PERSONAL NOTE: I will be in Washington D.C. from Tuesday, 8/13 to Saturday 8/17, so if you’d like to connect or have any introductions to companies or programs in need of influencer marketing / digital strategy help, please send me a LinkedIn DM!

The ‘Tom Cruise’ has dropped from a plane, signaling the official end of the Olympics.

Now it’s time for the internet’s next favorite reality show: the US Presidential election.

And I’m not just bringing it up because I’m headed to the White House Creator Economy Summit this week (my ‘not so humble’ brag).

It’s because Donald Trump showed up on Adin Ross’s livestream.

Spoiler alert: it was a huge hit.

So is it time for your creators to use their political leanings to grow?

Let’s get into it.

NEWS:

Are Presidential Candidates this Cycle’s ‘Hawk Tuah’?

This week, we saw Donald Trump on an Adin Ross livestream over 500,000 concurrent viewers, and recently, his VP pick, J.D. Vance, appeared on the Nelk Boys podcast.

They’re leaning in hard.

And on the left?

The community has had to do all of the social media work (J.D. Vance and the couch? Walz’s Midwestern Dad memes? Kamala’s coconut memes?)

So why is the right so incredible at aligning meaningfully with their internet celebrity advocates and the left has lagged so hard?

My point of view: conservative fandom runs deeper on the internet, and they’ve been earning it for decades.

The infrastructure on the right for highly partisan media is far deeper than the left, and has been since Rush Limbaugh spawned hundreds of AM radio versions of himself in the 80’s and 90’s.

We can argue all day about whether mainstream media leans right or left, but what I can say with certainty, political social media stars on the right far outpace the left purely on reach.

Biggest person on Twitter, Elon Musk, outspoken Trump supporter.

Joe Rogan, one of the biggest podcasts in the world, outspoken Trump supporter.

Candidate on the right, Donald Trump, arguably the first ‘influencer president’, has hundreds of millions of followers, not to mention every ‘truth’ being amplified by every media outlet.

If the left wants to catch up, it must find its advocates that feel like real people (the left’s Nelk or Rogan), give them face time to make content, avoid making it too ‘practiced’, and show some humanity.

Perhaps the White House Creator Economy Summit is their first step. I’ll let you know in a week.

NEW OPPORTUNITIES:

Can Influencer Marketing Platforms be your Sales Team?

I have a dark secret to admit…

When my team was managing thousands of talent at Fullscreen, we would go on Famebit, a big influencer marketing marketplace at the time, and submit our talent for campaigns.

A lot of our deals didn’t come through our sales team. We were fishing with dynamite.

And the vast majority of creator reps and creators I speak to ignore these platforms completely.

Many major platforms have their own influencer marketing marketplaces including Meta’s Brand Collabs Manager.

But there are loads of platforms including Izea, Later, and #paid with a consistent flow of paid offers.

So if you’re short on deals, roll up your sleeves and hit up these platforms!

SOCIAL OPTIMIZATION:

Threads is working!

Talent reps love to say that a platform is ‘dead’.

For decades, I’ve listened to leading voices in the creator economy call every platform ‘dead’ every year.

I just rewatched a panel I was on in 2013 with a very big name (who I shall not name) who said both Snap and Facebook were dead. Spoiler alert: they are both very much alive in 2024.

My rule: don’t say a platform is dead until it’s no longer available in the app store.

So yeah, I stuck with Threads.

And recently, Meta announced Threads is over 200m monthly active users.

For those paying attention, that far exceeds their initial ‘boom time’ active users before the 90% MAU drop.

Right now, I’m looking at the Top Charts for social media free apps, and Threads is comfortably sitting in the number one spot.

Where is X?

For some reason it’s now under ‘news’ instead of social media (???) and it’s sitting behind Reddit.

So if you’re trying to figure out where to invest your time, Threads is a good bet.

INDUSTRY HIRING:

100 Thieves wants a Senior Director, Partnership Development for anyone who knows not to take their company name literally.

True North Social needs a Social Media Manager if you want to manage social media for a company that manages social media.

MasterClass is seeking a Director, Content Marketing but will only consider you if you’re either Bill Gates or James Patterson.

MEME ZONE:

Thank you for reading! If you enjoyed this edition, give it a share and if you get someone to sign up, I’ll send you my ‘10 Rep-Friendly Ways to Monetize Today!’ deck!

Until next time, protect yo rep.