The Miner: Issue 2

Hello beautiful people! It's time for your weekly dose of OMG, LOL, and WTF in influencer marketing.

This issue is a bit late because I just returned from the Miami brand building workshop. Whether you're a newbie blogger, expert in your field, or just have big dreams, you should come hang. Next stop is LA followed by Atlanta, Dallas, and Chicago.

I hope you enjoy this week's edition and don't forget to tell your friends. Hit "reply" with any and all feedback and if you read a good link send it to info@carbonaugust.com. Here we go!

DIAMOND IN THE ROUGH

💎 In case you didn't know, you can post your IG and IGTV content from your desktop...

💎 Digiday chats anonymously with a hospitality marketer about working with influencers. The key takeaway? Non-travel influencers create the best content. I totally agree with this. I'm so tired of the drone shot in the pool, swimming with the pigs, the bath with the flowers. Blah, blah blah. Give me interesting content or give me Instagram death.

💎 Brands are rethinking the way they use influencers. First it was all about huge follower counts, then it was all about the micro influencer, now it's all about the tribe. There are so many sub-cultures on Instagram that it's becoming easier to target very niche groups. But that comes with its challenges. By working with smaller influencers, you might have higher engagement rates but it substantially more work and not every brand has that kind of manpower.

💎 TikTok is blowing up in the US. You might remember it as musical.ly but it was bought by a Chinese company name ByteDance. It makes sense that Facebook, Google, and Snap are all killing themselves competing with it, but it looks like the government is going to give them a hand. The LAST thing they want is China getting tons of data on Americans and that's exactly what's happening.

[Did you know if you sign up for my new course - Influencer Business Plan - you get a complimentary 30-minute personal coaching session? Enrollment ends next month. Don't miss out! Learn more and enroll today.]

GOLD MINE

💰 VCs are finally recognizing what we already knew: being an influencer is a legitimate profession. The first step was building a community, the second was partnering with brands and now influencers need resources to help manage their lives. From scheduling tools and banks, to Linkedin for influencers and shoutouts, Silicon Valley is coming and they're about to change the game.

💰 Maria Fagerström is a pilot influencer who figured out how to turn her day job into a lucrative IG career. She doesn't just post travel content, but gives her audience real insight into the life of a pilot. Fun fact: I booked Maria and her BFFs for a Carreraa x Elle collab way back when.

💰 Gwen Whiting and Lindsey Boyd are co-founders of The Laundress, an eco-friendly line of detergent and fabric care that they sold to Unilever earlier this year. Once they started buying nicer clothes they realized how hard it was to take care of them and their company was born. They didn't take any outside funding and bootstrapped their company. They have a NY store, two in Tokyo, over 85 products and even a collab with John Mayer.

💰 Pinterest is having a Video of the Year contest. You win some things and such but I didn't read the T&Cs so make sure they can't steal your first born child before you enter.

[You don't have to live this influencer life alone. Come join the Carbon August facebook group and get your community on.]

BLACK LUNG

⚫ The FTC is cracking down on fake followers and has settled with Devumi, a company that sold followers, likes, views, etc. As part of their settlement, Devumi had to give up the emails of everyone they've ever done business with. I should know, because I received a nice email from the FTC telling me I must delete any followers, connections, subscribers, views or likes I purchased from them. Now before you side-eye me you should know I bought some likes back in 2016 when Instagram came to my job. They were printing your top four liked photos and putting them in a frame. I wanted them to be all photos with Alexander so I bought 25 likes for each of those photos. They've since been deleted (as my entire IG account has changed) but I'll forever be in the system as will anyone else who has bought anything from this company. What I did was harmless as I didn't do it to fool a brand, but this information could have harmed my career if I was a traditional influencer. So if you've been thinking about it, I said it once and I'll say it again, don't do it.

⚫ Some "influencer" left a one-star review on Yelp for a restaurant she said has some of the best Italian food she's ever had. Why? Because she didn't get a discount after telling them she was an influencer and was going to post about them on IG. That's not how this works. That's not how any of this works.

That's it for this week's edition of The Miner. Don't forget to tell me your thoughts. And keep your eyes open because I'm going to drop one more 30-minute coaching session before the end of the year. I wasn't going to do it, but I can't ignore the roar in my DMs.