• Instagram is in its sharing era.
• Doing Things, a meme-focused media firm, is crafting videos to drive sharing in group chats and DMs.
• Making videos shareable is all about focusing on "universal truths," creative lead Sam Graviet said.

Instagram creators don't just want your likes. They need you to DM their posts to your friends.

Doing Things, the company that runs accounts like Overheard and Recess Therapy, is trying to tailor its videos so that Instagram users share them.

"Likes are awesome. Saves are great. Comments are amazing for reaching your followers," Sam Graviet, Doing Things' vice president of creative, told Business Insider. "But if you really want that algorithm boost … you need to be able to master what a share is."

The strategy shift stems from the top. Meta executives like head of Instagram Adam Mosseri have made it clear that "shares" — when a user sends a post elsewhere, such as to DMs or stories — is one of the top signals Instagram uses to rank content in the app.

"When you're creating content, think about creating something that people would want to send to a friend," Mosseri said in a 2024 Instagram post.

Why do DMs suddenly matter more? It's partly because that's how users actually interact with each other on Meta's apps.

"It used to be that you interacted with the people that you were connecting with in feed," Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently told Stratechery's Ben Thompson. But today, "the real social interaction comes from you finding something interesting and putting it in a group chat with friends or a one-on-one chat," Zuckerberg added.

Mosseri said at the beginning of the year that Instagram would be "doubling down" on messaging, adding more than 20 new updates to DMs between March 2024 and 2025.

Meta even positioned Instagram as "more of a messaging app than a broadcast-sharing app," in a statement attributed to Mosseri in Meta's opening presentation during the ongoing Federal Trade Commission antitrust trial against the company.

For Instagram creators, the direction is clear: make videos that people can't help but pass around.

Making shareable content

So, how do content creators make their videos more shareable and gain access to private spaces like the family group chat?

It's all about making content that's widely relatable, Graviet said.

Sometimes Doing Things uses a prompt like "What's your biggest pet peeve?" or "What's the thing about your family that annoys you the most?" as a tool to try to make videos that could resonate with a large population and spark an emotional reaction that drives sharing.

"It's finding those shared universal truths that we all have and then developing the content around that," he said.

One example could be a video poking fun at a trope that dads are obsessed with lawn care (the company has an account dedicated to dad humor). Workplace jokes are also popular on Doing Things' meme accounts like Middle Class Fancy.

The company puts the most shareable moment of a video in its first few seconds.

"It is like a hook to get you to watch the whole video," Graviet said. "That's just the part that spurs that connection with somebody else that you have, that lands the video in their inbox."

Doing Things may be uniquely positioned to pull off relatable content. Much of its portfolio is meme accounts that lean into observational humor, such as its city-specific accounts like Overheard New York or its animal feeds like Doggos Doing Things. The company, which raised a $21.5 million Series A round in 2022, has tens of millions of followers across platforms on its over 40 different accounts.

Graviet said Instagram is its top focus. Being an Instagram-first media company in 2025 means focusing on sharing.

"Sharing is such a huge part of the platform now, it's kind of always on your mind," Graviet said.

• One category of creator merch is feeling the pinch of Trump's tariffs more than others: plushies.
• Some merch companies are seeking to transition their plushies business away from China.
• Creators are worried they could upset their fans if they have to raise prices.

Rachel Reichenbach is stressed out about tariffs.

The artist and content creator sells frog pins, plush toys, and other amphibian-themed items to fans.

Her plushies are made in China, which means they could soon become much more expensive to sell in the US due to recent tariffs and rule changes instituted by the Trump administration. If she raises the cost of her green and blue plush frogs to cover tariff fees, they may become too pricey for her audience.

"No matter how cute they are, people are only going to be willing to pay a certain amount for things," said Reichenbach, who has around 117,000 Instagram followers and 670 Patreon subscribers. "My products, they're not a staple. It's going to be the first to be cut from most people's budget."

The US-China trade war is hitting the influencer economy unevenly. Influencers sell a variety of items to make money off their fame, whether that's sweatpants, keychains, or chocolate bars. Some products, like T-shirts or food, can be easily manufactured in the US, which could shield them from tariffs. Plushies, however, tend to be made in China, where tariffs on toy imports are now set at 145%.

The increase hasn't hit for some creators yet, but they're bracing for higher costs.

Plushies can sell for anywhere from $15 to upward of $30, several creators and suppliers told Business Insider. Creators are worried they could upset fans if added fees force them to raise prices. The market for influencer plushies, popular among anime illustrators, YouTube channels with animated characters, and VTubers, could crash in the coming months if creators back away from selling stuffed toys in favor of lower-tariffed items.

"For some creators, plushies are far and away the bestseller," said Walker Williams, cofounder at the creator e-commerce platform Fourthwall. "They're really collectible, they're fun, they're unique, and so for a good number of creators, plushies are 90% plus of their sales."

Warren James CEO Saurabh Shah told BI that plushie sales are a "close second" to apparel for the creator merch company, which works with creators like Hasan Piker and Tana Mongeau.

Why finding plushies outside China is challenging

Influencers and their business partners lean heavily on China for plushies because of the country's manufacturing efficiencies, executives at creator merch companies told BI.

China became a plushies hub because its factories are colocated and can easily work together, said Ronak Trivedi, CEO of the product manufacturing platform Pietra. He said cities like Dongguan and Yiwu have "extremely robust economies around plushie production."

There are other places for plush toy manufacturing outside China, including Vietnam. Companies make plushies in the US and Australia, for example, but they can be expensive due to labor costs. Factories outside China or Vietnam are also less equipped to work with influencers on small batch orders, and creators tend to release products in limited drops.

"If you don't want to produce 20,000 of them, basically you have to go to China or Vietnam," Williams said.

Being price conscious is a must for influencers who want to avoid upsetting fans

Some creators are worried about setting high prices on plushies because they think it will come off as greedy to their fans.

"When things are crazy in the world, I think creators are a little more reluctant to go and sell something directly to their fans," Williams said. "They don't want to put their audience under pressure to buy things."

Warren James is raising prices — to the tune of less than 10% across most categories — meaning a $35 plushie would now be about $38, Shah said. The company and creators are also eating some of the costs, as are its suppliers and shipping partners.

"We're being surgical about it," he said of the increases. "For us, merch is about fan connection — it should still feel accessible."

Other merch companies like anime creator product company Noir are anticipating much steeper price increases tied to tariffs that could more than double the cost of plushies for their customers.

Noir isn't shying away from letting customers know why prices are going up. The company plans to list price increases for plushies as a Trump tariff fee in the checkout cart.

Other creators have been shouting out potential price hikes in posts on platforms like Instagram and X.

"Transparency is really important for the fans to feel like they know why we're doing what we're doing," Cary Huang from the YouTube channel Jack n Jellify told BI.

Influencers and their partners are racing to find workarounds

The plushie price apocalypse hasn't fully hit. Some creators are still benefiting from the de minimis loophole that exempts from tariffs smaller orders shipped from China. But the administration is stripping that exemption away beginning on May 2.

Still, influencers and their suppliers aren't sitting idle. Some are rushing to get as many shipments into the US as possible before the exemption is removed. Others are considering sourcing their plushies from Vietnam if Chinese suppliers become unviable.

Shah said Warren James began exploring factories there across all categories after the Biden administration signaled tariff increases last year, and it's now doing test production runs. It is modeling plans to bring about half of its business in China to Vietnam.

Other merch companies are thinking on their feet.

Killer Merch COO Mark Bubb said more partnerships could help more players in the relatively nascent space succeed. One example could include various entities coming together "to give a decent amount of business to a small manufacturer that would help them scale."

Other creators may eventually move away from plushies if they become too expensive to produce.

"I do think that creators are going to go for products that are more made in the USA," Williams said. "A lot of creators are going to say, 'Hey, I'm not looking to pay 2.5 times the price on a plushie.'"

Oliver Gilpin, CEO of Telos Media, which runs animated YouTube channels like Solarballs and MrSpherical, said the company may prioritize playing cards over plushies because it has a smaller price markup on its plush toys.

"With tariffs starting, it really hits low markup businesses and products," Gilpin said.

Of course, abandoning plushies isn't an option for everyone.

"The type of product really matters," Jack n Jellify's Huang said. "You can't just swap out a plushie for a jigsaw puzzle."

• LTK is relaunching its app on Thursday to add new social features and expand beyond shopping.
• Other social-commerce apps like Flip have similarly moved into general entertainment.
• The companies are stepping up efforts to blend entertainment and shopping as they chase users.

For social-shopping apps, commerce alone isn't cutting it.

LTK, a platform that lets users buy products from creator videos and posts, is relaunching its app on Thursday to encourage more everyday content from its users.

"We're moving from being a shopping app to really being a lifestyle app," Amber Venz Box, cofounder of LTK, told Business Insider.

LTK's new feed lets users discover videos by geography and topic, such as fashion, parenting, cooking, and travel. It still wants creators to tag items in videos (that's how the company and its affiliate partners make money), but it hopes they'll vlog about other parts of their lives without any intent to push products.

The app also plans to roll out more strictly social features, like the ability to connect with friends.

It's not the only commerce platform looking to broaden its appeal in recent months. Flip, a TikTok-like app once composed purely of videos tagged with products, opened up to other content in July. It now hosts everyday videos it calls clips, which run the gamut from movie scenes to creator-on-the-street interviews and other types of content that would live on a general entertainment platform.

"The idea of social commerce over the last five years was that everyone built it to be a commerce platform where there's somebody selling you the product," Flip's CEO Noor Agha told BI.

Agha said Flip's clips feature is part of a push to merge entertainment and commerce. "If we cannot solve both, social commerce will never actually go mainstream," Agha said.

The opportunity is huge for companies in the category that can build an audience, as platforms like TikTok have shown. In a December EMARKETER forecast, the research firm predicted the number of US social-commerce buyers would hit 100 million in 2024, with sales crossing $100 billion in 2026. Social-shopping startups like Whatnot and ShopMy have pulled in tens of millions of dollars in new funding in the past few months as they chase new users.

TikTok made entertainment a must-have in social shopping

The push among shopping apps to add general entertainment is likely a response to the rise of TikTok's e-commerce platform, Shop. The app built an audience of more than a billion users globally through social entertainment before introducing commerce features.

"A lot of the social-shopping apps are trying to reverse engineer that entertainment component into their apps to make them more sticky and to keep users and audiences coming back," said Sky Canaves, a principal analyst at EMARKETER covering retail and e-commerce.

Social platforms in the US have spent years testing features to get users to buy stuff in-app, with mixed results. TikTok finally showed that consumers, if prodded enough, would get on board.

Canaves said TikTok has shown that social commerce can work, "but it needs to be grounded in content, and typically that's entertainment content and creator content."

Ultimately, that reverse engineering feat may be tough to pull off. In February, Amazon nixed its TikTok-like shopping feed, Inspire, in another sign that shopping-only video feeds lack staying power.

But relying on platforms like TikTok or Instagram for distribution is also risky for startups that don't want to be subject to the whims of Big Tech. Instagram, for example, has pulled back on commerce features in recent years.

LTK recently partnered with TikTok to integrate affiliate links within the TikTok app. But TikTok generally keeps its e-commerce features in-house. The company's future in the US is also uncertain due to a divest-or-ban law that targets the company and its owner ByteDance.

For social-shopping startups, building an entertainment platform where they can control everything may be the best path forward.

Putting social in social commerce

Making shopping feel more social is key to retaining users and growing an app's audience. Venz Box said a big part of that is tapping into the relationships users have with brands and the creators themselves.

LTK is encouraging creators to post more lifestyle content to the app so that users feel as connected to the creator on LTK as they do on larger platforms like TikTok or Instagram.

"We started investing in order to be the place that they retain, nurture, and grow their community," Venz Box said.

Community is a buzzword for social apps overall and has driven several trends in social shopping. Substack has several shopping-focused newsletters with established online and IRL communities. Meanwhile, TYB, a shopping-rewards platform cofounded by apparel brand Outdoor Voices' Ty Haney, is focused on building and maintaining communities of superfans with challenges and group chats.

Ultimately, every app is fighting for a share of the internet's most valuable commodity: consumers' time.

"I am willing to sacrifice that not every piece of content has something to buy in it because the opportunity set is so much larger if you can go deeper with people," Venz Box said.

• Meta is offering creators thousands to post exclusive short-form videos on Instagram reels.
• The deals require creators to post a certain number of reels on Instagram each month.
• Read the terms in the contracts Instagram sent creators.

Instagram wants to be the first place creators go to post short-form videos.

And it's attempting to do so with piles of cash.

With TikTok's US future in limbo, Meta has been contacting creators and their teams with deals offering thousands of dollars in exchange for exclusive video content on Instagram reels. The payouts described to Business Insider ranged from $2,500 to $50,000 a month and required the content to be exclusive to Instagram for three months. The Information first reported on the program last week.

BI viewed contracts and spoke with several talent managers whose clients have received these offers. The managers requested anonymity to protect business relationships. Their identities are known to BI.

Typically, the deals are being sent to creators with more than 1 million followers on TikTok.

Not every contract is the same. One manager told BI they couldn't see a clear pattern as to why some creators were offered more money than others.

The payouts are grouped into tiers:

• Tier 1: $50,000 a month.
• Tier 2: $25,000 a month.
• Tier 3: $15,000 a month.
• Tier 4: $5,000 a month.
• Tier 5: $2,500 a month.

But even the promise of a big payday hasn't been enough to lure in some TikTok creators. This underscores the challenges Meta may face in usurping TikTok's short-form dominance.

"To try and change consumer behavior, or at least the perceived acceptance of consumer behavior, by stemming down another platform, I just don't think is the right way of handling it," a second manager said.

Instagram is offering deals worth up to $300,000 over 6 months

Here's a glimpse into an offer that has been sent to several creators for a total of $300,000 over six months:

• Creators would be required to post new, never-before-seen short-form video content to Instagram as reels.
• Over the course of six months, creators would post at least 10 new reels on their Instagram accounts each month.
• This content must be exclusive to Instagram for three months.
• Videos must be at least 15 seconds and no longer than three minutes.
• Creators must post 25% more on Instagram reels than on their next-largest short-form-video platform.

• They must share two of the reels a month as an IG story.

• Once a day, they need to engage with fans via comments, shares, or replies.

• They must post twice a month on their primary platform (TikTok or YouTube), promoting their content on Instagram and encouraging their fans to follow them on Instagram via the link in their bio.

• Instagram may promote the creator's content through paid ads on TikTok, Google, and app stores.
• If creators meet these requirements, they will earn $50,000 each month for the duration of the six-month deal.

The second talent manager with knowledge of these deals said some of their clients turned down the offer, citing reasons like exclusivity and overall frustration with Meta. Some said posting multiple reels a day felt "cheugy," a Gen Z term for out of touch.

"It's not a good deal," the second manager said. "Having to track that you're posting 25% more to reels than TikTok makes this untenable."

The manager added: "Some clients are taking it because the money is good for them, and I've seen some clients pass."

Here are the terms for a second offer that has been sent to several creators for a total of $90,000 over six months:

• Creators would be required to post new, never-before-seen short-form video content to Instagram as reels.
• Over the course of six months, creators would post at least eight new reels on their Instagram accounts each month, totaling 48 videos.
• This content must be exclusive to Instagram for three months.
• Videos must be at least 15 seconds and no longer than three minutes.
• Creators must post more short-form video content overall on Instagram during this period than on any other platform, such as TikTok, YouTube, Snapchat, or X.

• If creators meet these requirements, they will earn $15,000 each month for the duration of the six-month deal.

Meta is also offering bonuses to lure TikTok creators

Word is getting around about Meta's offers in the influencer industry, two talent managers told BI.

"Meta is being really bullish on locking these in," a third talent manager who has seen similar offers from Meta said.

This isn't the only trick Meta has up its sleeve to woo TikTok creators amid a still looming ban or sale.

Meta launched a "Breakthrough Bonus" program last week. The program pays "eligible TikTok creators to help jump-start their growth on our apps," a spokesperson told BI. The compensation is up to $5,000 within a three-month period for posting reels on Instagram and Facebook.

Meta declined to comment on the specifics of these deals.

• TikTok is veering toward a US shutdown after the Supreme Court upheld a divest-or-ban law.
• The app is set to leave app stores and may go dark on Sunday if its owner, ByteDance, doesn't divest.
• TikTok creators and their teams are tired from months of uncertainty, but cautiously hopeful too.

TikTok is in trouble.

The company is set to disappear from US app stores on Sunday due to a divest-or-ban law that requires its owner, ByteDance, to sell the app by January 19 or essentially cease operating in the country. TikTok may stop showing content in the US and "go dark" over the weekend.

For TikTok creators and their teams, ongoing uncertainty around the app's US future has sparked frustration and fatigue.

"We've been dealing with this for months," said Julian Andrews, founder of talent management firm Talentiish. "I just sort of want the situation to be over so we know how to move on."

Some in the talent community are cautiously optimistic that a solution will emerge to save TikTok. President-elect Donald Trump has pledged to try to rescue the app once in office, though his options could be limited.

"So many of us are still holding out hope that it will work out," Barbara Jones, CEO of Outshine Talent, said.

Others aren't holding their breath and are instead focusing on established alternatives, such as Instagram reels and YouTube shorts, as well as challenger apps like Clapper, Flip, and RedNote.

"Many of our clients are making accounts on RedNote and Flip as well as downloading their data from the TikTok app," Jones said. "They are trying to be as prepared as possible."

Creators may be hesitant to commit to new platforms, however, when the advertising dollars are much more reliable on major players like Instagram.

Instagram is, for the most part, the platform of choice among those Business Insider spoke to who are pivoting from TikTok.

Fallen Media, which runs TikTok shows like "What's Poppin? With Davis!" said it will be heavily investing in Instagram reels, for example.

"I have suggested to my clients not to focus on any new platforms and focus on the tried and true," Andrews at Talentiish said.

In the meantime, there's still no clear answer as to what happens this weekend.

"The truth is we don't really know what's going to happen on Sunday, which I think is the crazy part," said Fallen Media CEO Sol Betesh.

Creators are exhausted and devastated to say goodbye to TikTok

As news stories around a TikTok ban swing between good news and legal defeats, some creators have sunk into despair. The Supreme Court loss on Friday hit particularly hard for those whose businesses depend on the app.

"The ruling is truly devastating for me as someone who built their platform starting on TikTok," said Sofia Bella, a TikTok creator with 4.8 million followers. "Losing the majority of my audience is a difficult reality to face, and while I'm doing everything I can to prepare, it's hard not to feel like I'm starting over."

Andrews said the job of talent manager has teetered between acting as a therapist and strategist for the creators they manage.

Some creators are actively fighting against a TikTok ban, including Vitus Spehar, who runs the news account @underthedesknews. Spehar has been covering breaking news and political developments around the divestment. They said Americans should call their senators and other representatives to demand action against the law.

Still, other creators who have experienced burnout from TikTok are welcoming a possible shift if the app goes down.

"Generally, the tone from most internet creators I've spoken to has been entirely apathetic," said Tati Bruening, a TikTok creator with 2.4 million followers. "The pacing of content creation for TikTok was a recipe for burnout."

Building a strategy for doomsday

Even as the creator economy braces for the loss of its favorite corner of the internet, this moment is a lesson for many.

"Stop building brands on social media that other people own," Jennifer Powell, a talent manager who works with creators like Tezza and Ty French, told BI. "This can and will happen again. Start your website, get newsletters going, blogs, use affiliates, turn it into a brand, and own your own little place on the web."

A TikTok ban could also be a gold rush for social media startups as they race to fill the void.

"There's never been a better time to start a creation or curation company," said Em Herrera, a former investor at Slow Ventures who recently founded a firm called Creator Venture Accelerator.

• Americans are rushing to download two Chinese social apps, days before a possible TikTok ban.
• Xiaohongshu and Lemon8 rose to the top spots on the Apple app store rankings on Monday.
• Both platforms could be subject to the same divest-or-ban law that's imperiling TikTok.

TikTok users are lamenting that the app could "go dark" in less than a week in the US due to a divest-or-ban law. At the same time, two other apps with Chinese owners have risen to the top of the Apple app store in the US.

On Monday, Xiaohongshu, also known as RedNote, and Lemon8, an app with the same owner as TikTok, hit the top two spots on the Apple app store rankings.

Xiaohongshu functions similarly to Instagram, but with more commerce features, while Lemon8 has been described by creators as a Pinterest-like platform.

The rush to download these apps is a bit of a head-scratcher, as they could be subject to the same divestment requirements as TikTok if the US government chooses to target them. The Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act applies to social platforms owned by countries that the US government views as foreign adversaries. TikTok became a political target because its owner, ByteDance, is based in China, which the US government has labeled a foreign adversary and Congress views as a national-security risk.

TikTok is clearly subject to the divest-or-ban law, as it's named in the bill's text. But ByteDance is also named, which raises the question of why its other app, Lemon8, is suddenly surging in popularity.

Christopher Krepich, the communications director for the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, previously told Forbes the bill would ban Lemon8 unless ByteDance divested. A spokesperson for the committee did not immediately respond to Business Insider on whether it would apply to Xiaohongshu.

The law was written broadly and could be enforced on any company owned by a foreign adversary that permits a user to "create an account or profile to generate, share, and view text, images, videos, real-time communications, or similar content." That could include Xiaohongshu if the US government chose to target the app.

The law does have some exceptions, including apps where users "post product reviews, business reviews, or travel information and reviews." That suggests Chinese e-commerce platforms Shein and Temu would not be targeted.

ByteDance, Xiaohongshu, Apple, and Google did not respond to requests for comment.

Why users are flocking to these two apps

It's tough to say exactly what's driving mass interest in Xiaohongshu and Lemon8. Some users may be flocking to the apps to find a replacement for TikTok, while others may simply like their product features. In December, Xiaohongshu had around 300 million monthly active users globally, Bloomberg reported.

Another possibility for the downloads surge is that TikTok users are choosing the Chinese apps as a tongue-in-cheek protest of the divest-or-ban law.

"It really is just retaliation towards the government in the simplest way, but in a way that feels very native to Gen Z," said Meagan Loyst, founder of the investor collective Gen Z VCs.

If millennials pioneered "slacktivism" with online petitions, Gen Z seems to be trying something new. You might call it "trolltivism."

"This is not the first time that trolling on a large scale has happened," Loyst said, citing the 2020 incident when TikTok users purchased tickets to Trump rallies. "It's trolling the US government."