[MUSIC] The entry deadline for the 18th annual Shorty Awards has been extended to March 6th. This is your final chance to enter. If you're working shaping digital and culture, bring it into the spotlight. Enter by March 6th at Shorty Awards.com. [MUSIC] There's a lot of really good things in this discussion. I have a Demetri Turner. I was an influencer market leader, advisor, known for building, and scaling high impact creator and ambassador programs from the ground up. At future influence, he partners with founders to turn creative relationships into sustainable growth engines. With an entire marketing work. Let's get right to it. [MUSIC] Demetri, thank you so much for joining. I don't think we get into the nuts and bolts of this a lot. I think it's a good exercise to start in in 2026. If you're building an influencer program from the ground up, where do you start and what is most important to you right now? >> Yeah, so if you're starting from scratch, I think there's probably two major prongs of the strategy that you're really focused on. The first is activating existing customers, trying to get testimonials. There's this concept that's been gaining a lot of steam of EGC, its employer, regenerated content. And then if you've been able to grow as a business and you're considering influencer's strategy, that means that you've been able to garner enough of a customer base that are super loyal. You probably had some decent word of mouth, referrals, and growth that way. And so how do you activate them? How do you find them? Who's talking about you on social and kind of layering the building blocks of what will eventually be a longer term, more robust, and basic program? Because I think when we talk about an influencer program today, it's not the same as it was two, five, seven years ago, right? The pay for play models essentially did. The way that a lot of brands are thinking about scaling and what I recommend to my clients and people that I work with is you have to find a way to incorporate your brand into the actual sales engine that exists in social commerce today. Yes. So platforms like LTK, ShotMy, that's a great starting point because those you're focused only on the creators who are actively trying to sell. Instead of influencers who have really large audiences, and they're getting 50, 100 million views per reel or whatever, and then they do a sponsored video and it gets 7,000 views in like 47 lights. And you're like, I paid $12,000 for that, like what did I do? So it's nightmarish and it doesn't really make a lot of sense from the brand side. And so I think that this is kind of the evolving solution. It's where your true investors at and just how do you activate them, how do you find and activate them? And then on the flip side of it, the other, you know, prong here is using, sourcing that content and scaling that content to support paid efforts. Because an ambassador program is by nature a slow rolling six, 12, 18 month long, you know, recruitment process. It's incremental results. There's not really any like big swings like someone that's just going to onboard and suddenly drive 10,000 affiliate sales for you. Like it's very, very unlikely. Yes. And so, you know, myself as like a partnerships consultant, you know, when I am talking to somebody and I say, yeah, you know, like you need to be building this program over 12 months. That minimum before you start to like actually see like, a vulnerable results that can have an impact in your business that will scale beyond five or like two or five percent of your overall sales. It will take time and everyone goes, I don't want to do that. Like I just want to hire influencers and drive sales. I can't do that either. It's like that's done. That's that time is over. Yeah. And so the solution there is either, you know, through your, ideally through your investors, through your customers and these activators that you're finding. Or through there's been a number of platforms that have cropped up in the last 18 months, two years that are like UGC platform. So we can find content creators who don't have large followings and who can give you what you need that works well on social to testimonial based, you know, speaking the camera with some B role cut in. Ideally, you can differentiate the type of content creators, depending on what your brand is up between different verticals for different content styles. And then you leverage that for your pay that's because that content generally speaking is going to outperform any brand asset that you're running. Yeah. And it's kind of shocking to me still that there's so many brands running brand assets and like on on meta and on TikTok. It's it's truly wild. That's just been like, like that's been the strategy. And I was actually speaking to the conference last year. I was telling people that I'm looking for brands that have a social first strategy because they understand that social commerce is where discoverability exists. And then you can kind of expand your your channels outward and more traditional ones like, you know, I don't know if anybody does display and then or more, but like, you know, search and podcast and TV and, you know, all that stuff and CTV. So basically the performance that you'll see the performance improvement you'll see and paid social as a result of using this type of content can cover the cost of the investment in the long form partnerships evolution. And so that's kind of how I structure a lot of these initial programs is like start building out your recruitment strategy here. Find your true ambassadors who want to talk about the brand and product organically, if they can drive a sale here, they can drive a sale there, build on that. Find ways to incentivize them find ways to activate them and then on the other side, you're leveraging them and others to create content for your paid ads. You'll see improved performance and that covered the cost of the investment. There are so many things I want to pick out of what you just said, if I get to 60% of them, I will be proud. But one of the things that I was thinking about the most is there's an ecosystem that you're kind of creating. This is foundation building rather than just kind of parachuting in and going, cool, we we slapped this on it and did that. I think and that this is correct too, it's like, you know, if you're a brand that has the ability and enough of a customer base, right, as you alluded to, like that can get to this point, right, you do have leverage, right. You do have you probably have some talent on the bench that, you know, that can lead into EGC, which is great that can kind of do this. You're trying to do the tone of everything has to come across and be natural. Like I'm trying to stop using the a word as much as possible and trying to go into a different thing. Just going to say, yeah, but I think, but that is the core of what we're trying to get into is like, if you see, if you see a brand's content, you're not going to be as inclined to gravitate toward as you see, you know, and again, I by the way, there are layers to what, you know, the career based content is going to look like too because, you know, there can be something that's really aspirational and interesting and creative and then there can be the, you know, the TikTok shop version, which is like, check out how soft my shirt is, right. We know like those things, right, those going to work. It's kind of funny to me. I guess like, maybe this is the new hell I want to die on, but to me, it's that the things that are most natural and the least disruptive to your content viewing experience to me are going to be the things that people gravitate to. The most, which are the things that you're talking about, right. If you root this in like what the product is, what the brand is, what those things are, that's much better than like if I send you an SMS message, like I get why I get don't get me wrong. I don't want to be drudge this. I don't want to just be like, well, that's dead. Stop doing that. I'm like, OK, well, it clearly works. If you're still doing it, it clearly works. But it does not mean that it is the most optimal thing to be doing when, you know, all things aside, like, you know, I, we probably don't have the data on because we're not tracking or looking for it. But there probably is data. And I swear I will land this plane, but try to get into all these things. But there probably is data that says, here's the amount of people that you lose after the seventh SMS goes unread because they're like, I'm done. Yes, 100% I was talking to somebody about this at around Black Friday. And they're just like the amount of texts I've gotten makes me want to throw my phone in the trash. I just can't. And, you know, what else are brands to do like with their existing customer base? And I also think it's an important. That's an important thing to note that like that's a retention strategy versus a marketing strategy and like reaching, you know, a new audience and every brand when they're thinking when they're thinking about reaching a new audience goes like, OK, well, how do we run as to reach the audience we want to get to and they look at influencer as that kind of channel, but it shouldn't be that we know that and it doesn't have to be. And I think this is the most like this is the most progressive route towards trying to work with influencers in a capacity that is not just like, you know, slapping a logo across their forehead and being like post that, you know, it's it's really a lot more grassroots approach. And yeah, it takes a longer time investment and it is.
is a lot more foundational. But if you put the investment in now, you'll be much further ahead than if you wait 12 months and you do. Well, we spent $50,000 on influencers and it didn't work, but we keep hearing that everyone else is being successful with it. So maybe now we'll try that. And it's like, we've lost 12 months. - Look at all the retail brands that are like, I'm gonna run a 40% sale. And the other ones like, I'm gonna run a 50% sale that's perpetuous, right? And again, I understand psychographics and understanding consumer psychology, it does work. Again, it wouldn't be done if it hadn't of worked and doesn't continue to work. But that being said, it is a race to the bottom, right? Like, no brand, like probably necessarily aspires to be in that position. You just get in that position and tell somebody, you know, it comes in the company and says, maybe we stop doing that. Maybe we, you know, there's this like, there's this room to be like this business genius that just comes in and goes like, what if we stop doing sales? - Yeah. - Yeah. - The thing for me too is like, one of the last things before I wanna get an algorithm is you're kind of learning to like the percent likelihood or the percent like that you are related to that product or that like we've already seen you talk about that or that it's the relatability part of it because if you go to like, and I think we probably are all sick of this refrain, but again, we understand it. You're gonna go to what you know. So everybody's gonna be like, well, who's our Mr. Beast? And you're gonna be like, that is the wrong question to ask. Please stop asking that question. It's, you know, but again, it's like that no creator can possibly work for any and all product or service. They can work for the things that the audience like, and it doesn't have to be so linear that it's like, you're only this thing and you're only beauty and you're only this. We do contain multitudes, but my gosh, I would rather work all day long with a person who has 200,000 followers, but every one of those followers is there for that reason versus the person who has 5 million followers. You know, and we've got data now that can tell us like, if you do this topic with this creator, you're gonna get a horrible return because people are gonna be like, I don't come to you for tax accounting advice. - Yeah. - That's a natural, even from the beginning, you know, talk to brands and be like, well, what kind of influence should we work with? And you're a home decor brand. Who's the home decor decision maker in most homes? It's gonna be the mom slash wife. And that follows other typical demographics of being, you know, between 25 and 55 and, you know, owning, well, maybe not a home, but like, there's all those things that kind of tumbled down as a result of that. - By the way, such a 2026 thing to be like, home ownership is so aspirational. I hope. - Yeah, yeah, it's like this is probably the home. Yeah, yeah. But there's certain aspects of it, right? That are all naturally preceding that or following it. And so, yeah, there's just like, I really don't think you have to overthink it. I think ultimately, the last thing I'll say on this is like, if you are, we all follow our own friends on social media as well as influencers and brands and whatever, but if your friend is actually recommending something in a social post, you'll pay more attention to it than if an influencer is, right? And you might think it's actually awkward to do or awkward to see, you know, like, I'm just personally talking about this thing, but I think that's actually where a lot of social commerce is going more generally, where like, every brand wants to activate people. People are realizing that they can earn rewards this way. They can earn free product and potentially have a little commission on top of that. Everyone wants to earn a little bit more. And so, there's gonna be, I think the barrier's gonna fall where more day-to-day people are considering posting and like being these extensions of a brand, especially for a brand that they would actually true love. And it's not as awkward to be like, oh yeah, you posted on social about it. It's so funny. Now actually, I earned five sales, and I made a hundred bucks off of that, and the brand wants to keep working with me. Okay, cool, that's legit. So, I think that that wall will continue to crumble and more brands are gonna start to execute this strategy. And yeah, the real question is just like, how do you cover the initial investment? Because it will take time. It's not something that you can truly automate from an AI standpoint. And then I'm sure there will probably be brands that are like, oh, but we have to move faster because now brands are creating products in our category. Or they're getting into, how are they getting into, creators are getting into SaaS. What do we do? It's like Mel Robbins has a protein powder. How do we compete with that? So I'm like, I honestly, if you're doing it right, I think you're okay there. Like, that's not for grudging friend of the pod, Mel. It's just to say it's like, I wouldn't go, oh no. You know, you've, you've entered a crowd of things. You can't do this. I can't possibly do this. No, you can. It's just, you have to find, you know, ways to make that connective. That's always the thing. It's like sometimes from an outside. If you're not the audience of a specific pod or a specific creator, you might be like, well, how does that work? And it's like, well, in the principle of transparent opportunism, if that person's leveling with you and being like, hey, I just think this is good. And if you like it cool versus like, you know, and you're not pretending that your thing is going to change the world and that you've been spending, you know, 14 years working hard science on your protein powder, I think we're okay. Yeah, it's expectation setting. Yeah, absolutely. And I think as it relates to the testimonial of it all, their rise of AI, I actually been like waging a little war on LinkedIn with all of these people who are like, oh, comment, you know, they're using a maychat function. There's like comment AI slupped to get this access to this platform that generates AI influencers who can hold your product and talk about how awesome it is. And I was like, what are you doing? I understand. I understand why that's easy and why that's enticing me. But you're ruining this. You're making the internet worse when you're trying to confuse true testimonials with real people who are like, you know, I'm actually using this and actually love it. And you can buy it or you don't buy it. It doesn't make a difference to me. But what the more that you blur that line, the worse off will all be. I also know that in this war, I'm Don Quixote, it's gonna happen anyways. There's no stopping it. And so as a result of that, there will eventually be a rebound effect where everyone's gonna be so fed up with it. It's like, I will only trust something. If somebody, if there's a human standing to my face and being like, look at this thing. I've been using this my whole life. Like it will come all the way full circle back to retail. - Yes. - But I think, again, you're really just talking about where is a true testimonial and how can you gather those up and, you know, and bring them to life. - Just like we have people right now, they're like basically describing what the direct TV bundle was from 14 years ago. Like that's the best utopia. And they're like, so what if I only had to click on one tile and that got me to all these things and I could just, and I'm like, yes, you're describing 2011 is what you're describing. They're like, whoa. Yeah, why do we ever stop doing that? I'm like, well, somebody was like, what if you cut the cord and then you suddenly have 17 subscriptions? And then, you know, it was better. It was much better for a whole year. - Yeah, of course. - Yeah. - You log into rocket money and you're like, I'm spending on what? Oh no. And I still don't have access to this. You're like, somebody will be like, oh, well, you don't have Paramount Plus. You're like, I have nine of these. I feel like someday, like seven or eight years from now, you'll get somebody that's like, why aren't there just like a bunch of stores in one place? So I can just go to all of them in one trick, you know? - Absolutely, yes. Or yeah. - But, you know, this literally happened to me over the holidays. My family was visiting, we were trying to watch a football game. And I was like, I'd stop, I cut YouTube TV because I'm only ever used it for live sports. And outside of football season, I'm not like watching a bunch of basketball games. Games I have young kids, I'm not even up past like 30 most of the nights, anyway. But he was like, my brother was like, well, if you get the bundle with Hulu and Disney Plus and ESPN, then you can, you know, you pay less to Japan for this from now on. I was like, you know what, you're right. I'll do it so that we can watch this game. And I'll actually will be like combining my subscriptions anyways. Come to learn. - No, I got ESPN selects. - Yeah. - You know, ESPN selects. Didn't even be able to, I couldn't even watch that game because it was on ESPN, like there's on ESPN, not ESPN Plus or whatever. - Yeah, yeah. - This sucks. - I get all this. - No, I absolutely hate it. - Oh my gosh. Yeah, like those examples all the time right now. But like to digress, like you give the mini chat example, which I think is a good one. Like if I have a monitor too, it's like, we're all looking for ways to game the algorithm, right? But there's a difference between subtle and overt. Yeah. And I think that, again, that's where we're trying to get into like natural. It's like, are there things that you look at like from optimizing the algorithm? And this kind of go, you know, across all platforms or just can be specific wherever you want to take it. Let's choose your own adventure. But it's like, to you, like, what are some of the things that are most pertinent right now to kind of, you know, or maybe like the thousand foot view of like, here's how you should probably assess the algorithm. - Yeah, so I think the biggest thing when we talk about algorithmic changes broadly speaking, well, not broadly speaking, specifically with Instagram is it used to be the content went to your followers. As a metric of success or viability in regards to working with brands, see what we're doing.
and the industry knows that like followers means nothing. We've known that for a long time. But from an algorithmic standpoint, if you post a content, it went largely to your followers. And then, you know, 18 months ago, whatever, they started implementing those suggested posts or suggested reels because of TikTok. And the four-up page, and I like, we want that too. It's working really well. You can discover new content. That's better for our platform. It keeps you on there longer. And so they started doing that. And from a brand marketer standpoint, who's running influencer programs, I stopped looking at audience demographics. I stopped looking at, you know, who, how much of their audience was in the US if I'm working with them for a brand that is only selling in the US. Like, none of that matters anymore. It's all interest-based profiles. So now, it's just what type of content are they creating? Are they creating content that is geared towards the audience? I want to reach much light. I was just talking to somebody about how to run paid ads on Meta. And previously, you used to set up campaigns that were targeted to specific audiences and develop creative that would apply to a dog lover's audience. And that ad had a dog in it or whatever. You connect all those dots. And now, if you ask anyone at Meta, they're like, no, no, no, no, just run a broad campaign. Throw as many creative as in there as humanly possible. They'll let the algorithm do its thing. And the winning ad will climb to the top and gather all the spend. And then you set that one aside and then you do it all over again. And then you set aside your winners. And then you compete the winners against each other. And it's like, it's the same thing organically. It's really-- you're just looking from a content standpoint. What is the content actually about and who is it geared towards? Is the only thing that matters. I'm not looking at audience demographics or profiles anymore. I'm not looking at who their followers are. I'm just looking at what type of content do you create and who is it speaking to? And does that make sense for the audience I want to reach? And the interests of my audience. It's purely interest-based. -Philian said it's designed to allow us to do more of it faster, which a turn would be like, if you're selling ads, yeah, makes sense. Totally understand it. Oh, you made it less complicated. And just like, I don't know, throw out a lot of A/B test, a great. Yeah, I don't hate it, honestly. But it's easier also from a brand perspective as well. I don't have to-- it was a killer. I was using a spire and every single person, I was like, OK, how's their content? Content looks good. Yeah. Now they're audience. And it's like, you see somebody with a blonde girl in Southern California and she talks about health and wellness. And 40% of her audience is in India. And she's like, oh, see you bought all those followers. And so now I'm not going to work with you. Now if somebody buys a bunch of followers in India, it doesn't matter. Because if the content spikes, it's reaching the right audience where that audience is interested in that content regardless of where they are. And so it's a little bit tougher on a performance standpoint because that audience might largely be elsewhere if you're only focused on selling within the US. But again, like this is an organic approach. You're trying to reach people who are thought authentically interested in that content, in that service or product or brand or whatever. And you're trying to build the dots, build a connection as strongly and naturally as possible. But that's why you run ads. So you can say, all right, these are the parameters. Otherwise, go. Just like you've created a run with it. And then you're more focused on performance and downfall. Yeah. I mean, these are the things that you kind of have to be aware of constantly because these really will shift wholesale, how you're approaching and how you're doing things. When I close these meetings, I do something called keep it short, which is, it's three short questions. The actual questions. Yes, the actual questions are short. They're designed to be not answered quickly. And that is joke. Are you ready? And that question is mostly retort. Yes. Underutilized platform for creators right now. Like, is there, I mean, like, obviously, we don't have like nearly as many. We've consolidated. But is there a place where you think there's a better ROI to be working with creators? YouTube is still maybe rolling. I think a lot of everybody focuses on Instagram and TikTok. But YouTube, I think, is where there's a lot of opportunity and a lot of new worship. So especially part of the conversation, how they changed the algorithm like six months ago. And they're like, they're allowing you to use all the content and pop into this and go into the backlog of the catalog. Yeah, absolutely. Related but unrelated, you could be a creator on any platform at any time in human history, when, where and why? Well, man, I'd probably say TikTok in early 2020. Yeah. Or maybe late 2019. So like before the pandemic, if you've been able to live a little bit so that you're-- Yeah, you've been able to up and then pandemic hits and boom, you're scat about that. Rocketship. No, I agree with that. The funny thing about that question is, when I first started asking it, I was like, this is a very simple question. And I'm like, not if you're in the weeds here because then you're like, OK, well, where can I monetize the best? And where can I do those? How am I going to grow? It's true. Yeah. The secondary part of that answer that we'll see in a few years if I'm right or wrong, I'm kind of bullish on live. Yeah. And like, everyone's been talking about live and how successful it is in Asia and has been for years and years, but for some reason, the West hasn't really caught on. I think it eventually it will. And I think we're getting closer and closer. I think it could be right now by starting to run more live content. And then in two years, we'll see if I actually do that. No, well, I think you're right, though, because it's funny enough, even though we've known that it exists or it's available, it's turning that into more of a commercial reason use form for that. Yeah. And finding it a way that it doesn't, it doesn't seem cringe or sass. Like if it's a specific platform and what not was, yeah, okay, that, you know, you know, what you're getting with that, you know, what you're trying to do. Yeah, I think there's a little bit more nuance needed. And also, like, probably creating there just as a hedge. And then if the platform is like, hey, we're going to supercharge this and amplify this as they have, and they've had moments where they've done that. Like, yeah, you can definitely benefit from that. No. Yeah, I think for most people, it's just easy to overlook it. Like people watch live, those are big numbers. And I don't mean like just on Twitch, I mean, like TikTok live as well. But, you know, these platforms are starting to prioritize that more and more. So, yeah, so, like, no, I like kind of going through the thought I just says, also, you might see a lot of people this year, especially the first half of this year talking about how they're like, how are you not creating a micro drama? And I'd be like, well, that seems like a lot more work. Then to just get on, if you have a, if you're just good on camera, you've got a good pair of social relationship. And you, you know, you just, you know, want to build an audience that way. I think, I mean, again, different things require different time. And some people will be like, yeah, but if you're doing like a three day mafia thought, like, that's a lot of time. Like, I understand. But for some people, like, yeah, the time associated in producing and editing and putting together a micro drama would still be more. Yeah, I agree. I think if you look at it really simply, you don't have to edit it with live. And for anybody that don't even need to say, say, right? That's it. If anyone's ever created a piece of content, you realize editing sucks. We're just going to start doing every one of these episodes live. Like, just made my life better, right? Yeah, yeah. Screw it. Yeah, yeah. I can hear Bill O'Reilly's voice in my head right now. It was famous internet videos all the time. Fuck it. Do it live. Last thing. You can remember buying in the last year from a creator off a live or just off of a social post. Like, caveat, it was more than a year ago. That's fine. But we make the rules. I bought a hat, a merch hat from PewDiePie actually. Yeah. Because on the hat in Russian, in my family's Russian, it says, yeah, and Sugabiyad is like, motherfucker. I don't know if we can keep that in. But it's like, I love it because it's in Russian. So almost nobody like that I'm walking around wearing that hat with can know what it says. But then I will come across a Russian person and be like, is your hat, say Sugabiyad? I'm like, yes, it does. And like, that's hilarious. And it's just like so funny. I don't know why he had that merch. It was sort of random thing. And it's like, even at the time, it's not like I watched PewDiePie a lot, but I just caught something and just saw that. It just spoke to him. And I was like, immediate by. Yeah. No hesitation. I've done that. I have too many random things. The pillow with the wings on it. There's been a lot of things that I'm like, you got me. Or it's like the little tiny, like almost like keychain vacuum cleaner for your car. And you're like, yeah, yeah, yeah. There was another one was the fan tech automatic screwdriver. And I didn't realize that I got like the mini version. So it's like for tiny, tiny little screws that like you had you need a specific tool for, that's the one I got. And then normal screws, I just have my good old great other shoe. Like, if you're ever putting together IKEA furniture, this will be super helpful. Otherwise, yeah, still a touch. It has come in handy. Yeah, it has come in handy with my toddler's toys because they're all battery operated for some reason. Yeah. I have a little screw in there somewhere.
- Here you go. - Look at this. - I'm so thrilled. - Look, there's a use for it. - Yeah. - I think we learned a lot in this. Like a lot of Fufufa thought, we'd think of what we get redundant in talking about this, the space, but it's just ever changing. And I really appreciate the candor. Community, thanks so much. - Appreciate it, man. Thank you for having me on. (soft music) It's no fluke, it's an original podcast from the Shorty Awards, hosted by myself, Jeff Farritt. Produced by Junian Sun, cover an episode of Art by Chelsea Sosano, and communications by Jeff Fland. If you love the show, give feedback or guess recommendations at
[email protected] or DM my son Instagrams. If you don't like the show, send a tweet to @unmos and he'll be sure to give back to you. Not a personal no. Thank you for letting me be part of today. Your commute, your bike ride, your doom scroll through our affordable houses on Zelo, every you're listening, really appreciate it. Until next time. (soft music)
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