Courtesy photo Mackinac Island resident and Escanaba native Bailey Manninen visits downtown Mackinac Island during the holiday season. A viral video made by Manninen has received millions of views since it was posted earlier this month.

MACKINAC ISLAND — A viral video made by a Mackinac Island resident who has ties to Delta County has received millions of views since it was posted last month.

Bailey Manninen shared a video introducing viewers to her life on Mackinac Island, which has less than 500 residents and no cars, on the popular short-form video app TikTok on Tuesday, Aug. 11. As of Thursday, Aug. 27, the video had 5.4 million views, 1.3 million likes and 14,300 comments — many of which compared Manninen’s home to the setting of a Hallmark movie.

Though she is now living on Mackinac Island, Manninen is an Escanaba native.

“I went to Escanaba High School — I graduated in 2015,” she said.

By 2018, Manninen was ready to move elsewhere.

“I wasn’t fully ready to commit to school, because I was at a crossroads … and I decided that it was most important for me to find some sort of stability outside of Escanaba and establish myself somewhere,” she said.

Manninen took a seasonal job on Mackinac Island in the summer of 2018, working at the Carriage House — a restaurant on the island. She decided to stay on the island after falling in love with her current boyfriend, who had been working at the restaurant for about seven years when they met.

Later that year, another opportunity presented itself.

“Right before the end of the (2018) season, I was offered a position working for the City of Mackinac Island,” Manninen said.

Manninen is now employed with the city’s Department of Public Works.

Since she moved to Mackinac Island, Manninen had wanted to share videos about how residents of the island live. She created a YouTube channel for that purpose two winters ago.

“I knew that people were very interested about what life is like behind the fudge and lilacs of Mackinac Island,” she said.

However, the workload associated with the channel soon grew exhausting.

“I would spend about 30 hours editing one video, and I also had a full-time job,” Manninen said.

Because of this, Manninen was enthusiastic about making the jump to TikTok.

Early on, engagement with the videos Manninen posted on TikTok was relatively low. In order to provide context for people unfamiliar with Mackinac Island, she decided to make a video serving as an introduction to the community.

“I had accumulated a lot of really cool footage in my two years here,” she said.

Even with pre-existing footage to work from, Manninen said creating her breakthrough video was a time-consuming process.

“It took me about nine hours to make that video, actually,” she said.

This included time spent selecting and editing clips, doing color correction work and recording a voiceover for the video.

Still, the payoff for Manninen has been worth the effort.

“I connected the dots for my followers, and that has made people a lot more excited about the content that I am going to be putting out,” she said.

Manninen has been recognized by large media outlets as a result of her viral video.

“Somebody sent me a Yahoo news article about me — that was crazy,” she said.

The website Insider has run an article about Manninen’s video, as well. Additionally, she has been approached by a producer from a major streaming service.

Whatever her future holds, Manninen does not plan to move away from Mackinac Island any time soon.

“Mackinac feels like the place that I belong, and I will probably be here for a very long time,” she said.

To find Manninen on TikTok, download the app and search for “baileyyjanette.”