Alexis McDonald has been creating on TikTok since 2019.
Then she launched Her Help: a girlhood app designed to build a safe space where girls can share stories, ask questions, and bond over shared interests.
She literally taught herself to code at 17 to build it.
The app’s downloads didn’t skyrocket, but her content did.
Since then, she’s grown 4 TikTok accounts to a massive 733.7 million views:
1) @lexyxo → personal account, direct CTA in bio as well as in many videos, 536.8M views
2) @herhelp → branded account, mix of formats, 106.1M views
3) @thehernews → pop-culture news format, 90.6M views
4) @her.pod → podcast clips, only 56.7K views and not active anymore
Now let’s break down a few of the viral formats here.
The Girlhood Hot Take
On her personal account, Lexi shares opinion-based hooks where she breaks down common girl experiences or calls out everyday phrases with a subtle feminist lens.
She’s pulled off over 70 videos in this format, each racking up more than 1.5 million views.
Male (un)appreciation
On @herhelp, she experiments with more formats. One of them involves recording her laptop screen and using the hook “what we really need is a,” contrasting it with webpages showing male billionaires like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg.
She posted this twice and got a total of 8.8 million views.
Another variation is when Lexi reacts to a clip of a male celebrity making a controversial statement, such as “Girls are so dramatic, not all guys are bad…” That format got 4.5 million views.
History (faceless) slideshows
Same account, different format. Here she uses the hook “the first woman to complete the Boston Marathon in 1967…” ending with “yes, it was not that long ago.”
The middle slides are simply black-and-white Google images. You can put together this kind of slideshow in under 10 minutes, then just do what she did.
Repost it. Same exact video. 80 days apart. Result? 4.8M views + 4.6M views.
“The loop”
Lexi started running with this format in September 2024. It had a slow start, but it quickly turned into her signature. Over on @thehernews, she spotted a chance to build a daily pop-culture news engine.
She summarizes each story using a long, small-font hook overlaid on top of UGC-style recordings of herself. Most of them filmed in her car.
This format isn’t unique to Lexi. Other girlhood accounts were already using it — and seeing big results too.
One creator, for example, uses it to promote her Substack. She made the switch in July 2024 and hasn’t looked back since.
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The most important takeaway is her skill in building distribution and creating content that sticks.
Sure, downloads haven’t quite kept up with the views. Partly because the CTAs aren’t super strong, and maybe the content messaging mirrors the app’s value a little too closely.
Take another solo-creator-founded app Lyynk, for example. It’s a mental health app created by French influencer Mia Abitbol. Mia is 19 and has 2M followers on TikTok.
In the first 200 days, Lyynk saw 260,000 downloads, but things have slowed down since.
The personal brand content is getting in the way of the app’s real value. It could also be that community-based apps just have a harder time convincing people to pay.
One thing that’s clear: having multiple accounts is a game changer.
It lets them test fast and fine-tune formats.
The creator-founder of Starcrossed made it work.
Her astrology app hit $60K in monthly revenue in just 90 days. She used her personal TikTok account but also began adding a clear, direct call to action in every video, starting days before the launch.
She added niche influencers partnerships on top of her high views videos.
Voidpet, another project led by a female creator-founder, turned into a real money-making machine.
Linda started with a mental health game based on her hobby, and when that took off, she doubled down by launching a second app that’s now bringing in $160K a month and over 130K downloads every month.
Instead of waiting around for users to convert, she used a TikTok video with 10 million views to build a 150,000-member Discord community, before her first app even launched.
That was a smart move to decentralize risk from solely having a TikTok/IG audience. She had more control there when she started pushing the app.
Remember, if you’re a creator launching an app; keep posting consistently & don’t be shy to add call-to-action in those videos.
Rooting for you –
The Social Growth Engineers Team
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