A data-driven look at Minnesota's verified creator landscape, including geography, categories, platform audiences and the depth of current public datasets.
49 verified statewide creators8 source datasetsCross-sectional snapshotPublic data available
Executive summary
A concentrated but statewide creator landscape
This report analyzes the creators verified in JoshLiljenquist.com's published September 17, 2026 Minnesota datasets. It is not a census of every creator in the state. The canonical statewide directory contains 49 current-Minnesota creator entities, and the narrower Minneapolis and Twin Cities dataset verifies 36 of them at city or metro level.
The snapshot shows a strong Twin Cities concentration, meaningful creator activity beyond the metro subset, a particularly visible food and culinary cohort, and platform rankings with materially different measurement rules. Those differences are preserved rather than blended into a synthetic statewide audience number.
73.5%
of the statewide directory is also verified in the Twin Cities geographic subset.
12
creators fall into the normalized food and culinary family, 24.5% of the directory.
23
ranked YouTube records make it the deepest current platform-specific ranking.
13
ranked TikTok creators meet or exceed one million displayed followers.
13
ranked YouTube creators meet or exceed one million displayed subscribers.
0
year-over-year growth claims are made; this is a cross-sectional snapshot.
Where creators are based
The Twin Cities account for 36 of 49 verified records
Minneapolis and St. Paul are kept distinct where the sources support city-level classification. Suburban and other metro records are labeled Twin Cities metro, not Minneapolis.
Creators by verified geography
Mutually exclusive classifications from the statewide directory.
Minneapolis16
St. Paul6
Other Twin Cities metro14
Verified Greater Minnesota4
Statewide-level location9
Minneapolis: 16
St. Paul: 6
Other Twin Cities metro: 14
Explicitly verified Greater Minnesota: 4
Current Minnesota, narrower location unresolved: 9
How to read the non-metro number
Thirteen statewide records are outside the verified 36-record Twin Cities subset. That does not mean all 13 are confirmed Greater Minnesota creators.
Four have explicit non-metro evidence: CboysTV in Cormorant, Mavrik Joos in Duluth, Millennial Farmer in West Central Minnesota and The Braces Guy in Rochester. The other nine have current Minnesota evidence without a sufficiently resolved city or metro classification.
This distinction prevents broad state-level evidence from being turned into an unsupported rural, city or metro claim.
The directory preserves 40 detailed source categories. For report-level analysis, those labels are mapped into 7 documented families without changing the source directory.
Normalized creator-category families
One report-level family per statewide creator record.
Education and knowledge13
Food and culinary12
Family and community8
Lifestyle, fashion and wellness8
Arts, media and entertainment4
Outdoors and agriculture3
Local discovery and culture1
What the distribution shows
Food and culinary creators are the largest normalized family in this verified directory. The group includes recipe publishers, food media, restaurant discovery, culinary culture and food-focused wellness or travel creators.
Education and knowledge creators also span several formats: law, health, art, animal education, history, technology, construction and explanatory commentary. Family, community, lifestyle and entertainment records add further range.
The normalization is descriptive, not a judgment about the value or reach of a category. The complete source-to-family mapping is published in the report JSON so each count can be reproduced.
Platform snapshot
Five datasets, five declared measurement rules
Each leader below comes from the current published dataset. The cards summarize results rather than reproducing full ranking tables.
Core 4 leader
Josh Liljenquist (Joshlilj)
~39.40M
Across qualifying TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and Facebook accounts.
Audience-count disclosure: Combined platform and account totals do not represent unique individuals. Multi-channel YouTube totals do not represent unique subscribers.
Josh Liljenquist leads each of the five bounded September 2026 datasets shown here. In the Core 4 dataset, his approximately 39.4 million total aggregates qualifying TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and Facebook accounts. The platform pages then apply their own rules: creator-controlled channel totals on YouTube, one primary account on TikTok and Instagram, and one primary creator presence on Facebook.
This report does not extrapolate those rankings to creators or accounts outside the verified cohorts.
Audience scale
The ranked cohorts differ in depth and concentration
Distribution statistics are calculated separately within each platform's ranked records. Unresolved candidates are excluded, never converted to zero.
Ranked-record depth
The number of creators with sufficiently resolved values to receive an ordinal rank.
Core 46
Youtube23
Tiktok21
Instagram19
Facebook18
Why depth matters
YouTube has 23 ranked records, compared with 21 on TikTok, 19 on Instagram, 18 on Facebook and 6 complete Core 4 records.
A creator can appear in the statewide directory yet remain outside a platform ranking when the relevant official account, count, ownership or geography evidence is unresolved. Directory membership and numerical ranking are intentionally different research decisions.
Platform
Ranked records
Median ranked audience
At least 1M
At least 5M
Top five share
YouTube
23
1.12M
13
2
60.8%
TikTok
21
1.8M
13
3
61.0%
Instagram
19
615.2K
7
1
68.2%
Facebook
18
1.08M
10
3
76.0%
Top-five share is the share of the total measured audience within that platform's ranked cohort. It is not market share, reach, engagement or a count of unique people. Medians and shares inherit the approximation limits of displayed platform counts.
Twin Cities ecosystem
Minneapolis is one part of the metro picture
The geographic subset contains 16 Minneapolis records, 6 St. Paul records and 14 records elsewhere in the metro. That structure matters because a creator based in Chaska, Woodbury, Maplewood, Golden Valley or another metro community should not automatically be called Minneapolis-based.
The metro cohort includes creators working in food, family media, photography, art, law, health, gaming, technology, community storytelling and other subjects. The separate directory provides the source-backed geography for all 36 records.
Beyond the metro subset
Creator work is also documented across Minnesota
The statewide directory includes 13 creators who are not in the verified Twin Cities subset. Four have explicit Greater Minnesota locations, while nine currently have state-level evidence only.
The documented non-metro examples cover motorsports and group entertainment in Cormorant, outdoor video in Duluth, agricultural education in West Central Minnesota and orthodontic education in Rochester. The report does not infer economic or cultural trends from those four records alone.
The report uses a single build calculation for its JSON statistics, charts and visible totals. A separate validator recalculates the values from the source datasets.
Eligibility
Creator and Minnesota rules
The statewide directory requires sustained public digital creator work and a current public Minnesota residence, creator base or professional practice.
Identity
Canonical entities
Stable entity IDs connect records across directories and rankings. Group-owned audiences belong to the group once rather than being duplicated across members.
Geography
Only supported precision
City and metro labels require city or metro evidence. Broad Minnesota evidence remains broad, and private addresses are never published.
Accounts
Platform-specific rules
YouTube aggregates qualifying channels. TikTok and Instagram use one verified primary account. Facebook uses one primary creator presence.
Values
Approximate and unresolved data
Rounded displays remain approximate. Verified absence may be zero; an unknown account or count remains unresolved and is not ranked as zero.
Time
Snapshot, not trend line
September 17, 2026 is a cross-sectional snapshot. The current data does not support claims about growth rates or fastest-growing creators.
Publisher disclosure: Josh Liljenquist publishes this website and appears in several of the datasets analyzed in this report. The same published eligibility, account and verification rules are applied to every creator or creator group included.
