Meredith Duxbury’s foundation routine made her famous on TikTok. What began as an everyday way of covering freckles drew millions of viewers, many of whom wanted to know why she applied foundation with her hands. But at a Glossy panel during New York Fashion Week, Duxbury and three fellow beauty creators spent less time talking about how to go viral and more about how to keep people watching once the first hit has passed.
The panel, moderated by Glossy senior beauty reporter Emily Jensen, brought together Duxbury, makeup artist Aditya Madiraju, beauty creator Shay Sullivan and hairstylist Matt Newman, known online as Matt Loves Hair. Each built an audience through beauty content. Now, they said, the work is finding a reason for that audience to stay.
For Duxbury, the answer came partly from reading comments. Viewers who first came for the foundation technique began asking for videos where she talked about her work and personal life. “Starting off, just with the lip-syncing videos, I wasn’t speaking,” she said. Giving followers a closer look at her life helped turn attention to a single routine into a broader connection.
Sullivan has made a similar shift. She still posts hair and beauty content, but she began sharing more of her personality after her husband encouraged her to show that there was more to her than her appearance. “Show more of your personality. Show more of your life,” she said. “That’s what people relate to.”
Newman sees another change in what audiences expect from a beauty video: useful advice. His early hair tutorials took off, including one in which he used a Dunkin’ drink lid to make a large messy bun. These days, he said, straightforward information that delivers results is more likely to hold viewers’ attention than a gimmick.
“People don’t want to feel like their time was wasted,” Newman said. Even in a 30-second video, he added, viewers want a tip they can use.
That does not mean every creator is moving toward shorter content. Madiraju said some of his best-performing TikToks run nine or 11 minutes. With a background in finance, he studies retention and looks at the questions people leave in comments to decide what to make next. The length matters less, he suggested, than whether the video continues to give viewers what they came for.
Nor can creators always predict which posts will succeed. Sullivan said a video that takes considerable time and effort can receive little attention, while a quick voiceover can take off. Madiraju described a wide range of engagement across his Instagram posts, despite having around 3 million followers there. A large following provides a community, he said, but it does not guarantee the performance of any one video.
The unpredictability has shaped how Newman thinks about longevity. After his first year of making content, he wondered how he could repeat the work for another year. Focusing closely on views made that prospect feel precarious. He now judges a video partly by whether he is pleased with it, regardless of its numbers.
Duxbury is also taking her work beyond the feed. Her new book, ‘Get Ready with Meredith,’ brings together beauty, fashion and more personal subjects, including her experience with anxiety. She wanted to give followers something they could pick up while taking a break from their phones.
“I had so much content digitally online, but I didn’t have anything tangible to share with my community,” she said. For a creator whose career began with a viral beauty routine, the book offers another way to spend time with the audience that stayed.
Photo by Benjamin Esakof/Halo Creative Studios
