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I swear this isn’t meant to be a newsletter about politics.

But my hand is being forced.

This week, the industry was rocked by the US Presidential debates, from Trump’s strange untrue accusation that immigrants are eating dogs and cats which churned out this absolute banger of a trending song to a ramp up of Harris vs Trump college-aged kids making bank with TikTok Live debates.

But, of course, the big news is Taylor Swift’s endorsement of the Harris/Walz ticket directly after the debate, a move that spurned another debate around whether she was stealing Kamala’s thunder or playing three-dimensional chess. I think that warrants a deep-dive.

Let’s get into it.

NEWS:

Taylor Swift: The Ultimate Influencer

There were a lot of media outlets trying to own the post-debate audience from Jon Stewart going live on Comedy Central to Donald Trump declaring victory from the spin room.

But the ultimate post-debate winner was Taylor Swift, who did it on Instagram.

The post heard around the world currently sits at just over 11 million likes and was so powerful, every live piece of coverage post-debate cut in for this ‘breaking news’.

But a different debate raged amongst creator reps: was this the right post at the right time with the right message?

My hot take: This campaign showed an incredible amount of deftness and strategy. So much so that rather than covering multiple news pieces this week, I want to deep-dive into each one of the arguments against Taylor’s strategy and explain why I think she made the right move.

1. She’s stealing Kamala’s thunder and making the debate all about her. This is the most common refrain I saw from haters on the left, but it completely misses the point. More than 67 million people watched the debate, but that over-indexed on the older and more politically involved crowd. Taylor, on the other hand, has a much younger audience who may not be watching the debates on linear television. The hundreds of millions she reached with this post are more likely to be less-engaged, gettable voters.

2. She’s alienating her Republican fans. Of course, when you take a political stance that’s always a risk. But she’s also so generationally massive that you can look at it the other way: she may be one of the few people that can get Republican fans to reconsider. And her tempered tone where she encourages everyone to do their own research leaves the door open for Republican fans to disagree with her.

3. Nobody cares what a pop star has to say about politics. Don’t think of this as politics. Think of this as a call-to-action in influencer marketing. She made her case personal, told the story of her decision, told her audience they should make a decision, then directed them to vote.org, which benefitted from 400,000 sign ups based on that CTA. I’d say a lot of people cared about what a pop star had to say about politics.

4. It’s off-brand for her. She has been very tactful when taking political stances in the past (you can see a full timeline here), but she has had a history of speaking up when she feels it’s important. In fact, her documentary heavily focused on her first endorsement in 2018, supporting Marsha Blackburn in the Tennessee Senate race. But the way she’s done all of the endorsements have been very on-brand: she tells the story about what it is, why she cares, and what you can do about it.

5. Signing the post as a ‘Childless Cat Lady’ makes it too unserious to be impactful. This is where that annoying ‘authenticity’ buzzword rears it’s ugly head. Memes are the language of the internet and memes are often comedic satire about the state of the world. She didn’t have to dryly say “I was offended by J.D. Vance’s insults towards single women.” Instead, she let people, dare I say, do their own research.

So what can we learn from this, creator reps? Get your clients to nail the basics of influencer marketing:

1. Build on top of an existing narrative and pick the most impactful time.

2. Make it personal.

3. Make it fun / funny / interesting / somehow engaging.

4. Be clear in your call to action.

5. Make sure it’s something you really believe in.

OPTIMIZATION:

Collab From Afar

Collaboration has always been the absolute fastest way to grow.

I have an audience, you have an audience, our audience would like each other, and we share our audiences.

Simple.

But if your client lives in the Maldives or, even worse, Delaware, how do you start a collaboration?

Hottest of the hot tips on collaboration: two people don’t have to be in the same physical location to collab.

Content just needs to lead audiences from one profile to another and vice-versa.

Look at John and Hank Green’s original “Dear John/Hank” vlogs. They started their channel as essentially public video e-mails sharing interesting stuff from the internet. They were seldom in videos together.

Heck, the photographer that took the Taylor Swift ‘Cat Lady’ pic is almost at 1 million followers based on a single tag. They were in the same room for the photograph (obvi) but she wasn’t in the image.

And there are loads of way to do this with current social tech: podcasts on Zoom, TikTok Lives with multiple people, trading images back and forth, sharing stories from each other, or good old-fashioned AMAs together.

Then, just like in influencer marketing, makes sure the call to action is clear: “Make sure to follow __________ to see part 2 of this video!”

MONETIZATION:

Hacking Sales in Instagram DMs

I’ve been getting one question near-daily and it’s time to address:

“I’ve been seeing a bunch of people on Instagram posting ‘Comment LINK for a DM with the link to buy!’ How are they doing that?”

And they should be asking! I see it everywhere from affiliate creators to OOTD moms to B2B marketers selling courses.

The leader in that space is called ManyChat. For $15 per month, you can get up to 500 people to slide into your DMs after writing a specific keyphrase in your comments section.

Convert one to a sale and it pays for yourself.

However, based on the success of that platform, new competitors have emerged in that space, like Ellipsend, which offers a more comprehensive, data-rich solution with deeper chat capabilities.

So if you have a physical or digital product to sell, try these. You can even start by offering something meaningful and free to see if your audience is ready for this (“Comment GUIDE and I’ll DM you my 10 Tips for Social Media Stardom!”)

And if you don’t have a product to sell yet, it’s time to start thinking about it!

As always, if you try them out let them know this newsletter sent you!

INDUSTRY HIRING:

The Motion Picture Association needs a VP, Content Protection Enforcement if you’ve always wanted to be a cop but only for YouTube takedown notices.

Epic Games wants a Director, Social Media & Entertainment. Must be able to do the floss to apply.

Roblox is looking for a Client Partner, Entertainment Vertical if you need a way to bond with your kids without leaving the house.

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.

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