Matilda Bea has had a “mega busy year”. Every month TikTok’s favourite dinner party hostess expects things to quieten down: “We say, ‘Oh, this month might be a bit calmer’ and every single month it’s getting busier.” In the two-and-a-half years since she began posting on TikTok, the 25-year-old lifestyle creator has grown her audience to more than 220,000 followers, where her engagement rate is an extraordinary 47.5%. Her secret sauce? “I’ve been able to build a platform where people are very aligned in terms of the style.”
The alignment means – unusually for most content creators – Bea’s partnerships often perform as well or better than her organic content. Her videos are carefully constructed as to offer real value to both brands and her audience; the integrations often feel seamless. Bea is the queen of positioning – she says her partnerships are about “aspiration and affiliation, not to hard-push sales.”
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She always had a creative brain, but doing well academically led her to a business masters and a corporate role in a boutique management consulting firm. She told herself “I can always have that creative outlet,” but admits her “gut was telling me, ‘why the hell am I here?’” As an avid consumer of social media (she wrote her dissertation on Finstas), and with her partner Joe being in the space, she decided, in July 2022, to start a little creative project and “posted a video on Tiktok every day for 30 days.”
Her first video was a mini house tour, using a viral sound and ended in a shot of her Pilates reformer machine. It received more than 200,000 views, here. She says: “People were very quickly interested. They were like ‘who the hell is this girl? And why does she have this reformer machine?’” Bea enjoyed playing with expectation and delivering that “extra”, which she is known for. By August 2022 she had grown her following by 6,000 and the creative project was now an extension of her life.
@matildabeaa my mum lives the good life 🧘🏼♀️ #FilmTeyvatIslands #fakebody #homedecor #pilatesworkout #reformerpilates
And the “extra” I mentioned kept coming. There was the time she turned her kitchen island into a chic cheeseboard, earning her more than 4.3 million views, here. Her 24th birthday party – which featured personalised gift bags for her friends – had more than 2.7 million views, here. Bea’s passion for hosting has become her brand, and her audience were highly engaged from the get-go, constantly asking her “where’s that from?”. It took a year before brands began to notice her, but notice they did.
Bea has established a template for her work that is about experience. As a social media consumer herself, she responds to content that is multi-layered and so, in general, prefers to work with brands that understand they are part of an eco-system rather than a single, solo plug. She says: “The more that is going on in a video, usually, the better it performs. You keep people engaged. They have lots of different things to look at.” It is much more powerful, says Bea, when the audience can see the product is “actually embedded into your life.”
@matildabeaa hosting tip: cover your kitchen island in brown baking paper and make it into a cheeseboard 🍷❤️❤️❤️ cc @alana lav #hosting #kitchen #aesthetic #london #londonvlog #londonhomes
She used to think skincare was one of the verticals where one-product content made sense. However, a recent video for L’Oréal Paris, titled “This is my apartment”, only features two or three seconds of “product focus” and it has received more than a million views, here.
Says Bea: “It’s fully disclosed in the caption, but viewers can’t really tell whether it’s an ad or not due to the organic style.” Brands, she adds, are getting used to the adjacency piece but she highlights L’Oréal Paris and Elemis as particularly good to work with in terms of creative freedom: “They just want the partnership to be as natural as possible.”
@matildabeaa come plan my Christmas party with me using @Paperless Post to send out the invites which fits so perfectly with the theme AD. They have gorgeous options for every kind of event and are no waste, fully sustainable ♥️ creating a paperless post invite is always the first step in prepping to host and now I’m that bit more organised for my Christmas party #paperlesspostpartner #christmasparty #dinnerparty #hosting #londonhomes
So how does she work with brands? In general, she says, they “want a combination of video and imagery. So maybe our most common partnership format is a Reel and three Stories, and one of those will have a link.” Bea finds Stories generate the most questions from her audience: “They are a good place for people to just directly respond, perhaps it feels easier to ask about sizing, etc.”
Bea asserts that giving her the option to choose products is also a key factor in the engagement process. On her side, she likes to deliver a detailed “high-level bullet-point guide to what the video will include” with the awareness that things might change on the day. Bea says she has recently found brands setting up WhatsApp groups for the project extremely helpful and it accelerates the approval process.
She is, of course, best known for her hosting videos and has turned offshoot content into a fine art. The event is one thing but it has also lent itself to numerous proliferations, from “Get Ready With Me to host” to “Unwind With Me after hosting” and so on. She hosts three times a week.
Looking ahead to 2025, she thinks brand events are going to grow exponentially and she has already begun hosting outside of her home, including for Majestic Wine and Juicy Couture, here. She is mindful that the sheer number of activations means collaborating with creators and their own networks is going to be crucial going forward, to mitigate drop-outs. As she says: “I can’t go to everything.”
It’s all about the relationships between the creators “who rely on and support each other” ultimately, superseding their affiliation with the brand. Says Bea: “I went to an event the other day with Sézane for Harlie Briggs – there was no way in hell that I’d be cancelling.” She is keen to stress, in the creator community to which she belongs, everyone tries to “show up because they know just how important it is”. Other creators in her network? Trishna Golkani, Xanthe Ross, Elsa Gladstone and Liv Madeline.
Bea is also anticipating more pop-ups – she highlights the success of nutritionist Emily English’s IRL experiences for example – and says she has found her audience “want to be going to fun and cool events that don’t just involve eating or drinking, but rather an immersive experience.” Briggs’ event for Sézane was a painting workshop and she also cites Amie Wine hosting an art-centred supper club. “There’s definitely a space for brands to do really fun pop ups and experiences, and that’s something we’ll see more of in 2025,” says Bea.
Adjacent to that is the rise in community experiences which she doesn’t see going away. Bea found Refy taking its customers to Mallorca “amazing” and I get the sense that she approves of this development and is anticipating more in 2025: “There are definitely going to be brands doing free events for customers; it’s just a sign of giving back, and a really nice piece of advertising.”
For 2025, Bea is looking at expanding her YouTube offering and continuing to lean into her love of interiors; she is currently doing a renovation which she is planning to share on the platform and, like all her work, will be a brilliant canvas for brands to partner with her.
She loves a “chatty video” but has been reluctant to do them on her other channels – indeed, she had 60,000 followers on TikTok before she even really featured herself in her content, “which seems absolutely bonkers now.” But she likes the cinematic aesthetic of the YouTube format and with audiences spending more time on the platform again, it feels right.
As Bea continues to grow her offering, her blend of creativity, partnership and community focus is authoritative in the ever-evolving world of content creation. And, whether it’s a chic tablescape or a thoughtful partnership, the success of her work is a reminder that the best content isn’t just consumed – it’s felt, remembered, and shared.
By Emilie McMeekan, features director for CORQ.
