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If there’s anyone who can turn lumpy cottage cheese into gripping entertainment, it’s James Bok, Comm’14, GDA’14.

On a Sunday last October, Mr. Bok, dressed in a grey long-sleeved T-shirt and black baseball hat, leaned over a cutting board in his Toronto kitchen, hit record on his phone, and began explaining how to turn leftover Costco rotisserie chicken into a healthy, high-protein salad – in five minutes or less.

With the easy assurance of a Martha Stewart, he combined two cups of shredded chicken, chopped carrots, celery, onion, and two diced dill pickles. “You have to get a dill pickle,” he emphasized. “I’m just not a fan of sweet pickles.”

Then came the secret ingredient.

Instead of mayonnaise (every mom’s chicken salad standard), Mr. Bok scooped a generous spoonful of protein-packed cottage cheese into a clear plastic tub, added Greek yogurt, mustard, pepper, and garlic, blended, then stirred the saucy mixture into the chicken and veggies.

Next, he took a bite.

“Incredible!” he proclaimed with a wide grin. “It’s crazy that this is healthy.”

This Instagram video has been viewed 8.3 million times to date. By comparison, last year’s top Canadian TV show, The Amazing Race Canada, season 10, averaged 1.3 million viewers per episode.

Welcome to the world of online influencers, where content creators like Mr. Bok can attract millions of eyeballs on TikTok, Instagram, and other social media sites, earning surprisingly large incomes through brand deals. No longer just a pastime for bored teenagers shooting videos in their bedrooms, content creation has become a bona fide profession, and Mr. Bok is one of several �ʹ�����’s alumni helping shape this booming (albeit largely misunderstood) multibillion-dollar industry.

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What do most influencers have in common? 

They never intended to do this for a living.

James Bok grew up in Toronto, the son of Korean immigrants. After earning a Smith School of Business commerce degree, he pursued finance and accounting, starting at KPMG in Toronto before moving to Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Later, he worked remotely for a venture capital firm, living in Europe, Thailand, and, finally, South Korea.

In Korea, he dabbled professionally in social media for the first time. Mr. Bok was intrigued by the popularity of skin-care products in Korea; preparing to launch his own skin-care line, he opened a TikTok account in January 2023 to promote himself as the company founder. However, instead of hard-selling products, he posted videos of himself cooking, eating, and going about daily life.

To his amazement, these videos caught on. Soon, he abandoned the skin-care business idea to become a full-time content creator. Looking back, he admits, “I might have been a little delusional.” At the time, his following was modest – around 30,000 on TikTok and just 5,000 on Instagram.

But as he began posting consistently, his audience grew rapidly. Now back in Toronto, he has 528,000 followers on , 413,000 on , and 84,000 on . His posts regularly attract hundreds of thousands of views and, sometimes, millions.

What makes him so appealing? Like most successful influencers, Mr. Bok has a friendly on-camera presence. His delivery is natural, and he smiles often. While he occasionally posts about skin care, lifestyle, and travel, about 70 per cent of his content is food related.

“I’ve never worked in a kitchen but I’m just so passionate about food. Social media kind of became an outlet for me to pursue that,” he says, adding, “When you’re passionate about something, people will be able to see it through the lens.”

He excels at fast-paced demonstrations of quick, tasty dishes. In one, he shared a three-ingredient mango sorbet recipe (mangoes, Greek yogurt, and honey, scooped back into the mango rind as the bowl). In another, co-starring his mom, he made flattened and fried strawberry-jam-and-cream-cheese croissants. The trick: he smooshed the croissant with the bottom of a frying pan.

“People love economical and healthy, and they love food hacks,” he says.

Mr. Bok films on his phone, using only natural light and no extra sound or video equipment. He prefers that his content appear spontaneous rather than overly polished. Each video starts with an “after” clip of him eating the dish he’s about to prepare, followed by a satisfied “Mmmm!”

While he makes it look easy, there’s plenty of planning behind the scenes. He prefers recipes with just a few ingredients and emphasizes simplicity. He also keeps up with food trends. His leftover-chicken salad recipe was inspired by cottage cheese’s resurgence as a high-protein, cheap option. And after posting, he responds to comments. 

Then there are brand collaborations. Companies pay to have their products featured in some of his videos. He attends influencer events to network and recently signed with an agency to handle his deals. McDonald’s, Procter & Gamble, Subway, Kiehl’s, and Turkish Airlines are among the brands he’s partnered with.

As for income, Mr. Bok says he now earns twice as much as the six-figure salary he received while working in corporate finance.

Yet despite his success, some people he encounters still don’t understand how he earns a living as an influencer. “They ask me what I’ll do after this ‘content thing.’” He admits such questions can be grating. “Content creation is my job, and I work really hard at it.”

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Like Mr. Bok, Julia Perfetto, Comm’21, never envisioned becoming a social media personality. She wanted to be an accountant. But then the pandemic – and an invite to appear on a reality TV show – intervened.

Ms. Perfetto, who grew up in Hamilton, Ont., began posting workout videos on and in late 2020 while still at �ʹ�����’s. “My friends always knew me as the girl who was into fitness and wellness, and during the pandemic we were all stuck inside. I thought maybe I should start posting some of my workouts. If I could help get people moving, that would be really cool,” she recalls.

One day, on a whim, she invited her older brother to join one of her shoots. By chance, producers of a new Netflix reality show called Dated & Related, saw it. They invited Ms. Perfetto and her brother to join the cast of the show, where single siblings help each other find soulmates while living in a luxurious villa in the south of France.

After filming ended, Ms. Perfetto returned home, intent on turning her workout video hobby into a full-time career by selling workout plans and offering fitness coaching online.

Then, in late 2022, Dated & Related was released. Suddenly, she says, “I had a whole new group of followers that didn’t know me from my workout videos but knew me as a personality from this show.”

Seizing the moment, Ms. Perfetto expanded her content beyond fitness. “I started posting about my life, what I was doing that day, and beauty and hair,” she says. As a result, her following skyrocketed. Today, she counts 310,000 followers on TikTok, 120,000 on Instagram, and 80,000 on Snapchat.

Her content is an eclectic mix showcasing a young, entrepreneurial woman living the big-city life in Toronto. One video might show her visiting a spa, another sampling dishes or drinks from restaurants. In others, she tries out skin-care products, spends time with friends, shares makeup routines with her mom, and unboxes products sent by PR companies. 

Her naturally curly hair is an occasional topic. She films her attempts to style it, showing before-and-after results – successful or not. These posts tend to perform well and generate lots of comments. “I think people like them because I’m not trying to come across as an expert and I’m being a bit vulnerable. I’m saying, ‘I don’t know how to style my hair, but this is what I’m going to try.’”

Ms. Perfetto’s appeal stems from her straightforward, unpretentious approach. She strives to speak to followers as she would face-to-face to a friend. Marketers might call this “authenticity.”

In fact, the bond influencers like Ms. Perfetto and Mr. Bok build with followers is a chief reason companies now invest heavily in influencer marketing, says Robert Kozinets, PhD’97, a professor at the University of Southern California and co-author of a textbook on the subject: Influencers & Creators: Business, Culture, and Practice.

Viewers see influencers as real people, whereas many have grown skeptical of corporate advertising and mass media, he explains.

Influencers can also be more cost-effective than traditional ads. They offer targeted audiences and are often “perceived as more credible” by brands, Professor Kozinets says. “They can help explain a product’s use, like how to put on makeup.”

While top influencers have millions of followers – think YouTuber MrBeast or actress/singer Selena Gomez – many succeed with smaller audiences. And the influencer market is set to explode. Fortune Business Insights estimates its value will reach US$23.6 billion this year and expand at a 17 per cent annual rate, hitting US$71.04 billion by 2032.

Notably, only a small portion of an influencer’s content is typically sponsored. For Ms. Perfetto, that’s about 20 per cent.

Her first deal was for a mere $50. Then a company offered her $500 to feature its fitness scale. “I remember telling my mom, ‘Oh my gosh, they want to pay me to do this?’”

As her audience grew, brands started calling. Today, her following is large enough that companies mostly reach out to her, and she earns a minimum of four figures per deal. Dove, Tatcha, L’Oréal, and Olaplex are among the brands she’s worked with recently.

Unlike many influencers, she negotiates with brands herself rather than relying on a social media management agency. “I’ve positioned myself as a brand-friendly creator, so brands tend to want to work with me. A lot of them will reach out and say, ‘Hey Julia, we love your content. We’re really interested in working with you.’”

She credits her business degree from �ʹ�����’s for giving her the confidence to strike deals. In her last year of Commerce, she even took an entrepreneurship class, COMM 405, in which her final project was to create an entrepreneur’s guide to a social media career.

Ms. Perfetto says last year was her best financially – her first earning a six-figure salary – and she’s exploring the idea of launching her own wellness products. “I would love to keep the momentum going and see how big I can build my brand and what else I can accomplish.”

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What comes next is a question many influencers grapple with. Fame and influence can be fleeting. Content creators are entrepreneurs. They put in many hours and, like any small business, must evolve to stay relevant. There are only so many eyeballs to go around on social media.

One creator who understands this challenge is Nolan White, Artsci’22. 

A Montreal-based men’s fashion influencer, Mr. White has amassed a sizable audience in just a few years. But he has not confined himself to social media videos. He consults in the fashion and social media industries, and he expands on topics from his videos in articles on Substack, an online publishing platform. For example, a video on how to find a good vintage leather jacket was accompanied by a more in-depth Substack article with additional advice.

In other words, he’s building his own media brand with fashion at its core.

Mr. White hails from Windsor, Ont. Recently, at a family gathering, he recalls he was asked to explain what he does for a living. 

“I’m a magazine condensed down to one person. I provide a little bit of information, a little bit of styling advice. I’ll do a roundup of bags or shoes or hats or whatever. I’ll do a little op-ed piece. I’ll do a history of a fashion piece, maybe I’ll do an interview, do a shop overview, and then, occasionally, I’ll sell a page to an advertiser.”

Like Ms. Perfetto, he started in the pandemic. In 2021, during his second year at �ʹ�����’s, multiple lockdowns left him stuck inside with little to do. Eyeing his fashionable wardrobe, he realized he had no reason to get dressed up. So, he started putting on those clothes anyway and posting videos of his outfits on .

To his amazement, people started commenting. Some asked fashion-related questions: How do you style a cardigan? What shops would you recommend in Toronto? In response, Mr. White began posting more informational and how-to content.

For a while, he did not make any money for these posts. However, while clothes shopping in Toronto, he was sometimes recognized by people who’d seen him online. Eventually, he connected with other men’s fashion influencers, such as Wisdom Kaye, an American-Nigerian model and social media personality, and he attended his first New York Fashion Week in 2021.

“That’s where I switched gears and decided, ‘You know what? I’ve got this awesome opportunity in front of me right now. I may as well take the risk while I’m young and swing for the fences.’”

Now living in Montreal – where many of Canada’s fashion designers and manufacturers are headquartered – Mr. White has amassed 325,000 followers on TikTok and 242,000 on . His platform, which he started last year, already has 16,000 subscribers. Some of the brands he works with are eBay, American Express, and Maison Birks.

He has incorporated his business, which earned $250,000 last year from brand deals and consulting work. He pays himself a salary from that revenue, but his business must also cover expenses such as a video editor, camera equipment, and work-related travel.

Mr. White’s popularity may stem from his everyman quality. As he explains, “I’m five-foot-seven and I’ve got a bit of a baby face. I’m not your six-foot-two runway model with chiselled features.” This, he believes, makes his fashion advice more relatable to a broad cross-section of men. “A lot of guys are like me,” he says. “They’re not used to clothes fitting them, and shopping can be a frustrating experience. I think people can pick up on the fact that I was where they were at one point.”

His posts are educational and entertaining. Recently, he gave viewers a tour of his entire trucker jacket collection. In another, he covered the history of Oliver Goldsmith eyewear, famously worn by Michael Caine and Audrey Hepburn. Shoes, boots, suits, belts, and watches also get their turn, and earlier this year, when Donald Trump hit Canada with tariffs, Mr. White provided a timely list of Canadian clothing brands that, he said, “you should absolutely support if you can.” 

While most of his audience are men (his core demographic is 18 to 40), around 30 per cent are women. “I’ve had women recognize me in public and tell me their boyfriend dresses so much better because of my videos,” he says with a laugh.

Is there a downside to fame? Yes, he admits. Social media users can be quick to criticize. If he features $250 pants, someone will inevitably accuse him of suggesting people need to buy expensive clothes to look good. “That can be frustrating,” he says. “Especially when I was starting out, I struggled a lot with that stuff. They see one video and make snap judgments about you.”

Mr. White tries to cater to both dedicated fashion enthusiasts and men just beginning to explore style. He strives to showcase both high-end and affordable menswear, hoping to help men become more confident shoppers. The best part is hearing from guys who have benefited from his advice.

Last year, for example, Mr. White wanted a suit for his aunt’s wedding. Rather than buy new, he challenged himself to assemble an outfit for under $250 by shopping for inexpensive apparel. He documented the process in a series of videos, highlighting his used finds.

Later, he received a note from a young man who had recently gotten married. The groom and his bride had a limited budget, and he wanted to save money on his suit so she could spend more on her wedding dress. Inspired by Mr. White, he successfully put together a stylish outfit for very little money. “He sent me pictures from their wedding, and it was awesome,” Mr. White says.

“For me, it was like, ‘Oh, I actually had an impact.’ And that was a good feeling.”