"With an audience comes great responsibility"—The Hamden Twins discuss TikTok, personal dynamics, fan interactions, future plans and more (Exclusive)
Katie and Lauren Hamden, known as the Hamden Twins, have taken social media by storm over the last few years. Their viral content on beauty, lifestyle, and fashion insights have helped the Hamden twins turn a passion into a flourishing business. At present, they have over two million followers across social media platforms, thereby racking up millions in revenue per year.
Katie Hamden first gained popularity on TikTok for her unique POV, lip-sync, and dance videos. She also posts about fashion, lifestyle, and brand endorsements regularly on Instagram. Katie's twin, Lauren Hamden, started her social media journey in a similar way.
In a candid and exclusive interview with Sportskeeda, the Hamden Twins opened up about their social media journey, memorable fan interactions, and future plans. The twins also recalled hilarious moments of people confusing one for the other and provided invaluable advice to aspiring influencers.
The Hamden Twins talk about authenticity in social media, hilarious mistaken identity moments, heartwarming fan interactions, and more
Q) How has your approach to social media and content creation changed since you first gained popularity?
Hamden Twins: We started social media when we were both very young. We’d have fun playing around with trends and doing TikTok dances. Our selfies would go viral as we are identical twins, but as we have grown and our brands have developed, we’ve started focusing on the authenticity of our characters.
Each individual is completely different in what we have to offer, and it’s become really evident to us that the best way to grow your audience, is to be true to your values and self expression because ultimately, that’s what people want to see, and even more than that, this gives you the capability to draw in an audience that you can make an actual positive impact on.
Lauren and I both work as a team but have made sure to focus on who we are as individuals too. Although we are connected, we are so different from one another, and we have decided to embrace that in our content.
Q) How do you strike a balance between your private life and engaging with a constantly evolving public persona?
Hamden Twins: We don’t really have much of an issue with this! Like with everything in life, it is all about balance :) We make sure to have a form of routine that we bring everywhere with us to keep us focused and level-headed. That involves healthy eating and exercise. And this keeps us sane throughout the irregularity that comes with the routine of our career and lifestyle.
Q) Have you two ever clashed over creative ideas? How do you generally solve them?
Hamden Twins: This is funny because it’s something we always joke about. It’s like we are two entities working towards the same shared dream 🤣 and so when we have differences in our creative ideas, we actually tend to just go off on our own tangents, put our individual efforts into the task at hand… see which one makes more sense and then join forces again on that trajectory. The process can be a bit of a mess though.
Q) What insights would you offer to aspiring influencers who want to make a name in the digital landscape?
Hamden Twins: For aspiring influencers, on a practical basis, we would say that there are two key words here: consistency and authenticity. Authenticity will be what makes you stand out and will attract an audience to your accounts that are genuinely about you and your content and values.
If you are making content that is authentic to your personality and interests, then being consistent will come easy. I’ve found that the less I care about creating content that I think everyone else wants to see, the more people are actually drawn to it.
Q) What are the best and the worst things about being a social media influencer in today's world?
Hamden Twins: When it comes to our careers, we feel insanely lucky and can’t really complain! The word influencer poses power, and we understand that with an audience comes great responsibility to make sure that the messages you spread induce positivity and ‘influence’ people in the right way. The people that we get to meet and spend time with are also an added plus, and we feel grateful every day.
Q) You have mentioned in your previous interviews that people often mistake Ms. Katie for Ms. Lauren and vice versa. Can you two recall a few interesting incidents that happened because of this confusion?
Hamden Twins: It doesn’t happen so often anymore now that one of us is blonde and the other brunette, thank god !! We finally look different enough, but we have had a few interesting incidents involving ex-boyfriends who have mistaken us for the other.
We’ve had times when Katie’s boyfriend has come up to Lauren and said crazy sentences that were clearly made for Katie. It’s mortifying every time, but (probably) even worse for them.
Q) What is the most memorable fan interaction that you have had till date?
Hamden Twins: The most memorable fan interaction that we’ve had till date is shared by both Lauren and I, it really changed our perspective on the power that social media holds. We are very open and raw on our Instagram and TikTok pages, you could even say that we tend to over-share, but we find it easier to stay authentic this way.
Through this, we have ended up speaking countless times about arguments that Lauren and I have had, brief periods of frustration towards the other, and how ultimately our love overrides our differences and we remain forever loyal and respectful to one another.
There was an occasion where we were approached by a girl of a similar age to us, who explained that she had differences with her sister, and after watching one of our videos where we covered the reality of the frustration we feel towards each-other, and the patience that is required as we show respect towards eachother through times of turmoil, she had reached out to her sister and made extreme progress in their relationship together and understanding their differences.
We felt overwhelmed at the potential that we could have made a positive impact on something as important as sisterhood, and we feel very proud of this.
Q) What do you think the future holds for the two of you? Do you plan on diversifying to other avenues?
Hamden Twins: We both have plans to pursue our passion this year. Katie has been learning how to produce music over the past couple of years and may be just about ready to drop some things she’s been hiding ;). And as for Lauren, she is in the process of developing a clothing brand full of her own designs. Her dream has been to make all the items of clothing that she ever WISHED existed.