TikTok creator Gabriella Gomez goes live every night at 5 p.m. PT and regularly draws more than 30,000 users per livestream, building a career around scheduled content instead of viral posts. Her traction signals to marketers that building requires careful integration, rather than quick hits and viral posts.

“I don’t think viral is the route anymore,” said Gomez during EMARKETER's Creator Summit. “You want slow, sustainable growth. Priority No. 1 is ‘How do you become consistent and stable?’’’

Livestreaming is an efficient way for creators to engage their audiences and monetize their platforms without brand deals.

• Almost half of TikTok LIVE creators invite users to join their livestreams through one of the platform’s cohost features, and 1 in 5 US creators will receive monetary rewards the first time they go live, according to data from TikTok.

By monetizing her platform through fan gifting, Gomez has stayed selective about brand integrations. Instead of ignoring livestream creators who are funded by their audiences, brands can instead work on building long-term relationships that lend themselves to natural integrations.

“The livestream space is funded by the audience, so there’s very obviously a genuine connection to a brand when you’re talking about it,” said Gomez.

Hacking the livestream format

Gomez started on TikTok Live taking over shopping streams for brands, but expanded her audience by participating in “battles,” or timed competitions where creators compete for monetary gifts.

Gomez uses some of the profit she makes in battles to gift creators on other livestreams, treating it like an ad budget and contributing to her visibility.

“It’s hard to justify the gifting budget, but it's really an ad budget,” said Gomez. “You’re not gonna see a direct correlation between that one gift and a sale, but it’s brand exposure that goes all the way down the sales funnel.”

Gomez runs her channel more like a media company than a creator. Beyond investing in exposure by gifting other creators, she engineers her audience mix by battling creators with predominantly female chats to grow her fashion and beauty base.

Fitting in without stealing the show

Gomez embeds products into her livestream, and recently worked with Kind energy patches to stay awake after hours of streaming. This became a “talking point throughout the night,” she said.

“I had a patch on, co-hosts were asking about it, and I said ‘Instead of having an energy drink for the night, I have an energy patch on,’ so it was a really organic conversation that came about,” she said.

Marketers and livestream creators must work around TikTok’s rules, as explicit product endorsements on a non-shopping category show can get penalized, said Gomez. Brands also have the option of a “Universe” virtual gift, the highest tier that creates a paid banner ad across a creator’s livestream.

Before becoming a full-time creator, Gomez worked in marketing for brands including K-Swiss, DC Shoes, and Beats by Dre. This background has given her a strong perspective on improving influencer marketing.

“At my last marketing job, I hated the way that we had to set up contracts like checklists,” said Gomez, giving a blanket “Two posts and three stories” requirement as an example. “A checklist is not the way to approach [influencer marketing] at all, because every creator is different and knows their audience best.”

Watch the full session.

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