How ‘workfluencers’ became the new buttoned-up breed of content creator

After parenting, beauty and gaming comes a more buttoned-up breed of content creator: workfluencers and corporate influencers.

Anyone from teachers to bankers to entrepreneurs who post about their working life on social media to raise their profile or network could be dubbed a work influencer. But a discreet and growing cohort is creating content to earn extra income through formal brand partnerships and payments from platforms. This month, LinkedIn rolled out a new feature that gives some creators a share of revenue when ads run before their video content.

“It’s turning into the modern side hustle,” says Dan Shapero, chief executive of LinkedIn. “We’ve seen creators on the platform earn from hundreds to tens of thousands of dollars.”

Creatives, recruiters and entrepreneurs are among the many professionals chronicling their workdays on TikTok and Instagram, from office outfits to commutes. They share tips on job opportunities and work hacks, helping to demystify industries that can seem opaque to outsiders and guide peers on how to advance their careers.

Workers with a sideline as an influencer include Kristi Kennebrew, a recruitment marketing adviser at FedEx who shares career tips and has posted on behalf of LinkedIn to her 223,000 followers; Madeline Zhang (45,000 followers), a software engineer at Airbnb who posts about AI and life in tech and has been sponsored by HubSpot, a customer relations platform; and Harleny Vasquez, a social worker turned clinical recruiter, sponsored by AI video editing tool Descript.

The creator economy

This is part of an FT series on the explosive rise of digital creators and social media influencers and the multibillion-dollar infrastructure backing them.

Read the other pieces here:

How to make it as a digital creator

The ‘ungodly spending’ behind the creator economy

How YouTubers finance their videos

Corporate or business influencers share information on strategy, new products and industry developments, creating posts to help companies attract clients and drive sales.

They may be encouraged — and sometimes paid — by their employers to act as ambassadors for the company or may work independently, posting on behalf of a number of companies or brands.

This is the “new era of influencers”, says Lara Sophie Bothur, who describes herself as a business influencer focused on the tech sector.

Bothur has a marketing background and started at Deloitte as its first corporate influencer. She shared content about the professional services firm’s products and services to help it win new clients and attract potential hires. Today she works independently, creating video content and written posts for technology companies including Nvidia and Google.

A single paid post can earn her a “low five-figure price”, while longer-term collaborations with brands range from €50,000-€250,000. She says she has a “low seven-figure business by revenues”.

Such demand underscores the adage that “people trust people more than brands”, says Dan Roth, vice-president of content at LinkedIn. “The ones who are breaking through aren’t necessarily acting like spokespeople. They’re employees or experts sharing what they actually know and see every day.”

LinkedIn, which is often associated with corporate humblebragging posts, has incentivised creators to speak and write about working life and business as part of its efforts to increase quality content and “expand usage and engagement”, says Shapero.

Underpinning this is a shift in the algorithm “from a feed that historically was all about your network and is [now] increasingly about the topics you’re interested in”.

LinkedIn has encouraged celebrities such as Snoop Dogg and Arnold Schwarzenegger to make announcements and generate business leads on the platform.

Its reputation as the “no-fun zone” is an opportunity, says content creator Ross Pomerantz, who fuses workplace and tech content with humour, under the name “Corporate Bro”. He is paid to promote brands and says his job is to show they “have a point of view” but also to poke fun. “It doesn’t have to be boring.”

Ed East, chief executive and co-founder of Billion Dollar Boy, an influencer and marketing agency, says there is a “massive amount of opportunity” on LinkedIn.

The interest from marketing departments at companies wanting creators to work on LinkedIn campaigns with them “is wild”, according to Brendan Gahan, founder of Creator Authority, a business-to-business influencer marketing agency. “It feels like YouTube in the early 2010s, TikTok in 2018. You look at how massive those platforms have become and the impact they’ve had on media, entertainment. [LinkedIn] will become just as impactful.” According to LinkedIn, creator-led ads grew 63 per cent in the last year.

Creators might agree a long-term partnership where they use a product in their work and talk about it several times over that period, or might feature it in a webinar or newsletter. “Buyers need to hear about something repeatedly from someone they trust. One post rarely gets there,” Gahan says. “LinkedIn lets brands pay to boost a creator’s post, the same way you’d boost an ad, to a precise audience. Smart brands run several creators, messages and audiences side by side. They see which combination brings in the results, then invest further in them.”

He adds that successful work and business influencers have “real experience and credibility . . . [people] who can articulate the needs, pain points and opportunities of their industries best grounded in real-world work experience”.

The rise of the workfluencer reflects a shift in demographics, with a younger workforce “playing a big part” in creating content and driving companies to commission it, says Gahan. “They are more social . . . creating videos, interacting more than their predecessors.”

Corporate Natalie, whose real name is Natalie Marshall, says the engagement on LinkedIn can outperform other platforms, and “more importantly, the audience actually wants to be there. They’re professionals seeking connection, not just scrolling to kill time.”

She says LinkedIn “requires a professional spin, so a typical TikTok video without an applicable work learning might get ignored by the algorithm . . . When you nail that balance — professional enough to share with your boss, funny enough you actually [would want to] — that’s when things take off.”

Her posts riff on treating the office like her home or the scariest people found in the workplace, while paid ones can be straight time-saving tips for a meal kit company or humorous skits on taking your mother to a tech conference.

She is never short of inspiration as followers message her with their workplace horror stories. “My content calendar basically writes itself.”

Roth advises companies to “look for people inside who are already building credibility in their fields . . . and activate them — even if, or maybe, especially if, their content doesn’t sound exactly like your brand voice. The most effective approach is to give people the space to speak their own voice and focus on being helpful, not promotional.”

Meagan Loyst, a creator and founder of Gen Z VCs, a collective of young investors, says work or business influencers often start by providing insights from the job they are doing as a founder or employee. Over time, “that allows them to turn content creation into a job”.

East works with businesses to identify potential ambassadors among their employees. “They have updated their contracts with additional responsibilities, to go live on Instagram or [create] TikTok” posts. Yet conflicts may arise if an employee becomes a brand themself and works for other products.

Salary is another issue, says Viktoria Semaan, a creator who works for software company Databricks. “Most of my creator friends left corporate [employment] because business-to-business marketing right now is in extreme demand. Some make six figures.”

Employers encouraging staff to create content, such as Starbucks, which has programmes to nurture in-house talent, may risk them jumping ship and becoming independent influencers.

But employee creators need some measure of freedom to avoid looking like corporate lackeys. It is a difficult line to tread, says Semaan. “Of course, you shouldn’t promote competitors.”