Okay. I think we are live. Hi everyone. Hope everyone can hear us okay. See us okay. I love seeing everyone say hello from where they are and all of the, cold weather. It is also, like, thirteen degrees here today, in the DC area. Alright. So let's jump in. For anyone new, I am Lauren Zoltick. I am the director of Performance Marketing at Storyblocks. If you haven't heard of Storyblocks, we're a stock media subscription service, with the goal of helping creators and businesses make better video content faster than ever. We do this by offering an exceptional stock library with unlimited access, plugins that integrate directly into your editing tools like After Effects and Premiere Pro, and the best legal coverage in the business. I'm here today with Kaya, she is a creator creator economy reporter for the information. She covers the creator economy as well as social media. And launched the creator economy newsletter in twenty twenty one, which now has over a hundred thousand subscribers, and hope hopefully, more after this, webinar. If you haven't already subscribed, please do. And I also would recommend giving her a follow on LinkedIn. She is my personal go to for Creative economy news, trends, predictions, everything in between, and previously was a reporter at CNN, covering social and tech. I'm so excited to have Kaya here today. We're gonna talk a little bit about emerging trends and opportunities in the creator economy and with influencer marketing. B to b marketing, with influencers and also some tips and best practices for, creating the best partnerships possible with influencers. So before we jump in, just a couple of notes, You'll see on your screen, you should see a q and a tab. You can submit questions for us at any time. We're gonna answer them after our conversation. So we'll we'll chat a little bit first, and then we'll jump in and answer as many questions as we can. Probably won't get to all of them, but we're gonna do our best. And then also, today's webinar will be recorded. So if there's something you wanna go back and watch or if you wanna share it with any of your peers or colleagues, You can definitely do that. There'll be an on demand version released, usually tomorrow. And so we'll we'll do our best to get that up. Great. Alright. Kaya, hi. How's it going? What's your name? To be here. No. Thank you for that intro thing. Thanks for having me. Of course. Alright. So let's jump into our first topic. State of the creator economy and this emerging, trend with b to b influencers. Can you talk a little bit about, like, state of the influencer economy or influencer marketing and the creator economy? Yeah. I mean, I think, like, the space has been around for a long time. I mean, people have been watching YouTubers for well over fifteen years. But I think two factors, the pandemic and the rise of TikTok really caused it to explode and just get more relevant and more momentum. You're seeing really creators at the heart of everything. You would really associate influencer marketing with kind of CPG brands, beauty kind of these really contemporary, categories and a lot of it kind of product placement. And now you're really seeing that expand, and there's so much depth there. I mean, from sports to politics to kind of more boring industries like cyber security or software, they're all really tapping creators and seeing the power there. The NFL, for example, is inviting creators to games and having them shoot footage, and not just sports focused creators, but lifestyle creators food creators who are talking about how they're tailgating. So it's really interesting to see, these different industries embrace it. Politics, right? Like the Biden administration is inviting creators to the White House for briefings on, the Ukraine war and all these topics So it's really interesting to see kind of the growth and and breadth there. And in terms of influencer marketing, it's growing double digits at a time when other, advertising forms are not growing at that fast of a clip. Yep. Yeah. Which is incredible. What are some of the biggest trends you're seeing that are emerging now within the creator economy? There is so many. I mean, we could do a whole look at them webinar on that. I mean, I think commerce continues to be a big one. We've seen kind of social platforms have a lot of stops and starts with trying commerce on their platforms. Right now, we have TikTok really investing heavily and creators that are at the heart of that effort. So both in terms of live streaming and just selling things directly. So I think that's gonna be a big theme this year. I mentioned politics a little bit. I think we're gonna see creators really at the forefront of elections and really using their voices to support candidates. Really curious to see kind of what the, Biden campaign in particular will do just given how, friendly his administration has been with creators, creators starting their own businesses too as well. We've seen offline businesses, everything from like gardening to beauty products, to, you know, backpacks for dogs. There's a lot of, kind of, variety there. And two just, it's become very niche. Both in terms of just working with micro influencers who just have smaller audiences, but also just the topics that creators are focused on. Used to see kind of a lot of general lifestyle, you know, family beauty, these types of categories, and now you're seeing, you know, corporate creators, right, who talk about work from home and poke fun at corporate lingo, some some great examples are corporate bro, corporate Natalie, miss excel. There's creators who can kind of show you the best, you know, tips and tricks of getting around a spreadsheet I've talked to creators who just post about oatmeal, who just post about cheese boards. I mean, it is so incredible how neat that's gotten. And I think that's really interesting. And also kind of speaks to the power of TikTok where you find these hyper interests of, of people those are kind of a few top of mind, but I think just the, the pandemic really added so much fuel to fuel to the industry. I love that. And I'm pretty sure I follow Cheeseboard creator that you're referencing. So there you go. What are some of the, like, surprises, in twenty twenty three, some things that maybe you didn't expect or or some successes or failures that you saw happen. Yeah. I mean, I think to me that the there was this really interesting divergence in the crater economy where on one side, you had influencer marketing really rising, insider intelligence had a forecast that in funds or marketing spending just in the US rose about fourteen percent to about five billion last year. And you contrast that with venture capital going into startups focused on creators. So selling them, you know, tax software or, you know, ways to manage their income or manage their posts The funding really cratered there. So that plunged sixty two percent to about one million year over year just in the US. Globally, it fell of fifty eight percent. So a little less. So you have these kind of two conflicting graphs and we we did a chart that kind of showed these side by side and I think a lot of people have conflated the startup's not doing well with the creator economy not doing well. So that's why we wanted to kind of show that side by side comparison. So it is an interesting time in the creator we're on one side you have these businesses struggling, but then the creators who are running their own businesses are doing quite well. So I think that was a really interesting kind of contrast that we saw last year. And I think too one thing that surprised me was just a AI. I, you know, chat JBT obviously, launched not last fall but the fall before. And it really kind of took the world by storm. And on top of that, you had AI powered video editing software and just a huge huge amount of investment, and tools creators in the AI space. So that was something I, definitely wasn't expecting, and I think this year we'll we'll see more of those tools and more adoption of those tools. Yeah. Some really cool, trends that you just called out. And I think Similarly, like, I I had heard a lot of people say, like, oh, create an economy, not doing well. And, it's it's really important. I think to distinguish between the two. I also think that, you know, similar to what we saw with, like, web three, things like that. Like, there was this huge, just rise of of businesses trying to adapt and maybe not finding the right market fit. So I imagine we'll see some of those trends hopefully reverse as well. Yeah. Definitely. Yeah, I think it became this buzzword and people associated the creator economy very heavily with the businesses rather than the creator is individual kind of personal brands and businesses. Absolutely. Alright. Well, let's jump into our second topic, more specifically about launching a b to b influencer channel. I think some of this advice will probably work for both B2B and B2C brands, but, you know, wanna talk specifically for for some of the B2B considerations as well. So to start there, can you talk a little bit about how you might approach influencer marketing differently or similarly for a b to b brand. Yeah. I mean, I think there's a lot of similarities. You obviously wanna find the creator who's a right fit. You wanna look at their audience demographic. You know, if if it's a creator who's reaching a lot of young people, is that the right, you know, audience for your software product? Maybe not. Maybe it is. You I think with, b to b brands, you probably want to pay more attention to kind of brand safety. Obviously, all brands are worried about that, but you know, a consumer brand for like a haircare product might be more willing to work with kind of an edgier creator who maybe like swears in their videos or is a little bit more loose where I think for b to b, you want a little bit, kind of of a different fit there. And two, you wanna think about whether they would be users of your software. Right? Like, if you wanna work with a lifestyle type or fashion influencer and your Monday dot com or some sort of software company, how how does that fit? Right? Maybe it's the fashion influencer is kind of unveiling a little bit about her backend and her business and talking to her fans, not just about fashion, but like, hey, look, I employ three people. I have to do payroll. I have to do, you know, this for my workflow. That could be really interesting. So I wouldn't just discount, oh, this is a fashion creator or this is a food creator. This might not make sense for me. But I think it has to be a fit. And you see that with, consumer brands as well, like, you want people that use your products or that would use your products, or that their products would be relevant to the audience. That's really important to kind of keep in mind. And I don't think you necessarily have to, you know, pick someone like a corporate Natalie or Colin and Sameer, are great examples of people that speak to the business side of being a creator. So they could be an excellent fit, but also, you know, someone else who could talk about their business because all all creators are entrepreneurs, and have to run businesses, even if it's just a one man operation. They have to do taxes. They have to do a lot of planning on their back end. So I think the fit is probably the the most important. And the measurement might just be different, right? Like, you know, some brands, really wanna sell products, or they really want you to download their app, and they measure the success of the campaign largely based on kind of those metrics. So the metrics might be different, for B2B brands as well. Yeah. A hundred percent. I think I think to your point, exactly, like, sometimes the most obvious thing or maybe the most obvious thing would be to run to some of those corporate creators that you're talking about because it is such a significant effect. And I think I think too, like, there's some great campaigns that have come from them with b to b brands. But I do think that as we're seeing this emerging trend with a lot of creators owning their own businesses, whether it be to, like, you know, produce their own content or, you know, you have CPG brands. You have e learning brands. There's so many different types companies that are being built around influencers and creators. I think that more than ever, there's an opportunity to work with them. I think the biggest thing there is, like, you know, it's and sometimes we forget this. Like, businesses are made up of people, and those people are on the same social platforms as everybody. And so as long as you have audience fit and you have an influencer that could or should or does already use your product. And that's the to us, the biggest indicator for storyblocks of six assess is if they are already a storyblocks user or, like, really could benefit from using us. We see the best performance from those partners. It's it's really, like, clear, as an indicator. And for us too, I mean, we have a b to b business and a b to c business. We have business licensing and individual users. And, and partnerships influencer marketing is one of the strongest channels for both lines of business. And I think it's because, you know, the audience is there whether they're working for a business or as an individual creator, and sometimes it's both So totally agree. I think the other question I get asked a lot, around start setting up a a b to b influencer marketing or or even a b to c influencer marketing channel. It's like how do you get that internal alignment, to invest in it. And I think, you know, once you have the strategy or kind of what we're talking about, the other the other consideration that I feel like, is really helpful is for a lot of brands or a lot of people in agencies, they're still kinda talking about influencer marketing as more of a PR or earned media play. And that does work for some brands and and for some agencies. But at least for us, I mean, we really think about it as a performance marketing channel. It is it is a revenue driver. It's pipeline driver. And we we measure it that way. We track it that way. We think about it that way. And it's really allowed us to expand our spend on it over time as we see a performance increase and as we, like, you know, go into new territories. So that would be the biggest piece of advice as, like, money speaks. If you can pitch it as a, you know, a revenue driving channel, It's it's a good way to get alignment to to test it out and starting small and and building from there. You know, speaking of the the kind of exponential growth of the influencer marketing channel. Do you see this trend of of b to b brands investing in influencer marketing, which we're starting to see continuing to grow? I think so. I mean, I think we're seeing this across the board. I spoke with a cyber security startup called Ora, and they are boosting their influencer marketing spending by fifty percent this year. And you wouldn't think a cybersecurity company necessarily doing that, but they sell, software to families and it's kind of identity protection software. And they've been working with you know, moms with as little as five thousand followers to kind of big, big name creators and celebrities to, to kind of boost awareness of their product. And it's so interesting to hear kind of the different industries that are playing in this space. I spoke with the creator last year who has a long term partnership with an HVAC company. And they used to, him and his wife used to be travel creators, and now they bought a home, and, you know, they're doing all this home improvement, stuff. So we're really seeing this across industries. And I think you have a a really savvy strategy, it can work. But I definitely see, I think b to b, growing. Amazing. Alright, let's jump into our third topic, and talk a little bit more about best practices for effective partnerships with influencers, and let's start, maybe with the, not as fun topic, but a really important one, which is around negotiations and contracts. Do you have any guidance for folks that are approaching, negotiating rates, contract terms, and how to make the most of of partnering with influencers. Yeah. I mean, I think both brands and creators have gotten much savvier with contracts and just kind of getting really granular with them. You know, obviously, it's the price for how many posts they're doing. Right? Are they doing it across platforms? Are they doing stories and short form videos? Are they doing a longer video? Are they doing a live stream? All of those will play in. I think exclusivity is also really important. You know, if let's just take a category like beauty, right? Like, no one uses one brand for beauty, right? Like, you might have a blush from this company and a moisturizer from another company. And that is totally normal. So the exclusivity might just be less there where it's like, oh, you can't work with other, you know, another blush or promote that for x amount of time. I think with kind of software, it's a little bit different because how many software providers are you gonna have really, to run the backend? So the exclusivity might be longer there. And that might be more expensive. You know, it's licensing. How can the brand reuse your, reuse your content? Can they put your image on a billboard gonna cost more money. Are they putting paid spending behind it? That also will be a higher rate. So I think a lot goes into this. And in terms of just even beyond the contracts just aligning on the brief, I think, is super important and kind of understanding before the creator goes out and shoots everything and puts all that time in. What does the brand expect, and kind of how much are you able to use your own voice? You know, there's so many horror stories from creators about having to reshoot something six times and then not getting paid for that. And all of that really damages, the relationship between the brand and creator, and that's not gonna ultimately make for a success strategy. So there's a lot, to kind of keep in mind. A hundred percent. And I think, you know, as someone who is negotiated, now probably thousands of influencer contracts. I think the important thing to remember is, like, as a brand, you are trying to get a great rate for your marketing spend. And as a creator, they're trying to make as much money as they can, and get the most value out of the partnership. And sometimes you don't meet in the middle. Like, sometimes there isn't a rate that works for both of you, and that is okay. So it's just about finding the ones that do work and finding, you know, the the thing that works best for both of you. And I think to your last point around, you know, making sure you're setting expectations. I think the other note there that I would have for brands is to try and do their best to trust creators. And so I I do think it's important to say, like, you know, this is about how long we're gonna take to get back to you in terms of feedback. We we do need to, like, review this part of it before it goes live, like setting those expectations, but also trusting the creators to communicate, your your, you know, your value props and and what you are trying to get across to your audience in a way that makes sense for to come from them and for the audience that they know better than than you do. So yeah, a hundred percent. And I think too, just with the offer. Like you really don't wanna low ball creators. I mean Yeah. I I love what you said, Lauren, when we were at south by together on a panel and you said that you guys will actually counter sometimes if a creator comes in too low. And I think that is just incredible. I would love to see more brands do that because I think that's such a rare thing. I don't think I've heard that from very many creators. I mean, oftentimes they're kind of negotiating for a bigger price. So I think just valuing the creator's work and time that goes into that, is super important. And especially, like, you you know, you wanna build longer term relationships with creators. And if you kind of start off on the wrong foot, I mean, The creator is so busy. They they get so much inbound. And it's better for everyone too. It's just more it's more authentic. You know, the I always ask creators, you know, pet peeves and they're like, if I have to say, you know, the brand's name in the first three seconds or if I have to stick to a really kind of, specific script. It's just not gonna land with the audience, and that is the whole point of influencer marketing is that these creators have built so much trust with their audience and know how to speak to them. And if if it feels like this kind of very polished ad, people are just you're not gonna get the engagement. People are just gonna scrolling. So, and of course, the brand wants, you know, certain talking points in there, but there has to be a way to kind of work together to make that as non commercially as possible for it to really land with people. Absolutely. And I think it's why it's so important that the creator is a user or, you know, make sense as a user for your business. I should clarify I'm not, like, out here, like, trying to to to throw it out to you. But, like, for this for this example, that I gave at South Buy, like, this creator was starting out new TikTok creator, was was growing her audience, but, like, had some really successful viral videos and she came in really low. And I knew that if I accepted that rate, that in three months from now, she was not gonna wanna work with us because she would have all these offers that were so much higher. And so I said, hey, like, based on what you're doing right now, This is what I would actually offer you if if you were a different creator based on, like, average CPMs. And then, like, let's talk in three months and see if it if we need to, you know, renegotiate a, we were signing a three month contract. And that and we did end up working with her much longer term as a result. And now she charges you know, fifteen twenty x what we originally agreed to. But, but yeah, okay. Let's let's go into the next question. Let's talk a little bit more about social media channels I know you cover all of them. How do you think brands should approach, which channels to build out their influence of marketing? Programs on and invest in. I think it really depends on kind of both the creator and the goals of the campaign and who they're trying to reach. I mean, I think for B2B brands. I mean, LinkedIn is so untapped, and I think they, over the past few years, have really started to embrace creators, embrace people sharing more on LinkedIn, even kind of outside of work stuff. And I think the really interesting thing about LinkedIn is those are really decision makers and you know who's viewing this, who's engaging with it, their titles, what companies they work at. And I think people are treating LinkedIn much more as a social network rather than kind of a resume platform. So I think that's one that's could be really interesting for our b to b brands. You know, the big ones, of course, YouTube TikTok, Instagram, Facebook honestly has pushed a lot, on real monetization for creators, huge audience there too. So I wouldn't discount Facebook. But it really kind of depends, you know, are they trying to drive a lot of conversions? You know, it it depends on the crater as well. I mean, if a if you really want to reach people on Instagram and the creator you're working with has a bigger presence and engagement on TikTok, you know, you have to kind of readdress those things. But, you know, as creators, I think everyone feels pressured to be everywhere, but ultimately I think there are always you know, two platforms that the creator really spends the most time on. So it's kind of thinking about that and thinking about how to re repurpose, content as well. But the downside with that is a lot of creators have found too, that maybe their Instagram reels, you know, that that content performs differently than when they post to TikTok. So the creator really kind of understands a lot of the time what will land with which audience and platform. So it's hard. There's not a one size fits all, but I think across the board, most, most of these campaigns are focused on Instagram Instagram and TikTok are kind of the the top. But the interesting thing with YouTube too is, you know, if you're doing a longer video, people are really sitting with that content longer. With short form, I mean, our attention spans are so short. We're flipping through if you think about how many TikToks you would consume in thirty minutes. Versus watching a thirty minute YouTube video, you are gonna be so more engaged with that YouTube video. So there's different interesting things. I mean, there's podcasts too. I mean, there's so many different channels and ways to reach people. Yeah. I honestly, it's a, maybe a topic for another day, but I wanna dig into influencer Podcasts at some point with you. And, yeah, I think the other thing the other thing I'd add to is, like, with, desktop and mobile, you know, certain companies have, a better conversion rate on mobile or a better conversion rate on desktop. And so that's a consideration for us. We invest a little bit more in YouTube or Twitch or some of those desktop leaning channels I think LinkedIn also works as well on this too. You know, whereas TikTok, Instagram are a little bit of a lower conversion rate for us just because of our buyer journey or what the average buyer journey is for us. So I think that's another another consideration. But yeah, I love I love everything you said. Can you give us some examples of successful influencer partnerships that you've seen? Yeah. I mean, I think high level, like we we we touch on this, but you really wanna work with creators who have talked about your product before and are actual users of it before you came into the picture. I think a really high profile example is Duncan donuts and Charlie Jamelio. She is her audience knows that she loves Duncan coffee. She's like a big coffee drinker, but especially Duncan. And they actually named kind of a special edition drink for her, the Charlie. And that it led to a fifty seven percent increase in their app downloads on the day that they launched the drink. And then they have forty five percent increase in cold brew sales the next day. So you could you really see the impact there. I mean, obviously, Duncan cannot make you know, a million drinks saved after creators. But I think savvy partnerships like that that isn't just like, oh, you know, Charlie Duvalho is posting about Duncan and and got paid for it. Like, this really took it to the next level and was something that was super authentic. I think her audience was super excited for her about that partnership. They know she uses Duncan. And I think generally just approaching these partnerships more holistically. I mean Colin and Samir do this really well where let's say they're working Samsung. They'll go to the Samsung Galaxy event. They'll speak at it or they'll attend those things. They'll use the gear in their videos. They'll kind of sprinkle in mentions of it throughout, you know, they do these kind of longer form videos and interviews. So I think that those are really interesting partnerships too where you're hearing about it over and over again. And if you think about the way sports, embraces endorsements, I'd love to see that happen more with, influencer big. Brendan God is a is a great expert in this space, and and he's brought this up a lot, and we've talked about it. But, you know, if you saw your favorite athlete, you know, I'm a big ten fan. So if, I guess, who is the number one player in the world from Poland, who I'm a big fan of, if she's like going in Adidas, on the court one day. And the next day she's in Nike. I mean, it makes no sense. Right? But she's always in the same brand, and it just comes off as an authentic. So you know, if there is a travel creator who flies Delta all the time, and then Delta sponsors them. And every single time they're traveling, you're seeing Delta Delta Delta Delta, mean, it just sticks with you much more than kind of these these one off things. But I thought the the Duncan and and Charlie one was just really smart and obviously had, had a media impact for them in terms of sales and and driving conversions to their app. Holy. One of you, Steve Lauren, what what are your I was actually saying, okay. I don't know. This came out today. So I don't know if anyone's seen it except for me, but hopefully, other people have the so this one's maybe a weird one to bring up, but, did you see, Abby Abi, Jacobson and, Alana Glaser did a, Mirillax one night. Oh my god. I I got on my Instagram and I, like, thought I was watching a broad city episode. And I was like, oh my god, I missed the show so much. I have not seen this episode. How did I miss this episode? And I was like waiting for the four and three and two and one, and it was literally an ad for but it felt like you were, like, in a scene from the show. And I was, like, this is the most natural integration. Like, you could kinda tell about two minutes in that it was an ad. But, like, barely. And I was, like, this is such a good I mean, you I watched I think it was, like, four minutes. I think I watched the entire thing. And, like, it was not it was such a good integration. So I think, you know, the the common thread is, like, finding, creators that actually use the product that feel like a really good fit and whose audiences are invested in, those types of products, but also, like, trust the creators that they're, that they're following. And so, yeah, I I I think all great examples, but if you haven't seen it, you should watch this, this add on. Yeah. That reminds me of what love the love actually cast came together for Rednosed Day. I don't know if you remember that, but I think it was ten minutes. And I watch the whole thing. And, so it's either like the content is phenomenal or the partnership just makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Another one I would just call out is I think Erin Miller, is just fantastic at bread partnerships. She does a lot of kind of nostalgia content. So she goes on eBay and like buys all the stuff from like the nineties and does these really funny skates about, you know, you know, the outfits and everything. And she will kind of be in character and do her skits and then have like a makeup company and will be doing her makeup and really slyly bring it in where you don't even kind of realize it's a sponsorship. So I think those can work too, where it's just really well, and seamlessly integrated. So there's there's different ways to do it, I think, is our is our point. Yeah. Absolutely. There's so many great examples. And I think that's why the influencer marketing ad spend is going up because there's a lot of ways in. Alright. Let's let's jump into our last topic, and then we'll get to the q and a. What's next in the creator economy? So let's jump right in what are some of your biggest predictions for twenty twenty four? Yeah. So I I did write a piece on this. So I'll I'll I'll recap that a little bit and recap some of the stuff in our patient. I mean, I think we're in a an election year twenty twenty four is gonna be really huge for creators. I think you're really gonna be seeing them involved in politics this year. On the commerce piece. I I think TikTok is gonna be successful. I think there's been some kind of mixed you know, mixed feelings on it, but, after shopping on Black Friday and buying a bunch of stuff, that actually was really well recommended. I was like, well, okay. So I think their sale I mean, they are investing a lot of money into it, but I do think their their sales will be successful this year. And I think this is a big kind of test year for AI in the creative economy. A lot, you know, we've had on one hand this explosion of of tools. But I think when I speak to creators, I mean, one, they're always very precious about editing and their craft and even just hiring a human editor can be a really big step them to make. So I think the AI video editing tools have to get a lot better, in terms of, like, editing stuff out of the background. And once they get really big, I think creators will embrace them a lot more. It reminds me a little bit of kind of the web three parallel where, you know, everyone was talking about web three. I was asked all these creators, are you gonna, you know, embrace NFTs? And they were kinda like, ugh, I don't most of them were like, no. I do think AI is a little bit different, but it's similar hype sites where it's like this explosion of tools and craters have kind of been cautious in embracing them. With the with the exception, I think chat GBT has kind of a tool for creators to kind of research, take inspiration. So I think those would be my, my, my top three things and just I think it'll be a big commerce here as well, more creators are starting their own brands. We'll be curious to see too if like YouTube and Instagram start pushing more of their own shopping features too. Yeah. I think it was two years ago Kai and I were on a, south by panel together talking about, building trust between brands and creators. If you haven't seen it, it's on YouTube. It's I think a helpful panel. But, yeah, our Q and A was just questions about web three and NFTs, and we were like, okay. Can we talk about anything else? But, yeah, it's a it's a great call. Alright. So one of the one of the trends I've seen more in marketing overall is budgets getting tightened up, but still this expectation of, like, achieving the same results. And then we're also seeing, a lot of influencer rates rise And so I think what's emerged from that is is more of a focus on, what, what are being called micro creators. Do you think that this is an effective strategy? Do you think it's sustainable? What are your thoughts? Yeah. I mean, I definitely think it's effective. I mean, you can have creators that have. I'm amazed when I talked to creators who there's one creator I spoke to who has two podcasts and about four thousand Instagram followers. And just from Instagram sponsorships, at the time when I spoke with her, she was making a thousand dollars a month. So I was really blown away by that number and obviously from her podcast and and elsewhere she makes more revenue, but even with four thousand followers, you can make, yep, meaningful income. And I think why is because you have these really super engaged audiences and the trust is so much higher than when you get to this big kind of level of superstardom in the creator academy. So I definitely think it can convert people. I you can get really niche. You can work with kind of like a a an outdoorsy creator and be an outdoors brand, and that's a, you know, might be, a better partnership than, you know, an outdoors brand and like, you know, Mr. Beast or some of these kind of big games, or they can convert honestly at similar rates. But I think the question is, like, if this pool gets, you know, if they start working with, you know, a hundred micro influencers, you know, does that pool of money get really spread thin? So I think there is a concern because especially for these smaller creators, I mean, they don't wanna have to do more brand sponsorships that clogs up their feed. So it can be kind of it can be tough. But I think it's great that brands are really willing to work with smaller creators because I think in the early days, it was like, we really just want Kim Kardashian and we have budget for these kind of big big people. So I think it's, a positive step that, the strategy has changed, but I think we'll have to see long term, like, if these rates, end up being enough for creators to like sustain a living off of. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, for us, I think a good example. We have one creator who has maybe, you know, she gets about ten thousand views on each YouTube video and sometimes beats out some of our bigger partners, in in certain months. So it's it's pretty wild to see how effective, you know, finding that really tight audience fit can be. Another trend, I'm starting to see. And and we did a webinar, talking about leveraging your internal team members as creators your social platforms for for businesses. But one one trend I'm trying to see more of is bringing a creator that's you know, successful on their own right on on YouTube or or Instagram in house and, like, having them be sort of the face of your brand and and make the social content for for your brand. Do you think that this is what do you think about this tactic? Do you think it's effective? Do you think it'll stick? I love it too because especially if if this brand is bringing in a creator and either doing like a really generous some sort of revenue share or they're bringing them on as salary employee. I mean, I think that's awesome for creators because what we haven't really touched on is just the burnout and the downsides of this. I mean, you're all this your wheel. You're having to feed the bees. You're having to constantly come up with content and having that cushion of like, oh, I have a salary and benefits and I get to hone my skill set of what I'm good at. I think that's awesome. Of course, there's a downside of, like, you you might have to give up some upside or some earnings that you could you know, get more of if you were on your own. But I think we've seen that also this big kind of UGC rise, you know, it's technically user generated content But I think what a lot of people mean by that is it's actually creators generating content for brands. So they're hiring creators just like they are for brand partnerships where they're saying, hey, we want you to kind of film stuff for our socials. So I think it's just an extension of that and bringing those people in house makes perfect sense. I think it's been interesting to see you know, one example that sticks out to me is Morning Brew, the media company, which is really known for newsletters. They're, they've been hiring creators alongside journalists. To start kind of franchises for them around personal finance, to host podcasts with them. So that's really interesting as well to bring people in to kind of these traditional roles, but being able to hone those skill sets. And I think there is a lot of, there's been kind of a shift in trust to individuals versus institutions and brands. We've seen that kind of across industries. So I think having a face of for a company just is is a trend that we're seeing more and more of. So I do expect that to stick around, and I I also think it's an interesting exit stretch for a creator to be able to be like, you know what? It's nice to have a steady paycheck and still be able to do what I'm really passionate about, but do that in house. So I think it's an exciting development. Yeah. Absolutely. I and I think your your insight on, the move the trust shifting to individuals is such an important thing and it's why that tactic of leveraging internal team members as creators for your business is is really effective because, you know, you're starting to see how people, consume media shift. And and one of the things we talked about in that webinar, which I think is important to to reiterate here is, like, how people are consuming news, educational content, even entertainment, has moved a lot from, you know, these more traditional platforms like reading the newspaper or watching TV, even things like going to, x for you know, what CNN has is like, what's going on in the world. Instead, going to TikTok, there's more and more people getting renewed on TikTok and and using TikTok as a search engine to learn new things. And they're going towards individual, creators on those platforms to to get news from people that they actually trust versus, you know, the businesses that sometimes are are more faceless. So, I think these are really important to trend to consider, especially as you're figuring out how you're gonna communicate with your audience as a business, and where you wanna invest invest in. I think the the other trend I wanted to talk to talk about a little bit more, and we've talked about this a bit, is more creators becoming founders. This trend will continue to grow. What are your thoughts there? Yeah. I definitely do because I think creators, I mean, social media is almost this first step in a career now where it's not just like, okay, I wanna be a YouTuber and that's it. It's like, what where do I take that YouTube influence or influence that I've built on social media and how do I turn that into something that then can run itself without me having to perform constantly? Or in ten years from now, do I wanna be a new to videos maybe or maybe not. So I think that's really interesting is either is that launching, you know, a consumer brand, is it launching a consulting company? Is it launching? You know, there's, you know, creators that talk kind of about personal finance and then started like a tax business, right? And and and that's what a lot of their income comes from. So I do think, that's gonna be something that creators think about because I think when you're in this, you know, hamster wheel of constantly creating content. It's hard to step back and be like, well, what do I actually want my business to look like? In a year or five years from now. But that's really important because there's also a shelf life to kind of social media fame and just like we saw with TikTok, right? Like suddenly a new platform comes out of nowhere and you have to learn it. And then there's a whole new generation of creators that are coming in, and the competition is super fierce. And two, I mean, you have to deal with harassment and hateful comments and all the ugly parts of the internet as well. So I think being able to create something with a or less that you own, it could even be a newsletter, right? Like Colin and Sumer, are great examples. They they have published press and that's building, you know, a mailing list of their kind of top really engaged people that they own. And if YouTube goes down or you know, their audience engagement goes down on YouTube. Like, they have this mailing list, and that's a super powerful part of their business. So I think all creators are thinking about different ways that they can do that and, what kind of businesses make sense for them to launch. And of course, using social media to promote those businesses and grow them. But doesn't have to rely solely on, social. Yeah. I think one thing you said, when we were chatting yesterday was, creators are incredible at marketing, like, obviously, that's how they they market themselves. And so I think the the I love the advice you gave around, you know, if you're gonna partner with creators, take advantage of their marketing prowess and and learn from them. Yeah, a hundred percent. Okay. Last question, and then we'll jump into the Q and A. If you can leave everyone with one takeaway from today, what would it be? Yeah. I mean, I think this is what's come up, but it's just trust the creator. I mean, within reason, right? But I think trust their voice, I mean, you are having them come into your marketing efforts for a reason. And if you're just gonna have them be kind of like a spokesperson, then you can just hire kind of a regular person for that. So really trust like their voice They are in this day in and day out. They know what works on each platform. They know what speaks to their audience. So you have to have a level of trust and give up a little bit of control and really be creative for influencer marketing to to really work for your business. Absolutely. Alright. We're gonna jump into the Q and A before I do, a quick call to action one, if you're interested in more content like this, you can head over to storyblocks dot com slash resources There's a bunch of other webinars, and great content from our team, that has guidance for all different types of marketing. So please check it out, and stay tuned for our next webinar, which will be in February. We're gonna announce that a little bit later. We had, a little bit of a we had someone cancel sort of last minute. So we're finding a new guest for February, and we will send out, information around that. Very soon. I promise it's gonna be a good one. We have some great, folks that we're chatting with right now. I'm just trying to figure out dates and times. Okay. Let's jump into Q and A. One thing we didn't talk about is, is is gifting collaborations. Versus, more of the pay to play. And so this question is from Jill. Would you recommend starting off with contracts like pay to pay play a contract from the start, or would you offer a free product in return for, for for the work? Thank you, Jill, for the question. I mean, I think it depends on the creator. I think once creators get to a certain level of their business, they don't really do gifting or free products anymore. I think for the creators that are just starting out, it's a great way to kind of build a relationship with them. And I think those creators are super excited. They're like, oh my gosh, I'm like getting this free product. This is awesome. But once you're a year five years in, you're like, I don't necessarily think I'm gonna do that. I also think you can't really do a lot of strings attached with that. Like, you can't give someone a free product, then be like, you have to say x y z with them. You kind of have to be okay with sending stuff out and then hoping that creators like actually give you a really an interesting review of it. So I think it's fine with kind of emerging smaller creators, but, if someone's really established, they're really unlikely. I think to do, free products and gifting. I mean, they'll take the products. They'll be happy with it, but I wouldn't expect, kind of a comprehensive post and and return for it necessarily. Yeah. Absolutely. I I think, it also depends a little bit on what the product is and how big of the big product is or or, you know, how expensive it can be, and how big of a fit it is. But, yeah, I I represent, a creator who has, you know, almost two million followers, and we get tons daily of, gifting collaborations for, like, you know, like, hair bands. And I'm like, I can't, you know, this is the I think you have to use discretion into, like, how do you, like, who do you target for those things? But I do think it can be really effective if you're finding the right sort of micro creators. Alright. Oh, this question, maybe a basic one, but I I it's one I'm asked a lot what is a creator? Is it an influencer? Is it a freelancer? Can you define it? It's actually not a basic question. I think it's really challenging, actually. And I think it used to be that like Instagram was influencers and YouTube was creators. And this person was for to me. I mean, maybe this is like, people don't agree sometimes when I say this, I think it's all interchangeable often because, you know, creators are building credibility and trust with their audience. And so they are influencing you to do even though influencers became, I think, this like kinda dirty word a little bit. But yeah, some people are like, I don't I don't think I use them pretty inter interchangeably. But to me, it's someone who has built some sort of an audience online and is making some I actually don't think they have to be making income necessarily to be a creator. I think it's people that have built an audience around content online. It could be a podcast. It could be a newsletter. It could be x y z. So I take like a super broad kind of view on it. And I think also we're seeing a lot of people who are doing this kind of part time where it's like a VC who does a sub step That's super interesting. Like, I think that person is a creator. So I did a really wide view on it, but other people are like, no, I'm really not an influencer. I'm not really creator or or kind of put themselves in different buckets. Or I'm seeing also a lot of people say like, oh, I'm a storyteller. I actually I'm just an entrepreneur or I'm a business woman. So, to me, it's just people who are individuals. And and to it gets complicated because I talk to these podcast hosts, and they're under the IHeart Radio Network, but before that, they've always had corporate ownership. But I think they're creators. Because they are the hosts of this podcast and this is their baby, even though they've been salaried. So it's really hard to define actually, I think personally. I totally agree. I think in my head, I sort of I've differentiated the two terms like influencer and creator by say by making creator more inclusive. And I think Yeah. The reason I've done that is because if you there's a poll that was done, recently that asked people if they were creators, and it was it was like a very large it was like forty to fifty percent of people think that they or define themselves as creators But do forty or fifty percent of the population have what we would call, like, influence enough to, like, sell a product or or create a trend or things like that? And so that's how I've sort of defined it is like once you get to that level where you're you're able to influence your audience. You know, I think I think that that is where I kind of classify influencers, but we're kind of expanding that too, right, with micro micro creators and and things like that. So I I agree. It's a really challenging thing to define and a and a great question. The next question is from Tony. Do you have a good starting point or resource research resource on how to discover an influencer's analytics? Oh, interesting. I mean, the most basic is like asking them to share with you. Right? But I think there's so many influencer marketing agencies that you could look that, have really sophisticated kind of like AI powered, ways that they kind of measure, measure that. But think the thing is too though creators want more analytics from the platforms themselves. Like, they wanna understand, you know, where where their audience is coming from and more kind of granular nation. So I think there's always more desire from that on on creators, but I think probably if also if they're not willing to share analytics with you, that maybe is a little bit of a red flag. I don't know, Lauren, if you feel about it, but Yeah. Absolutely. I think I think it is. I we tend to go the route of of asking. And, I think for us, the the thing that we do be because a lot of our investment is in YouTube. We look at viewership more than, like, follower count. And and sort of consistency of viewership, as a good indicator of audience engagement. You know, if if I am having a conversation about or or investing more, I would be asking around, like, what time. And you can even see that sometimes. If you click on the last few videos, you can see, you know, if there's like a big spike or a big dip in certain places, I sometimes I'll look and see if, like, people are skipping over all the ad reads because then it's, like, you know, that's you want people to stay engaged throughout the video. So there's there's certain indicators that are public as well that we we tend to look at too. Yeah. And two, I mean, it used to be all about follower account, and I think now follower account, especially with TikTok. I mean, a million you could have a million followers on Talk and amass those really quickly, but then have thirteen thousand followers on Instagram. So it doesn't even a million followers doesn't mean what it used to anymore, which is crazy. I mean, you could have a million followers and actually not make that much money, which is just mind blowing because there's just so much competition. So it's really I think about the engagement. It's how many comments. I mean, you can even just look at a creator's profile yourself and do a cursory look of like, okay, many million followers, but they only get five comments and the likes are really low. So you can kind of tease out if there's like bots or maybe there's just not a ton of engagement. So you can do kind of some preliminary stuff yourself, but obviously with like watch time and that kind stuff, you're gonna need, more information from the creator. Absolutely. And I think too, like, you know, viewership is so if viewership and engagement is so important, you sometimes we'll have creators who don't have that many followers who are consistently getting a million views on, like, Grammeals because the content they're creating is great, but it's not, you know, they're they're they're either new or there's some reason that they don't have a a massive following yet, but it doesn't mean you're not gonna target audience that you want. So, yeah, I think there's a lot of indicators to to look at, that are accessible in how it goes. I would add quickly to that short form video has been amazing in terms of reaching people, but it's been actually really hard to then harness that into a following and people coming back. Because the way that TikTok has trained us and even reals is we're there for entertainment. So we're just like flipping through and we'll like it and laugh and comment, but we might never see creator again. So that's the tricky part too is that it's actually it's a it's an amazing time to be able to reach audiences quickly, but then actually building that relationship is harder on platforms like TikTok, where you don't have stories. And DMing isn't as, you know, normalized and and on TikTok. So there's kind of, Those are things to keep in mind as well as like these creators might have these massive views and reach, but like they're still working on building that direct line of communication and contact with their audience. Awesome. Alright. Let's do we'll do two more questions and then we'll we'll wrap up. This one is from, Cameron. Create curious about your thoughts on X and their creator programs. Yeah. X is a fascinating one. I mean, I think pre Elon Musk acquisition Twitter was really trying to do more with creators. They rolled out super follows and tipping and all these different things. And even before the Musk acquisition, I mean, there's plenty of people that are kind of influencers on Twitter and have huge followings that weren't really able to had to go to Instagram or other places to really build a business there. I think we'll, like, we have to kinda see. I mean, it's interesting to see, like, mister mister Beast, I think, yesterday or today said he was gonna post his first video on X and just kinda play around with the revenue share. I think what often happens across platforms is that they'll bring in a new program, whether it's real bonuses or the TikTok creator fund, and like, it's like super great in the beginning. And then as more creators join, as the pool gets smaller, it kind of goes down. So we saw that with x as well where like a lot of people were posting, about kind of like, oh, I'm just like tweeting or posting or whatever we call it now. And making money. And then over time, you've seen that kind of go down. I mean, it's been really interesting to see Musk, talk about creators quite a bit and talk about those efforts. So we will have to see I think how that how that stuff pans out. You know, they In many ways, Twitter was ahead of its time and acquired Vine and acquired Neesh, which was an early influencer marketing agency, but for various reasons with their execution, like they didn't become this kind of huge creator platform in the same way that YouTube and and Instagram did. So We will have to see what what happens with that. But, you know, they do have subscriptions, they do have monetization turned on. So that's you know, more opportunities than a few years ago. Nothing to add there. I think it's it's a, you know, wait and see. Alright. The last question, what's your advice for reaching out to brands as a new or emerging influencer. Yeah. I think you have it's a little bit of mass outreach. I feel this way as a journalist too, where I'm like, oh, I need a quota creator for a piece. So you reach out to a bunch of people. And I think you wanna reach out to the brands that you really wanna work with. Right? So if there's dream brands that you wanna work with, You know, it's finding the right point of contact there, like go through LinkedIn, maybe find who leads and wants our marketing stuff, and just kind of introduce yourself share a little bit about you, the type of content. Yeah, I think it's just, it's it's a it's a grind. I think to kind of get those early partnerships. If you have a manager or other creator friends, any kind of introductions, I think are always really helpful with kind of those warm intros. To the extent that you can go to events and stuff kind of around brands and create our economy. I think is also really helpful to to try to meet people in person as well. But I would focus on kind of the brands that you really wanna work with and why and maybe sharing some of the some of the times you've talked about the brand organically well and and they can kinda get a feel for you and and how you use the products. I know Lauren, you you might I feel like you would have a good advice on this too. I have two two thoughts, that have both worked for me as, like, a brand, marketer, like, getting these kind of pitches from influencers, but also have worked really well for the influencers that I manage when I'm reaching out to brands. One is you know, if you don't have any, brand sponsorships under your belt, this is a hard one to do. But once you do have one or two, giving examples. And if you have data from that from that brand of, like, how you impacted sales or how you performed, that can be incredibly powerful. And the more you can get from them the better, in terms of, like, incremental sales, like, things like that, can be really effective with with kinda convincing your audience. And then for the, you know, you you gotta do the mass outreach before the brands that you're like, I really want this. Take some time and think about how you might partner with them and, like, look at how they partner with other influencers too and even make a pitch or for, like, how the content that you'd produce for them or how you'd integrate the ad read into your YouTube channel, and and customize it for them that explain why you think this would be a great fit for your audience and for your content. I think going in with a little bit more attention to detail of, like, what you'd actually do It doesn't mess in, you know, you can say you're open to their suggestions and all those things and you wanna collaborate with them, of course. But if they they know that you kind of have ideas already and really are invested I'm working with them. I think that sometimes helps sweeten sweeten it a little bit and and can, you know, make them wanna pay attention. I think to follow-up within reason, you obviously don't wanna be blowing up people's inboxes, but for for me just as a journalist, like, I get so many pitches about companies need to write about them or whatever it is, and things really do get lost in my inbox. So I appreciate like a nudge and a follow-up, although not seven of them, but I think within reason. Don't assume that someone is just like ignoring you or or, like, you can't just kind of reach out once and then expect it all to kind of fall together. Absolutely. Yeah. The amount of responses I get on my, like, second follow-up or my third follow-up is Hi. Fire. Alright. Well, that is it for today. Thank you so much. And just a reminder, everyone, this will be on demand on storyblocks dot com slash resources. Also send it out to everyone here. So you'll be able to watch it again or share it with your colleagues and peers. You can join us for our next webinar in February. We'll send out an announcement about that shortly. And thank you, Kya. This was such a fun conversation. I always love chatting with you. I learned a lot. I hope everyone else did. So thank you, and have a great rest of your day, everybody. Thanks for all the great questions too. Really appreciate it.
