Social media star Delaney Rowe (@delaneysayshello) shared this week how she grew her audience on TikTok through comedy.
At a SXSW panel in Austin, Texas, Rowe shared how her satirical characters and videos were the key to her online success.
Rowe’s most viewed video, posted last month, gained over 50.6 million views. She calls it “Absolutely insufferable female lead of an indie movie goes out in the rain.” The clip is self-explanatory but it’s a spot-on sendup of that pivotal scene in a dramedy you’ve seen one too many times.
She believes the reason this particular video went viral is because it was similar to a real-life experience. “That character tends to hit,” she says.
When Rowe first started her platform she said she drew a lot of her content from interactions with strangers.
Rowe says when she’s around new people, she makes sure to listen more intently in order to catch them saying something off the go. “No one’s really safe,” she says.
She says she’ll hear someone mention a detail about their life and think, “Wait, that’s so funny and annoying.”
@delaneysayshello Quincy I know you’re scared.
♬ Little Life – Cordelia
When asked about feedback on her content, Rowe admits she does read her comment section in order to gauge what to do next. “I don’t know if I would know what was good if I didn’t read the comment,” she added.
“I’m not sure how I feel about every video I make,” she said. “You’ve gotta find the balance of doing it for you, but you also gotta know what’s working.”
Rowe shared some tips to aspiring comedy creators on TikTok, too: “When you’re consuming a lot of things that you aren’t really resonating with, I think it makes your work worse.”
“Everything is embarrassing when you start,” she adds, “Once you get over that, that’s when things start to be fun.”
Rowe says being humorous is an easy way to be confident in your content. “I feel protected behind the sort of character stuff I do,” she said.
When Rowe first started, she felt that TikTok “had an anonymousness to it that was appealing.” These days, that’s not a luxury she has.