How Little Sleepies Built a Fan-Powered Influencer Community

Maeher runs influencer and events marketing at Little Sleepies, the bamboo pajama brand. She joined host Sherri to talk through building the company's influencer community program from nothing, keeping every piece of creator content in a tracked library, and giving product away with no requirement to post.

From baby formula to bamboo pajamas

Maeher got into the baby industry through the formula brand Bobbie, and stayed. "I don't have kids myself yet, but it's honestly an industry that I never can imagine myself being in any other industry now," she said. The reason was personal. A young, healthy friend had struggled to breastfeed and went store to store looking for a clean formula without finding one. When Maeher came across Bobbie during a job search, she thought, "This makes so much sense and it feels very personal."

She spent about three years there, then ran her own consultancy with CPG, femtech, and skincare brands before a recruiter pulled her back in-house. "I love love my job. I know how lucky I am," she said. She knew fast that it would work: "you get that vibe very quickly. It's either it's a match or it's not." Little Sleepies began when its founder, Meredith, couldn't get her own child to sleep because of tactile sensitivities. As Maeher put it, "it's something that was a problem that she solved and a problem that she experienced herself."

What she looks for in a creator

Parenting creators are everywhere, so Maeher screens for engagement instead of follower count. "But if your community's not engaged, there's hardly any comments on your posts, your conversions aren't necessarily there," she said. She wants the accounts where followers reply that they relate, often about sleepless nights and night feedings. "What makes you stand out is your community and that engaged community," she said.

Little Sleepies has the kind of audience that makes this easy. "The fandom for this brand is nothing like I've ever seen, truly," Maeher said. Creators ask to work with the brand for product alone: "The amount of creators that would love to work for us just in exchange for product. It's amazing." She added that "there's just so much demand for the partnership" that her team rarely has to do outreach.

An influencer community where everyone has a place

Creators who don't fit a given campaign still get something, whether that's the affiliate program, VIP early access, or a sneak peek. "We try to really make sure that regardless of how many followers you have or who you are, you feel involved and like you're part of this community," Maeher said, "because truly our community is like what makes us successful."

Finding the non-obvious creator

Maeher also looks past the obvious picks. Parenting content, she said, "can get very like stale," so she watches for different angles. One creator she has her eye on "creates these like Beverly Hills mom satire videos that are just like really funny and I think really relatable," even though she doesn't have kids. "I love to find someone that's doing something a little bit different," Maeher said. What ties the creators she likes together is honesty: "you're being so raw and honest. It lands so well." Sherri put it more bluntly: "we don't need more of the same. We need the real."

Content as an engine, not a post

The change Maeher points to is brands treating creators as more than a social post. "Influencers are more than just one channel," she said. When usage rights are written into a product-exchange deal, one video can run on organic social, the website, review sections, paid ads, and email. "It really needs to be like a content engine," she said. "It's no longer just paying for a post or sponsoring a post. It's paying for an entire piece of content to play for the entire business."

The thing that breaks this is internal handoff. The rights exist, but one team never hears about them. Maeher's fix is a tracked library. "Everything has a to-do list, everything has a sheet," she said, with creator names, post links, file locations, and expiration dates in one place. "Everybody needs to be like continuously reminded this is here." The same setup feeds her paid program, since "it's so important for these product exchange campaigns to function as a UGC engine as well." She aligns hooks and briefs with the paid and UGC teams before a campaign runs, so "we're making sure each content serves a purpose and fulfills the needs for every channel."

Why she gifts with no strings

Maeher would rather gift without asking for anything back. "I personally love a PR box and a no-strings gifting like initiative," she said. Her reasoning: "when they truly like love something, they will recommend it to their audience organically, regardless of what kind of packaging it came in." She still cares about the unboxing. "I do think it's important for it to be an experience," she said, pointing to the deliveries some brands now stage with coffee carts and bellboys: "I love that brands are really making these like really elaborate PR deliveries now." A smaller brand can skip all that. A good product and a handwritten note still work.

What's next

Going into fall, the brand's busiest stretch, Maeher has a wide remit and a clean start. "I'm really excited to do more community events, really elevate our gifting, elevate and amplify all of our partnerships," she said. "I'm essentially coming into a blank slate and I've had a lot of freedom to play around with it."

The creators she follows herself are founders building in public. "I personally have been like obsessed and like going down the rabbit hole with creators that are building something behind the scenes and show their life," she said, naming Jess Hunt of Refy, Kristin Juszczyk, and Shay Mitchell. You can find Maeher on LinkedIn. The full conversation is in the player above.