On a Scroll continued from page 10 someone just wants to go through every neighborhood in Colorado in twenty min- utes, they just scroll through thirty-second videos over and over and get kind of an over- view of it, because it’s digestible and it’s not an overload of information.” He also posts home tours, things to do and news about the Colorado housing market. Although Vascassenno started his TikTok in 2021, he didn’t see a spike in viewership until this spring; now he has 24,400 fol- lowers. In May, he posted his fi rst video to hit one million views; it talked about the best cities for new college graduates. Vascassenno tags every one of his videos with the hashtags #livinginDenver and #moving- toDenver to keep up his viewer- ship. “Let’s say someone’s living in Florida and they’re thinking about moving to Denver,” he says. “You go to TikTok and type in the search bar ‘moving to Denver’; I want my face plastered all over that search result.” Despite having gone well be- yond the 10,000-follower thresh- old, Vascassenno hasn’t signed up for the creator fund. TikTok already helps him make money by acting as a platform to scout real estate clients, he points out; most of his clients now come through TikTok. “I set a goal for, I think, 50,000 by the end of this year, and with the way things are going, we’ll see if it happens,” Vascassenno says. “I’m also not super con- cerned with that kind of vanity metric. I’m more concerned with if there’s a percentage of people within that list that wants to do business with me and wants to work with me.” 12 @pao_denver Pao, which bills itself as “Yelp for Gen Z,” is actually an app designed to help people fi nd the “hidden gems” of a city. Anna Zervos was a student at the University of California, Los Angeles, when she thought that people needed a new kind of online business and restaurant guide. She created a team — her mother and best friend — and moved to Boulder, where the app was launched in 2018. Zervos is still the CEO today, and Pao continues to expand its reach. “Our goal was to kind of battle the dinosaur apps like Yelp and Trip Advisor, things that were kind of outdated,” says Jillian Brown, Pao’s market- ing and communications manager. Pao launched on TikTok in 2020, with accounts focusing on Denver, Los Angeles and Miami. While the Pao crew found places to showcase, businesses were soon paying to be featured on the app. “We defi nitely do some of our own sporadic content, like wanting to feature businesses that we think are really cool,” Brown says. “Primarily they are businesses who come to us wanting to be featured on the account.” Taking note of its success on TikTok, in Pao got its start in Denver, while Michelle Nguyen started her TikTok after she moved here. they’re at 13,000 or 14,000.” As for Pao’s own TikTok — pao_denver has 47,600 followers — Brown says its aes- thetic keeps it unique. “I think a really huge benefi t for us is we’ve spent tons of time brand-building just on our own of what kind of content we want to push out [and] how we want to come across,” she says. Pao’s most popular videos include drink spots to try this weekend, as well as “vibey” date-night spots in Denver, including Toro Latin Kitchen and Avanti Food & Beverage, as well as other photo-worthy spots like the Marijuana Mansion. And through Pao, anyone can post cool spots they fi nd while traveling, sharing them with followers searching out information on other cities. But it all comes back home to Colorado, where the app got its start. @itsnuwin Aesthetics are important to 23-year-old Michelle Nguyen, a lifestyle video creator with 5,718 followers. With videos that range from “a day in the life in Denver” to “the best nail salon in Denver,” her TikTok account is full of Denver “infl uencer” content. Recently, her most popular videos have focused on where to get the best hot pot, su- shi and boba around Colorado. “I’m scared to post anything that’s not hot pot at this point,” the summer of 2021 the company launched Pao Creative, a content creation company dedicated to making short-form videos for TikTok and reels for Instagram. Today Pao Creative makes TikTok content for such businesses as Spectra Art Space, Babe’s Tea Room and Little Man Ice Cream. “Spectra Art Space is a really great case study,” Brown says. “They were one of our very fi rst clients with zero followers on TikTok, and now Nguyen jokes during a lunch break from her full-time job doing corporate marketing. Nguyen grew up in Vietnam and came to the United States in 2017 to attend college at the University of California, Davis. She moved to Denver for work and has been using TikTok to try new places and meet people ever since. She’s also been using it to show her friends back in California that Colorado is far from a Midwest desert with nothing to offer. She’s long been interested in videography and social media. “When I was a kid, I used to carry a GoPro around my chest and I would walk around,” she says. “I was really into videography. Going to college, your parents are kind of in your ear, and they’re like, you shouldn’t do it [social media], it’s not a real thing, get a job and do it on the side.” In college, she started a food Instagram account, thedavisfoodie, and her friends sounds stupid, because a TikTok is three minutes maximum, but to do voiceovers, to edit the videos and everything, it takes me about an hour or two,” she says. In California, content creation — specifi - cally on social media — is an oversaturated market, she notes, making it nearly impos- sible to stand out and be noticed on the plat- form. In Denver, though, there are far more opportunities to get audience engagement, because there aren’t already a million people making the exact same video. But Denver has its drawbacks, Nguyen says, mentioning the awkwardness of pull- ing out a phone and tripod to fi lm a video here. “In California, everyone is not fazed,” she says. “They’re like, ‘Oh, another person doing the same thing that every other girl in this restaurant is doing.’” In Colorado, she adds, you don’t spot someone fi lming at a local business every day, making it awkward encouraged her to start recording the res- taurants they visit on TikTok, leading to that hot pot success. Now she regularly features different Asian restaurants around Denver to show off the scene. “My best friend, Megan, that I met here in Denver, she never tried Vietnamese food or hot pot, and now she keeps begging me to go back every single time,” Nguyen says. While the TikTok is a hobby, she takes it seriously and struggles to keep up. Working an eight-to-fi ve job, spending evenings with friends and maintaining a healthy lifestyle doesn’t leave much time to fi lm videos. “It to be the one person who is. Recently, she’s received a few comped meals in exchange for featuring a restaurant on her page, and she’d like to pursue getting more business. “I feel like a goal is to be an infl uencer, but right now I feel like my fol- lowing is not big enough,” she says. “Right now, it’s a hobby that I want to be really invested in.” @coloradohikes TikTok isn’t all about things to do in town. Coloradohikes shares information on the best hiking trails and other adventure spots OCTOBER 6-12, 2022 WESTWORD | MUSIC | CAFE | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | NEWS | LETTERS | CONTENTS | westword.com @PAO_DENVER @ITSNUWIN
