I Am Not an Influencer

They say don’t burry the lead, right?

I’ve have thought long and hard about this for months, even years. Addiction runs in my family. Good news is I don’t drink much at all. But when you have an addictive personality that addictive behavior is usually redirected to something else.

You know some of the one most addictive things on this planet (that do not need to be injected into your body)? Social media.

That’s where my addictive behavior has shifted. Myself and millions of teenage girls have this same issue. It doesn’t help me (or the tweens) that this product was engineered by some of the smartest people in the world to retain my attention at all hours of the day.

I posted on instagram for the first time in 2013 (not gunna share that though). I was told that’s where the cool kids were moving now that our mom’s were joining facebook. Think about that. It’s 2024 now. That’s over 11 years of using one product. I haven’t kept clothes that long. This product probably has more data on me than I’d like to know…

If you scroll through my personal profile, you’ll see a slow improvement on the “quality of content” I am posting.

I got into using funny captions, I saw that was what drove up like count. Then the pictures got better as I started experimenting with photography, in hand I got better at framing and editing photos. I realized that videos were being pushed more than photos, late to the game I posted my first video in 2022.

At the end of the day it was all to get more likes and views.

As I was obsessively on the platform more and more. For multiple hours a day. By choice or because the algorithm kept me on? Likely both. The more time I spent on the platform, I started to notice the type of content that got high engagement, what drove like counts, and views. I started taking notes.

When I was running my photo and video business I was posting my work on my own instagram page. The content I would post would serve as a portfolio of work so that people would want to pay me to do photos and videos for them.

I needed to make sure my content got in front of them to make them want to work with me. So I needed to learn how to do that. I had to learn how the algorithm worked.

I learned how to balance quality with catchy content. Things started to look real cool on my page. I followed the framework of: “do dope shit, and share it publicly.” The truth is, it helps when the images and videos of that look real nice.

The point of this ranting is that I was learning how to make content that caught people’s attention, and that they thought was interesting. My profile started to looks more like an “influencer” page than a generic user account? That wasn’t was I was going for but I’ll take the compliment.

Why does this matter? After using instagram for all this time. I am just now starting to recognize a shift. A shift in how businesses and products are being sold, and more importantly… made.

For the last 5 years people have been using influencers’ reach to sell a product. To get it in front of hundreds of thousands of people with the hope that the use that person’s discount code to but the product. That conversion rate is pretty low, and it’s also really fucking hard to track the success per video or per influencer. Not everyone uses a discount code.

Now things are starting to change. I talked about how influencers are starting to create products of their own, or really smart people are approaching these people and asking them to make a product with them, that aligns with their brand.

This was all with physical consumer products. Now imagine the growth of a digital product paired with viral distribution. That’s real magic.

I see this happening right now.

Check out the Pelosi Tracker. This account started sharing all the trades Nancy Pelosi made. It got a massive following because it paired parody, outrage, and real research. People loved it. It captured a very specific audience. People interested in stocks and that got triggered by congressmen (and women) making millions of dollars trading on insider information.

The Pelosi tracker has almost 750k followers on twitter alone. I know they made some adjacent accounts in the similar space but they have a captured audience of almost a million people. That just followers on twitter…

Until recently, they probably could have made thousands of dollars a month working with trading companies like Fidelity or ETRADE. They noticed the changing dynamic... They made a product for their audience. They knew exactly what almost a million people wanted: to trade like the senators that had inside information.

So they made a platform that does that: AutoPilot

This is the magic of capturing an audience and making a product for them.

I know what you’re thinking: “What’s your point”

I’m learning how to build an audience. Whether thats for myself, or a meme account.

The goal is the same: Audience > Community > Product

If you know how to build a community or a following. You have captured the voice of your customers and the their attention at the same time.

All you need to do is build a half decent product for them to use.

When I’m asked if I’m an influencer because I’m trying to share catchy or cool videos. I say absolutely not. I’m experimenting with how to capture peoples attention and how to build an audience.

So no, I’m not an influencer. But I am learning how I can influence others.

That’s a good way for how to build a bootstrapped business in 2024.

That’s what I’m learning how to do: build an audience.

 💙Jared

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