• Brands have incredibly robust teams that are creating content. Do I think that brands are starting to think about how they can create content that looks and feels like Instagram native content? Yes. We're doing a lot more campaigns recently. It is a content creation play where we're working with people from 5,000 to 25,000 followers.

    We don't care as much about their reach, but we just want their viewpoint. We want their content. You think about a brand that's doing their own shoot. Maybe they can hire two models. Decent models, $1,500 a day. That's on the low-end. Photographer, three grand for the day. Production, you're in 10 grand for the day. You're going to shoot 20 looks that day. You got these two models. You shoot your 20 looks for 10 grand. Great. For the same amount of money, you could potentially work with 30 micro influencers who are going to shoot in 30 different locations and have 30 different points of view.

    I don't know if it would be advantageous for a brand to bring it in-house because you would start to lose what makes influencers so interesting and special, which is the ability to get those varied and wide points of view fairly affordably and fairly easily. I do see brands relying on, specifically micro influencers, more for content creation. I do see photographers who are creating content for brands beginning to suffer because they can't compete with the scale and price that micro influencers are able to give. I think a big part of it is that you get the photographer and the model and the production, you get all in one and it's insanely cheap.

    It's just one person out of 30 you're working with. Even if you don't love it, it doesn't matter because you've got 29 other amazing people doing things. There's less risk inherently in doing it. We are in a very real way seeing that as a trend. I think it's something that will become a trend. I think, most influencers, the goal, correct me if I'm wrong, is not to work in-house and be behind the desk. You want to leave that to the desk jockeys like us who sit and stare at a screen for 10 hours a day. How would you go to Positano three times a year if you had a full-time job in an office, I say? If you're a small influencer, seriously think about that as something to offer brands.

    Again, you have 10,000 followers. That's essentially meaningless for most big brands. The ability to give 10, 20 high-res images, that's huge and valuable. The ability to do that once a month for the next year could be really valuable. That could probably net you more money than trying to sell your 10,000 followers, which the most you probably get is $150 a post to do that, so you're not getting rich doing that. It's definitely something to consider.
    Episode #139
    - Instagram Story Best Practices, In-House Influencers, Growth Issues