If you’ve been following the news recently, you’ve probably seen the stories about Samantha Cristoforetti, the first astronaut to make it big on TikTok. Cristoforetti posts humorous, informative, and sometimes rather moving TikTok content about her time in space and what it means to be an astronaut, and her videos are well worth checking out if you love interesting and unique social media content. She’s actually Italy’s first female astronaut, believe it or not, and she’s a true inspiration to anybody who wants to follow in her footsteps.
You might be wondering, though, exactly how Cristoforetti has achieved her stunning social media success. How did she do it? How has an astronaut managed to rack up over 17 million views on one of her videos? Well, the short answer is that it’s complicated. While Cristoforetti does obey some of the typical social media rules, she flouts others, so it’s not really possible to replicate her unique success. However, we can take a look at some of the things she has going for her and examine whether they’ve helped her on TikTok. Here’s how Samantha Cristoforetti achieved TikTok success.
She’s an astronaut posting on TikTok
It might seem obvious, but a lot of Cristoforetti’s success can be attributed to simply being in an incredibly unique position. She’s one of the first astronauts to post regularly on TikTok, and her job is so unlike many other TikTok stars that she’s pretty much primed for success on that alone.
It’s also worth noting that Samantha Cristoforetti is already famous as an astronaut, which helps. She’s essentially got a built-in content generation mechanism; there’s pretty much nobody else posting content aboard space stations on TikTok, so in that regard, Cristoforetti has a ready-made audience waiting for her on the app.
She posts regularly
We can’t stress this enough: if you want to achieve TikTok success, make sure to post regularly. Samantha Cristoforetti posts content on TikTok every couple of days, which, considering the incredible demands of her day job, is pretty impressive. She makes sure to keep up her social media feed, and so should you!
Of course, it’s not just about posting regularly. You’ve also got to have the content to back you up, and that’s another area where Samantha Cristoforetti shines. Her content is interesting, varied, and fun, so she’s not just posting the same video over and over again, which can be damaging to a social media presence.
She’s charismatic
As soon as you see a video of Samantha Cristoforetti, you know that she’s charismatic, bubbly, and great to watch. Whether she’s preparing her space bicycle (no, really) or showing you how to wash your hair on the International Space Station, she’s always got a unique and interesting angle on the content she creates.
Cristoforetti is also blessed with a very expressive face, which means that whatever she’s doing, she can communicate her emotion and her intent with every video. That’s another reason why she’s managed to achieve TikTok success; more expressive creators can be more likely to go viral because their content is more compelling.
She’s leveraging her unique skill
One of the biggest ways that you can increase your chances of achieving TikTok success is to leverage your unique skill. Whatever you can do, you should be trying to do that as part of your core social media brand identity; that’s how you can stand out from the crowd and show your individuality.
That’s exactly what Samantha Cristoforetti is doing. She’s using the skills that only she has (obviously she’s not the only astronaut, but she is the only one with a TikTok presence) in order to reach a mass audience. Cristoforetti probably isn’t even trying to achieve TikTok success; she’s simply doing so by virtue of creating content people want to see.
She’s cross-posting, too
Cristoforetti isn’t just posting on TikTok. She’s smart enough to know that if you want to be well-known on social media, you have to take advantage of every platform at your disposal, and that includes Twitter, where Cristoforetti is also very active. Her 996,000 follower count can’t hurt in terms of her TikTok success!
That’s a lesson that you can take to heart if you’re also looking to become a social media influencer. You need to make sure that you post on as many different apps and channels as you can. Post on TikTok, yes, but also post on Twitter, Facebook, and anywhere else that you can build a following.
She makes pop culture references
Part of Samantha Cristoforelli’s brand is to make space accessible and exciting to users. There’s a natural curiosity and excitement about space in the general population, and Cristoforelli knows this, which is why she carefully weaves pop culture references into her TikTok videos.
Take the famous “space towel” video, for example. Cristoforelli uses a reference to Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy to cross cultural boundaries, which is something that you can incorporate into your own videos as well. Make references to things that your audience will understand and you’ll hopefully communicate better in your content!
As you can see, Samantha Cristoforelli’s success is pretty difficult to replicate for most TikTok users. She’s already in an incredibly unique and interesting position when it comes to making social media content, and she’s leveraging all of the strengths that position gives her in order to make great, engaging content. In essence, that’s all you need to do as well, although not all of us are able to make TikToks from space!
