Long Island TikTawk

Have you ever considered working with a family member? And then tried promoting the business on social media?
That’s what Jill Schieber, of Plainview and her son Jordan Schieber, of Long Beach are doing with their local business, Matchmaking for Me. The duo started their business as a way to bring Long Island singles and beyond, together.
When they wanted to build their clientele, Jordan, 28, turned to TikTok. What started with a video of Jill, 60, describing the type of person they were looking for to date their client, led to a following of over 14,000 followers and locals wanting to know how they can be set up too.
Quickly after learning the want and need for this on social media, Jordan turned the camera on himself, posting videos giving dating advice to young singles helping to grow their clientele and following even more.
“It reaches people that I would never expect,” Jordan said.

Abby Fridman, of Suffolk County, 26, was originally planning on being a doctor. She was attending Stony Brook University when she started posting on social media. It didn’t take long for her to gain a following and start making money using the different platforms. After graduating, she gave herself an ultimatum: If in three months she didn’t start making money on social media, she would go to medical school.

“I started paying a lot more attention to making my TikTok than my chemistry class,” she said.

When she realized she was starting to make more money as a creator than she would as a doctor, she decided to shift her career entirely and now has a business teaching others how to create on social platforms.

Melina Roussos has everyone’s dream job. Under her account, “Your Foodie Princess,” she has grown her following of over 68,000 followers on Instagram and TikTok going around to different Long Island restaurants and enjoying all the good food there is to offer here.

The 27-year-old Commack native started her social media page back in high school. Even back then, Roussos would always make her family and friends take her to new restaurants and loved documenting the food she ate. 

After receiving about 1,000 followers, she got her first restaurant owner to reach out to her and ask to make content, which was the start of a shift from posting for fun, to a full fledged career, including the launch of her marketing business, Social Spoons Studios, helping local restaurants with their social media presence.

Thankfully, there’s not a shortage of restaurants on Long Island which means there’s not a shortage of work for the creator. 

“All these years later I still love it…” Roussos said. “It’s still fun, I still enjoy myself every year I have, every restaurant I go to.”

Social media has really changed the look of journalism, and Blake Grossman is a perfect example of that. The 24-year-old Hicksville native may look like a typical “influencer,” but his background in journalism has helped him build his following.

Blake may have the look of a content creator but his videos are a take on modern-day journalism as he reports on all the “abandoned” spots on Long Island as well as giving an insight into pop culture and nostalgia.

Katherine Schiro’s rise to social media started as a family affair. It was actually her parents, Al and Vicky, who went viral first in a video that has over 70 million views about Al trying sweet potato pancakes and wanting “14 of them right now.”After a few months of helping them manage their accounts, Schiro, 32, of Suffolk County, was inspired to grow her own following. She tried a few different things until she found her niche: Fashion.

At 4 years old, they met at a pool in Orlando, Florida, quickly realizing they were from the same town, going to the same nursery school.
Fast forward to over 20 years of friendship, Joe Hegyes and Andrew Muscarella have a podcast called Good Children where they talk about growing up on Long Island, pop culture and, of course, spreading the good word of Ralph’s Italian Ices.
Now, the duo is venturing out to build their own platforms as content creators.
We talk about what’s next for them in the creator space .

Long Island TikTawk: Angelina Cammareri

What started as a way to connect with their community while living upstate in Syracuse has turned into a career for Ana Richardson and Michael Calobrisi. Although you may not realize from their separate accounts, the two are a couple who met while studying together in college.
With a background in acting, film and news sharing, they grew their accounts based on their individual niches. Richardson enjoys finding new businesses and budget-friendly things to do in her own personal life, while Calobrisi has a love of what he calls “strange history.”
The couple is preserving Long Island’s hidden history while also sharing what you can do around your local area.
“We just really love storytelling and I think that these platforms just kind of allowed us to have a way to tell these stories,” Richardson said.

Meet Eden Boakye, the 22-year-old content creator from Westbury who has gained over 800K followers across platforms talking about food, fashion, lifestyle and claims these spots are supposedly the BEST on Long Island. #newyork #longisland #podcasts

Rebecca Koltun wanted to go to medical school, but a life changing ski accident in 2021 resulted in her being paralyzed from the neck down.Koltun began posting TikToks in the hospital to show how she paints by using her mouth as well as other tasks that she does on a regular basis.Now, the 24-year-old has expanded her content creation to include trends and dark humor, which has garnered her millions of views and several thousands of followers.