Working with influencers

From DevSummit
Jump to navigation Jump to search

Influencer section =)

  • The question to ask is: "Was the video an effective vessel to bring people into our work"
    • The scales are completely different than what we are used to in the non-profit/justice community
      • For example, 50k views seems like a lot, but expensive - like $1 per view you could pay people to view the video instead
    • For influencers having 1M views is standard so a much different definition for success
    • So, it becomes a question of "what's best way to spend our resources?"
    • Bring in a specialist - Full time and part time content creators are often better at doing this than the "experts" in the organizations
  • Example from an influence when they reached 20M subscribers
    • Crowdsourced a question - what should I do do commemorate the event
      • Idea to plant 20M trees - did as a partnership with a nonprofit to get $1 per tree to make it happen
    • Grassroots org structure would do this:
      • Set up rallies worldwide and gather stories from distributed actions into a single story
      • This also gives local orgs a hook into gathering local media exposure and highlighting the local impacts
    • Applied this model to content creators
      • Partnership between two big influencers
      • Created a shared call to action for other influencers to use their own creativity to mobilize their subscribers and then point them all to a single resource
      • Incredible successful - raised all money in 56 days
  • Activist creators have a ceiling and this helped them break through those numbers
  • same principles apply for political, big tent climate action, "sandboxed" action with positive spill over for partners with influencers
  • Cultural divide between non-profit/justice work and funders and new generation of content creators that had stunted the relationships being developed
    • Huge potential in partnerships and requires organizing work
    • Need to get the message out
    • We tend to think about influences not as partners, but as distribution channels, but there is a large potential and high ceiling for these type of relationships
  • Power in these partnerships between organizations and influencers
    • Look at Joe Rogan and DT there is some real loss opportunity for this
      • Right has been building channels and partners for these upcoming right wing influencers and how these partnerships have power
      • Left has not done his
    • Minimizing this opportunity is a loss for real growth, outreach and messaging advantage
      • Big companies
      • Right wing politics are taking advantage of this
  • YouTube is the second largest search engine - so missing out there you are missing out on an enormous audience
  • Different level of manipulation given influencer market
  • What are the different niche influencers given men and women
    • i.e. the MAHA (make America healthy again vax questioners) moms getting into feeds in other countries
  • How is this different
    • Launch strategy rested on a single video to launch the campaign
    • There was an unlisted video only for influencers to get involved
    • How would they get the volunteers - they sent a tweet - which seems weak to get that many people involved
      • It got 1000 volunteers with wrong date and wrong place
      • This is a much different response than then Hollywood celebrity tweeted about ocean health
        • Replies were "marry me" and not about the call to action
    • So, this is different in ability to get mobilization
    • Who is talking, parasocial relationships, is part of the brand
      • It creates a relationship between the speaker and the listeners
      • The speaker doesn't know you, but the fans feel they know the speaker
      • Identify with the shared values
    • Replacement for the sense of belonging
      • I.e. we used to have Sierra Club memberships
      • Creators are constantly creating a sense of belonging and membership - they are constantly replacing members
    • Erosion in trust with institutions and media -
      • Tilts the advantage to those that are best at getting attention
    • Example with GenZ for change for Biden
      • leader is 24 years old and all people on the staff are influencers
      • It's not 1 person who is the leader and rest are support
      • It's one influencer with a network of others on whatever media platform of their choice
  • Lessons learned:
    • Good features:
      • Have a lead influencer that has others who want to participate with them
      • When they signal broad based values others will show up
    • Need:
      • More support in social infrastructure to support those that raise their hands
      • Some of the communities of practice like the science influencers have an invite only gathering once a year
        • Theres are good to partner because they do longer format
      • Values aligned coalitions of influencers like
        • Environment
        • Progressive values, etc
      • How do you authentically talk to audience
      • Space for creators to talk to others with support of experts (so like science blogger and his gov't geek sidekick like Dr. Trayourus)
        • This makes content feel authentic
        • Need time to think and build an approach
        • Must support the popularity of their posts
          • 1 bad post, punishes your rank and visibility in the algorithm
      • Show up in places where new influencers are learning how to do this
        • i.e. VidCon
        • Give them as place to use their platform for good
        • How to compete with "sponsored" posts or their own company posts, but you need their popularity to boost yours
        • This has to be promoted from within the community else it will not work if done for external sources
      • Understand the secondary spaces for their superfans
        • I.e. Patreon - where have longer more personal interactions with people
    • Search
      • Look for your thing on whatever social media platform to see how people are looking for things there...even where to go for lunch
      • Editing is a skill, but AI might help
      • Algorithms that prioritize discovery are great, but holding onto people is hard
      • YouTube is where people go to build longer term audiences
    • Resource: Ashoka & Social Good Club's playbook "Partnering with Creators" - a guide for campaigners thinking about how to strategically work with influencers.