming.
When I came back to the States, I wanted to sharpen my ability to meaningfully share stories, so I studied at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, under the guidance of the brilliant Amber Dermont, learning how to more sharply and concisely articulate myself and my experiences.
Back at Dartmouth, I was incredibly lucky to study under Melissa Zeiger, Alexander Chee, Vievee Francis, Matthew Olzmann, and Cynthia Huntington, all personal heroes of mine who became my greatest advocates and mentors.
My passion for storytelling eventually led me to politics. I joined the New Hampshire Democratic Party in 2016, a crucial year. I’m so proud of the work I did on that campaign. My team and I delivered razor-thin margins of victory for the democratic candidates up and down the ballot and ensured continued reproductive healthcare access for millions of women.
That experience taught me that storytelling is at the heart of political engagement. So many people won’t take action unless they can connect to a specific person’s experience. It was a huge unlock.
Following my time with the NHCC, I had the opportunity to work as a communications coordinator for the Young African Leaders Initiative, in partnership with the Tuck Business School. This was another one of those magical seasons in life. Sometimes I can’t even believe it was real. So many months of just pure community, family, learning, collaboration, innovation, and design thinking. It was an absolute dream.
After YALI, I had an exciting few years in Manhattan, Los Angeles, and Atlanta working as an actor, model, and production assistant for various commercials, films, and television shows. (I’m still randomly on a hotel billboard near Grand Central!)
I’d always had a passion for theater, and the nature of the work allowed me to both do acting, while still writing, and volunteering regularly for the ACLU, Planned Parenthood, and other organizations I admired.
That was a great time for me as an artist, I got to experience so many different types of people and lives, and it fueled me creatively. I even got to work on a pig farm in New Jersey for a while, waking up at the crack of dawn to herd sheep, collect eggs, feed pigs, and plant crops.
In 2020, I returned to the Democratic Party, this time in East Texas, and had a great experience connecting with voters on the ground, often virtually, because it was during the pandemic. It was cool to be on a team that was directly calling and checking in with community members, many of whom were quite elderly, isolated and didn’t necessarily have a support system looking after them. That campaign taught me more about the power of collective community care and how much it can drive change.
In 2021, I followed through on a lifelong dream and began a Master of Fine Arts program at NC State, which I graduated from in 2023. I learned so much during the program and had incredible professors like Belle Boggs, Wilton Barnhardt, Cadwell Turnbull, and Dorianne Laux. They made me a better storyteller, a better writer, and a better person. During that time I also founded the audio department of Passengers Journal, where I was recruited as an editor.
Most recently, I moved to Atlanta and have been working as a digital media strategist. I currently co-run a company with one of my best friends, and I have been very blessed to have the freedom to apply all of the lessons I’ve learned in each of these various roles.
We have a lot of exciting things in the pipeline. Right now we’re working on an interactive eight-week course to help creatives overcome fear and avoidance. I’m really excited about it.
