“I’m not anything crazy,” Liv Bak, a student at Brigham Young University from Minnesota, says after telling me about her experience building her social media into a job. Having recently reached her goal of 10k followers, Bak may be considered a micro influencer, but her story is anything but small.
It all started when she started posting “fit checks,” sharing her modest outfits, when a friend suggested she try it at a pivotal time in her life–right before her temple endowment.
“My outfits were kind of my identity,” Bak, a fashion lover, says. “And so I was like, wow, if I get endowed, I have to change everything I wear.”
Posting on her TikTok helped her to adjust. As she kept posting consistently, using hashtags like “fashion” and “modest clothing,” Bak gained followers and comments.
With social media’s infamous potential to be fake, Bak proves that authenticity really matters.
A 2020 study by the Journal of Business Research identified “passionate authenticity” as one of the ways social media influencers like Bak can be their true selves online as they are “driven by their inner desires and passions more so than by commercial goals”.
“Passionate authenticity” can be valuable online as well as off, and Bak shows that authenticity is worth it–even if it comes with unintended consequences.
Finding a Community
One comment under a video asked why Bak decided to be endowed and change her style. She responded by posting a five minute video, going through her daily makeup routine as she talked about her decision as if conversing with a friend.
When the video blew up, Bak says she hurried to the comments to see why so many people were engaging with the video.
“It was all hate comments,” she says. She chose not to engage with comments criticizing her decision and her beliefs.
“There’s so much negativity,” Bak recalls. “I’m just gonna keep doing positivity.”
It was a moment of positivity that got her through a slump after the endowment video.
“It just felt draining,” she says. “And then I received this DM from this girl, being like, ‘Hey, I watched your video of getting endowed and I decided I’m getting endowed.’”
Bak says moments like this put the fun back into posting as she continued to gain followers.
“I actually have the power to influence people,” she says. And with that, she began building a community.
“I can create a community of girls who love church, love Jesus and love fashion,” she says. And she finds support in that community to keep doing what she loves to do.
Goals with Value
Bak is mindful and organized in the way she uses her growing influence. On Sundays, she uses a “very, very detailed planner” packed with ideas for videos about school, scrapbooking, style and much more. And when inspiration strikes in the dead of night, she’s up scribbling ideas on sticky notes.
“I’ve gotten to a point where I edit videos at like two in the morning,” Bak says, laughing. “It’s really horrible, because I need to be asleep.”
In organizing her general goals, she tends towards groups of three. Her three topics: fashion and makeup, college lifestyle and faith. Her three rules for herself: TikTok can’t control her life, she must be authentic, and she can't promote a product that she wouldn’t use herself off camera.
In fact, she takes this third rule so seriously that she’s passed up a large paycheck offered by a company asking her to promote their beer.
“This is where you really have to check in with your values,” Bak says. As a non-drinker, she says it was still a tough decision to pass up, but one that she knew her answer to.
“I have to be authentic,” she says. “The most disappointing thing” for her is when she meets an influencer in real life, and they are different from who they are online.
Bak’s speech, mannerisms and style are so similar online and off that watching one of her videos feels like being there with her on campus, at home or in her car.
“I wanted my page to feel like you were on FaceTime with me,” she says.
Bak says this doesn’t necessarily come easy to her.
“I still get camera shy,” she says, and when she is approached in real life by a follower, she “goes bright red.”
Staying True
More than anything, what gives her confidence is her desire to share with others how God changed her life. From being sick and in and out of hospitals in high school to posting videos about why she chose to be endowed, Bak says God gave her a miracle and she wants her followers to know that God loves them too.
“I’m gonna do anything I can to share that with other people,” she says.
But as passionate as she is, the internet is still unpredictable. Just last year as she was about to make her goal of 10k followers, Bak says that she was disappointed to realize she hadn’t posted anything about faith in a while. She decided to incorporate that more clearly in her next videos.
In a rapid series of events, she lost thousands of followers who criticized her beliefs and after posting a video addressing politics, Bak watched her follower count drop from the brink of 10k to barely 5k.
“I was devastated,” she says.
But then, something incredible happened. Within the same 24 hours that Bak lost 5k followers, she gained 6k followers—all new people. She says she learned a lot from that experience.
“I can’t let it derail me,” she says about losing followers and facing hate comments and DMs. “If I stay true to myself, the right people will follow me.”
Looking Forward
Bak is thinking about more than just a few of the right people.
“I want to get to 20k followers,” she says. “And I have a deadline.”
No matter what happens next, her focus won’t change. She won’t either.