The new social with Rachel Karten

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Welcome to the Rebooting show. I am Brian Morrissey. I'm joined today by Rachel Karten. Rachel is the author, the creator of Link in Bio.

She is a... I would say you're a social media expert. We used to call... We used to say social media guru, but I'm not gonna- No.

[laughs] I'm not gonna label you that, Rachel. Thank you. Those days are over. I appreciate it.

Those days are over. Those days are over. That was, like, probably one of my first newsletters. I was like, "No gurus.

I'm not a social media ninja." Like, I don't... Just call- Exactly... me a social media manager.

[laughs] Okay, go back to the, the social media manager. I mean, that was- [laughs]... those were the intern days, and I wanna g- get into that. But before, just to get to your bona fides, in case people don't know, you were at, at Conde Nast and led the social team at Bon Appétit when it really exploded, like, as a brand, and then kind of imploded during the pandemic.

It was like e- explosion, implosion. How did you get into social media? Because it is, it is a career that, geez, they probably did- do have majors in it. They did probably.

They definitely do. But, like, most people- [laughs]... sort of found their way in it accidentally, at least from what I remember. Yeah, I feel like I...

I was known among my friends in high school as the person who would log into your Facebook and write your album captions for you. And so maybe my career- Oh my God, you were logging into Facebook- I was logging into Facebook... uh, in high school, so. Yeah.

Well, yeah. [laughs] That, that helps, I guess, put you on the trajectory. But that was sort of probably my, my intro. But then in college, I had a blog on Tumblr, food and fashion blog.

[laughs] No need to talk more about that. But that sort of, like, introduced me to writing on the internet, discovering, you know, people on the internet and connecting with people there. And then I worked at a company called Plated, meal kit delivery service in New York, that I was doing their HR and doing their social media because I couldn't convince them that they needed a full-time social manager. Very odd, horrible combo.

Do not recommend doing HR and social media. But eventually, I made the case that I could be their full-time social person. And then I had always read Bon Appétit magazine. Obviously, I had the food blog back in the day, and so that was always sort of a passion of mine.

And so I think I had initially applied to Epicurious. Don't think I got that job. Then applied to Bon Appétit, or they reached out being like, "We actually have this role at Bon Appétit. Would you be interested in interviewing for it?"

So that's how I ended up there and worked there for four years. Yeah. So I mean, that was... You weren't in the, like, the height of the early social media.

That was when it was, like, truly the intern, you know? It was- I was, I was... I started working in social media in 2013, which is pretty intern vibes, but not- Was it still? Oh, it still is.

[laughs] It, it... The comment section is still filled with, like, "Give this intern a raise." So everyone does still think that, but obviously, there are now, you know, 10-person social media teams that exist, but the, the consumers still think maybe an intern is running it. Okay.

So about, I think in the fall, you, you posted... You, you, you had a newsletter about going post-social media, because when I started covering social media, it was... And I'm sure it still kinda is. I mean, first of all, it was social.

Like, I had a tweet-up, Rachel. I mean, this is how far I go back. [laughs] And I'm gonna brag. [laughs] So you had a Tumblr, I had a tweet-up.

And people showed up. I thought it was really cool. Like, I was, like, really into social media. Like, I was, like, true, like, original Twitter, and I saw it, like, as really powerful.

I mean, as a reporter, I give it credit for helping to de-commoditize me in a profession that was seeming to me was very designed to commoditize me, and- Hmm... I started tweeting and developing my own following, and I realized life is a lot about leverage, and this [laughs] it was good to have distribution of your own versus rely on your, your employer for that. Social media's changed tremendously, obviously, and you wrote about it being post-social media because, you know, at the time, it was a follower sort of framework, and you were trying...

Uh, brands were trying to... were amassing these large followings, and they were like, "Wow, this..." You know, we had... They had distribution, and, like, FacebookI mean, Coke was running TV commercials to build Facebook's distribution, and then Facebook pulled the rug out from under them and said, "No, you gotta pay for, for distribution," which, as a reporter, I thought that was like, you know, I can't...

I was like, "I can't believe. I'm outraged." And like, and the w- the brands were like, "Oh, great. We're used to paying for distribution.

It's fine." Yeah, yeah. [laughs] "Don't worry about it." [laughs] But social media's a totally d- different beast.

What is your theory of the case? Well, I feel like the original social contract with social media was, right, you grow followers, and your followers see your content. That is sort of how the initial agreement was made. And so when you had TikTok take off and had this really aggressive, like, interest-based algorithm that was like, "Hey, we actually think we know what you want to watch more than what you think you wanna watch," which is, you know, opting in via following someone, there was a real shift of what works.

And I think that a lot of brands specifically, and what I was writing about, are living in that old era, where they're like, "Our followers wanna see our content. We wanna show them what we think they wanna see," and that's just not how you get reach anymore. In fact, how much a non-follower enjoys your content is a better indicator of if you'll get reach than if your follower likes your content. And that's such a mind fuck [laughs] if you have built your entire career trying to grow follower to get reach, and now all of a sudden it's twisted, and it's like, "Oh, we have to entertain people who have never even heard of our brand, who have never even thought of us before.

How do we get them in the door? How do we, you know, welcome them to our table?" And I think that that is a, a real, real shift that is a huge opportunity if you're willing to make it be an opportunity, but I think a lot of brands have a hard time understanding how to show up in that new ecosystem. Yeah.

And, and you talked about how the middle lane is kinda gone now. What, what did you mean by that? You know, I think that when you are a brand, you grow your following, and you have sort of an estimated understanding of how many people will see your content. It's like, I'm The New York Times, I have a million followers.

I can assume that some percentage of my followers will always see that content. And so you can sort of estimate how something might do, and of course, things take off or things would tank, but there was sort of this, like, middle ground where your posts would always land. And I think now it's sort of like, are you on the fast lane, and are you about to go mega viral, or are you on the slow lane, and you have a million followers but 50,000 people saw it? And, like, that's a ratio that maybe feels a little bit brutal when you've spent years and years building that following to, you know, assume that people would see your content.

Yeah. And also, I think the big shi- what, obviously, the big shift is, is to short-form video on a lot of these platforms. I mean, short-form video has, has swallowed what used to be social media, which is a bummer for a tech space person like me, because I, I miss, I miss snarky Twitter. I was good at it, honestly, and it's gone now.

It was taken away from me, and now everything is short-form video. But I think that also... Doesn't that also push brands into thinking more like being programmers? Yeah, so I think the best brands right now are thinking about, you know, a comment I'll see a lot on, on those types of accounts are, like, my show is on, right?

They don't mean that literally. The consumer doesn't mean that literally, but they're sort of like, oh my gosh, the coffee shop that made that video I saw yesterday, it's back on with another episode. Maybe the coffee shop isn't thinking about it episodically, but they're like, you know, if you break it down, the set is in the coffee shop. The character is the barista, and you kinda have a show, essentially, and you're programming it that way instead of, you know, how you used to approach social media would be like, "Here are our five pillars, and these are the buckets that are gonna go into our pillars, and we're gonna talk about all these things on social media."

And I think the best brands right now are taking, like, a really focused approach and saying, "What's our show? What would the log line be for our social media strategy? What are we gonna be known for on social media?" Instead of trying to use your social media like a website and, like, be everything to everyone.

I think that's a, that's a really hard thing to do right now. So, like, g- give an example. Like, I mean, Duolingo. Like, go through, like, how they use social, because I think it's completely different than how brands used to use.

I mean, I, I covered Dunk in the Dark, uh, uh- [laughs]... a very seminal moment in social media. Iconic. Yes.

Yeah. [laughs] Truly iconic. Well, I'll say, you know, Duolingo, I think, is from maybe even an era before what I'm speaking about in terms of serialized content, but if you, if you think about it in a certain way, there's a tension of this app showing up in a really chaotic, surprising way. And if you think about the way that these discovery sort of based algorithms work, you need that hook.

You need that sort of, like, shock moment, and I think that they really first started with that, and then they built a character that all of a sudden, like, yeah, my show is on. The owl is the main character, and what kind of, like, hijinks is the owl gonna get up to today, right? And that sort of through line of familiarity also creates a really important, like, scroll-stopping moment, 'cause you recognize that character immediately, whereas a lot of brands don't have that sort of immediately recognizable hook.

And so when I, I was talking to the head of social at MLB, and he had this amazing line, uh, he heard from somebody else, so I'm gonna misquote it probably, but it was like, "We don't have short attention spans. We have short consideration spans." And so those few seconds where we're considering if we wanna watch something are so important. And so what Duolingo did really well is they said, "We have this owl.

We're gonna put the owl in the first three seconds," and you're immediately gonna be like, "Oh, I love this owl. I love whenever it does something wacky, weird, chaotic." And so that consideration pa- span, they really solved for it, and I think a lot of brands aren't solving for what those first few seconds of a video is, which I know sounds very, like, algorithm hacky, but is unfortunately sort of the state of what we are- Yeah... we are working in right now.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, [clears throat] you don't really have much of a choice, I don't think [laughs] these days. No. But I think the characters part is interesting, 'cause I think in a lot of, you know, within decentralized media ecosystemLike, characters are very important.

Like to me, like the podcast, like I do another podcast and, and we, we think about a lot and, and there's, there's other hosts. About there's characters. And, and the characters develop. You know, it's not...

It's more organic than like, it's certainly not sc- storyboarded. [laughs] Yeah. But to me, I mean, John Kelly Puck jokes about like my, my like cinematic universe, and I was like, "It's actually true." I do think you kinda do wanna build, uh, almost a cinematic universe with different characters.

Totally. And it's that repeatability and like that trust that you build that makes me personally wanna tune back in. And even like I think about a Gap right now, which a lot of people are saying like, you know, their social is amazing, and what they're doing is building trust over time that like they're gonna... If you see that music video star, I'm like, "I don't know who maybe Young Miko is, but I trust that like Gap always does a sick ad with musicians, and like essentially creates a music video, and like I'm gonna tune in for that."

And that's that sort of repeatability of like I can't wait to see who they're gonna work with next. And I think that we're also living in a time where I think consumers are really aware of how marketing works, and they want to be delighted by marketing. They know how algorithms work. They know that they're being marketed to, and so they want brands to really like step up and, and, and delight them and sort of put the effort in that I think maybe I haven't seen quite as much in the past as like more silence brand, we don't want you here.

It's sort of like if you're gonna show up in our space, like do something good with it, you know? [laughs] So do you see like brands like sort of bifurcating between... 'Cause everyone, like performance marketing sorta ate the world when it comes to these brands. Like, they really went hard into performance.

And, you know, it was always a divide between we used to call direct response and, and, and brand advertising. And brand was the sexier side. It was the TV ads. It was the, the, the ads in Conde publications and whatnot.

And then there was, you know, direct mail, you know, spam- Yep... various [laughs] other things. Directories. And then Google came around and, and, and vacuumed up the, the entire direct response industry.

And all the money [clears throat] for the platforms, not all the money, YouTube aside. Most of the money has, has been in DR really. They've just rebranded it performance because I think it confers higher social status. I'm not sure.

But it's really direct marketing. What I- I- is the, is the bifurcation like that brands will need to be like almost like entertainment studios on, on one side, and, and then they're gonna be running this mechanized marketing. I mean, the mechanized marketing's going nowhere, that's for sure. To me, what I see is, and it's even happening within the platform, we can look there for a sign, is there's going to be social media surfaces that are entertainment only.

Like, use those to your benefit if you're a brand, and try and create something that will get reach because there is huge opportunity for reach in a way that, you know, the typical sort of like only your followers see your content era limited to some extent. So now there's like infinite. You can go very, very viral if you're a brand. And then there will be surfaces for community, people who have opted in to see your content.

I sort of think about it as like opt-in, opt-out. So there's people- Mm... who aren't opted in. They're just scrolling for entertainment.

How will your brand show up there? And it can be very different than a surface where people have opted in. I think about how s- you know, Instagram has turned broadcast channels. That's people who have opted in to hear more from your brand.

So how you treat that surface should look really different than how you're gonna treat the entertainment surface. And so I just saw today, I think, Facebook launched a new app called Forum, which is Facebook Groups on an app. And so that's interesting to me. I'm like, "Okay-" Mm.

"... that's their community surface," right? That's where people are chatting, sort of like a Reddit-type surface that was within Facebook, that they're saying, "Hey, here's a new app where you can just get that." To me, that tells me, "And we're gonna supercharge the entertainment side of Facebook now.

You can have your community over here. We're gonna, we're gonna supercharge entertainment." And I think that with Instagram we're seeing the same thing. Adam Mosseri said pretty recently that they think about social media now as what you send to a friend in your DM.

So it's not about sharing, you know, your marriage on feed. It's sharing a meme with a friend who just got married that somebody else posted. And so that's where they think of social as happening, is like, "Oh my God, it's the meme you send to a friend, and then you're talking in the DMs." That's really interesting.

That's not how social media was sold initially. It was sold as you post updates that your friends see. And so I think that we're seeing these platforms sort of bifurcate into entertainment surfaces, community surfaces, and brands should sort of start to think about their social media in that way as well. Internally, that has to, to change things.

I mean, I think your first, your first newsletter was a s- a [laughs] cri de coeur about the, the social media manager who was long, long-suffering social media manager who has been ranked low on the social hierarchy of, of marketers. And the tables always turn, so [laughs] do not... You know, the people who are on lower, I saw this, you know, with the, the quote unquote digital. You know, it was like the, the web shops.

You know, they were known as corridor agencies because they, they waited in the corridor for when the like TV people were finished pitching the big idea, and then they brought in the, the website folks to talk about how they were gonna... They called it like matching, matching luggage, where it was like, "Okay-" Mm. "... you're gonna take our big idea-" Mm-hmm.

"... and you're gonna match it to like this little website, and, and we'll give you a half million dollars to do a microsite," which was great business. But- [laughs]... that went away 'cause only 2,000 people went to the microsite.

But this has to be a bigger part of... Talk to me about how the role of, quote unquote, social media, I think we probably need a different name for it at this point, how that role has changed within the overall marketing organization.I mean, I think that social media in my past and when I was getting started was thought as distribution for th- things that somebody else was making to some extent, right? Mm.

It was like you're gonna distribute that on Facebook, or maybe if you're lucky, you'll take a nice flat lay photo and that's your creative brain getting put to use. [laughs] But it was not very much creative ideation or you weren't really involved in campaigns, I would say. And now you have social media managers in, you know, in-house campaign pitch meetings and agency pitch meetings. The ideas are coming from the people who are scrolling every day, living on the internet, what are sort of like the signals that you're seeing.

And I think that they're, they're given a nice seat at the table now for bigger creative ideas. There's also just a shift in the way that I think marketing teams are operating. Something that I've written about recently is just how many, like, in-house filmmakers I'm seeing for films that are going on social. You know, Gap is building out an entire, like, entertainment division essentially that looks a lot like a Hollywood studio would look.

One of my favorite brands is called Phrrm. It's a perfume brand, and they are, you know, they have an amazing in-house film team that their social is essentially just short movies. And I think that in the past, you know, that budget would never be allocated for just, you know, Instagram. [laughs] Yeah.

They're, they're not commercials that are going anywhere. So we're seeing a bigger sort of investment, I think, in, okay, we have to entertain online now, and there's a huge opportunity if we choose to do that. And so how do we, how do we build not only our social team around that, but also our marketing team, our creative team, and not thinking of it as such a, like, siloed way? Yeah.

I also think about how technology companies themselves market themselves, because y- everything from Silicon Valley, like, filters down to the rest of us. You know, we never got snacks in the office until Silicon Valley- [laughs]... decided that we should have snacks. I mean, that was one positive that came out, right?

But how they market is very different, I think, than how a lot of brands traditionally have marketed. And they, I think there, there's a bunch of different reasons why they wanna go around media, but they, they're investing, a lot of them are investing a lot in their own original, you know, basically media arms, or affiliated media arms. Can I be honest, though? Yeah, of course.

I only ever hear about, I only ever hear about new media. I've never seen consumed new media. I, oh, a new media, new media. I'm saying from a Silicon Valley standpoint.

Yeah. I'm not exactly sure what they're putting out that is interesting. [laughs] Okay, so you rated- Is that fair? [laughs] No, uh, I mean...

All right, well, let's actually unpack this. Let's start with first principles. I don't, I, I guess, like, what is the strategy, right? Like, so I think a lot of, you know, like take AI, right?

Like, we've got everyone, the, the, the meme of college kids booing AI as, you know, and that's, of course, anything that sort of starts to trend, it will, it'll have so many imitators. Now, if anyone's speaking at a graduation, I would just, you know, gloss over that part of the- [laughs]... the speech, 'cause you're gonna get booed. That's just how it works.

But they're probably tapping into something. You see, like, with what OpenAI did and, and, and buying TBPN, that clearly was to, was because they, they feel like they were behind in, in what they love to call narrative and whatnot. I don't know. I think like any industry, they can be very insular, and I think a lot of their efforts are preaching to the converted.

I mean, these are whatever, you know, cracked founders who have OpenClaw up and running at all times. Like, that's [laughs] like not the, you know, I don't know, I don't know if Marc Andreessen is, is reaching the masses. I, I could be wrong. [laughs] I also think that there's, with this sort of like democratization of social media, I do feel like I don't even, I don't even take in brand content anymore.

It's all, like, a surface area of how a brand shows up, and that can be through f- a founder's content, that can be through a clipper or whatever it might be, and that creates, in my head, a image of the brand. And I think that a lot of these companies, I find the, [laughs] the founder to maybe cloud my opinion of the, of the brand in a way that's, like, hard for me to take in whatever the launch video is of the actual thing, if that makes sense. And so I think- So you think they're doing a ba- a bad job?

Like, I mean, 'cause they're pouring a lot of money into these, like, launch videos, for instance. You know, the launch videos have gotten, like, very cinematic [laughs] in many ways. If you're on Twitter, maybe, but I've never seen it break through beyond Twitter, to be honest. I just polled my audience of what brands they think are great at social.

Very, very few tech companies are showing up there, I would say. It's, it's just, I understand that it's also for a niche audience, and so again, like, they're showing up where their audience is, and so I don't think that's a bad thing either. But I just think in terms of, like, we should be looking at them as s- some sort of north star for marketing. I, I find a lot of the conversations happening on Twitter about marketing to be actually quite behind.

Oh, like clipping, like that's a thing. That's sh- what do you mean? That's short form video that we've all been sort of- Yeah... doing.

Of course, podcasts, the clips, you know what I mean? I find that to be sometimes, like, a little bit behind what most traditional marketers actually already know. Yeah. Why do you think, I, this, the clipping discourse did kind of l- like explode for some reason.

I'm not sure why. Because I think that there's an understanding now that you can almost treat social media like a slot machine and put it as much stuff as you want out there and something will hit. And I think if you, when you start to reframe social media that way, it can be a very appealing thing for people because distribution is whatever, and so people want to just say, "Oh, oh my God, if I post 100 clips a day, well, my likelihood of hitting the jackpot is much better." And so I, I, I think that sort of framing of what social media is- Mm-hmm...

whereas I think in the past it would be like, well, you only post once a day because you don't wanna annoy your followers, and that sort of has gone out the window. And so I think that that's sort of like a-Reframing what I think people are understanding So, so wait, is, is that flood the zone concept, is that valid? It's valid. It's not one that I necessarily endorse.

[laughs] Why don't you endorse it? I think you could do that. Just like with any type of marketing, there's marketing that I think is, you know, I don't wanna say ethical, but just sort of like is, um- It's growth hacking... think more in to- m- yeah, so thinking more in long-term versus short-term gains, I guess I would say.

But sure, you could do that and get attention and, and maybe get a nice profile or something, which isn't meaningless. Yeah. No, it feels like, I don't know, when I read a, a lot of the articles and I... It felt like another growth hack, honestly, and it was not just social media.

Digital media has always been filled with, with various growth hacks. I mean, I'm glad the, the, that small period of threads sort of went away, not Threads the, the app, but like actually doing threads. And, and social media has always had its share of, of growth hacks, and this is just to me, the latest one, and then the platforms will get flooded, and maybe they want that. I don't know.

Maybe be- because they have, you know, AI and algorithms, they're saying, "Hey, this is a sorting problem. We love to have more items to sort from because we are more likely to be able to get that one piece that is gonna get someone to stop scrolling and spend more time." I think so. Like, I don't know if there's a downside.

Like, are they... I don't know if people are gonna get, or you're gonna get... It's a little bit humiliating to me, but like, I mean, I don't wanna be one of the people in, in the few times I have to go to Vegas sitting at a slot machine- [laughs]... feeding it, feeding it quarters.

So you started Link in Bio in February 2021. Why, why did you start it? I started it because I wanted to create a resource for people like me, people who work in social media, who wanted to learn more about it and weren't getting what they needed from sort of traditional resources or media. Okay.

But you weren't thinking about this as, like, building a business originally, or were you? I wasn't. I was like, "I'm gonna start a little Substack." It w- the dashboard in Substack was still in beta when I started it.

I was like, "This is gonna be fun." But I, I had a following from working at Bon Appétit who knew me as working, doing their social. And so when I announced it on my Instagram that I was starting a Substack about social media, I got 8,000 subscribers in one day. And so then I maybe had to- Yeah...

take it a little bit more seriously than I think I had originally planned to. But I wasn't thinking about it as a business, and I, I just wanted to interview, you know, sort of the people who were running social media. I found a lot of traditional media was interviewing the CMOs or sort of the people that- Mm-hmm... were above them, and so I wanted to, I wanted to hear directly from them.

Yeah. And I think that, I mean, this is, like, a very powerful, like, form of media to me, the sort of expertise, like, right? 'Cause you're, you're writing for the best... I, I've, I've seen my career, like, B2B, and the best, like, B2B writes to a, to a job function, right?

And but it's usually done by, by journalists who have never actually done the job, right? And- Yeah... I think that's what, you know, Lenny Rachitsky i- is, is one of the reasons that he's, he's really good at what he does, is because he has been a product person. Yeah.

And now he basically, Lenny is, is... I guess in a previous world, we would think of that as the trade publisher of product. And, uh, you're writing for the social media, I guess what we used to call social media manager, right? Like, I mean, who are you writing for?

I write for a social media manager, and I also write for anyone who is on the internet and receives brand marketing and might be interested in, in what they're being marketed. But my- Okay, so you, you do both sides. You think of it as, like, B2B and B2C. Like, it's not just helping people do their jobs better.

I think that my core focus is that, but it has maybe attracted people who are also interested- Mm-hmm... in it. And so I hear all the time, like, "I work in finance, but I love your newsletter 'cause I love learning about social media," or, "I love seeing how... What that brand or the...

my favorite public library, why they went viral, then you interviewed them." So I think there's sort of a mix of it. But my sort of core, who I'm always thinking about, is how can I make this useful for somebody who is working in social media? Yeah.

I like that you go deep in, in this area. You know? Like, I mean, social media used to be covered by, particularly by traditional media, as, like, embedding a bunch of tweets. Like, you know, bad brand tweets w- [laughs]...

was like a, a genre of, in the... You gotta, you gotta publish nine stories a day, and so- Mm-hmm... you know, a couple are gonna be just a l- a, a bunch of embedded bad brand tweets. [laughs] But treating it, but treating these kind of areas that probably weren't treated as seriously as they should've been, I think is always, like, a really good, a good lane, 'cause it's useful and it's needed in the market, right?

Yeah. And I al- like, I think when I was thinking about starting it, and even now, it's like, do I extend beyond social media? Should I write about marketing? And I think actually staying focused on social media has benefited the, the newsletter in a lot of ways as well, is because you also are able to go really deep and nerd out, and there's also always a social media angle to a lot of stories.

So I'm always thinking like, "Okay, this is a big story, like, in the news right now. Like, what is the, the social media way into it?" Yeah. I mean, yeah, there is.

I mean, I can rem- see, in the old days, it used to be, like, it was a stretch sometimes to find the hook. Like, 'cause [laughs] it's like, you know, there, there would be... But now even the Iran war has a social media angle, right? That's true.

Haven't written about that though. Yeah. No. They've got...

I don't know. Iran has a good strategy. What do you think about the White House's social media strategy? Not good.

No? Too, too, too online? Too extremely online? Too extremely online.

Do you not like But that can be li- but, like, I was thinking that when you mentioned, like, very online people being in the social media role, 'cause I, I would think that that could be a risk, right? That you're... In, in anything, 'cause as, as I said, everything can be insular, right? And if you're like...

But then again, I don't know. Maybe, maybe, maybe people are just trying to reach the extremely online. But I think that, like, with the social media role now, it's, it's far, far beyond that. Yeah.

I think that there's ways in so- into social media that get engagement that I don't necessarily think is good engagement, and I think that sometimes the metrics of, like, reach can be confusing when you work in social media, of like, "Oh my God, this reached so many people," but what did it do? And I'm sure that's been a problem for a long time now, but I think I'm always trying to focus on, you know, how do we reach people and resonate and make something memorable? How do you make something memorable on social media right now?

It's very, very hard. You... There's those surveys that come up when you scroll TikTok that are like, "Do you remember what you saw two scrolls ago?" Yeah.

It's like, "No. [laughs] Couldn't tell you." Yeah. It's tough.

I, I find... I don't know if you've written about Kalsi's social media strategy. I don't totally understand it. But then again, I don't really love those brands, so, like, I might...

Maybe I'm l- I'm j- that colors my impression of how Poly Market and Kalsi are doing social media. Have you looked into them? I think that there's just some sort of, like, ethical standard that I think marketers need to hold themselves to, and if you don't, there's lots of options. And so I, I find that some of the way that they, they post pretty unethical.

Okay. S- Yeah... there's, yeah, there's, like, ethical social media. This is like Victor Wembanyama with, like, ethical basketball.

[laughs] Back to, back to your business. When did you decide it was gonna be a business? I, in 2023, created a send that would be for paid newsletter subscribers. What I wanted that to be was, "This send is for the practitioners.

You are deep in social. You want to be better at your job. This is a strategy send." And then the other send in the week was a free newsletter, usually an interview or an essay, that was for everyone.

You don't need to be, be a paid subscriber. And that is maybe a little bit more of like, "Oh, that brand you saw go viral last week, like, I interviewed their social manager, and, like, you get to learn all about their strategy." So that's sort of how I initially thought about it. And I also, with that paid newsletter, also created, like, a Discord community where people could join, show up, talk to other social managers, and, and also learn from them.

Yeah. Okay. So the free send is more for the general, more for the general audience, but the, the paid one, you're trying to get people their job. They need it- Yeah...

for their job. Yeah. Yep. And I, and I, and when I announced it, I also created a template that was, they could send to their boss to how to get it expensed, because that felt important to me.

That this is a educational resource, and you should be able to expense it with your job. Hmm. Do you track how many AmEx you have versus non-AmEx? It's always a good- No.

Maybe I should. [laughs] Well, it's not perfect, I guess, 'cause everyone wants to... the, the SkyMiles or something now. But it used- [laughs]...

to be, like, a shorthand for, for how much you're getting. Oh, that's interesting. You know? I never knew that.

Yeah. Okay, so you, you still do consulting, though. That's part... Like, explain the flywheel of the business, 'cause that keeps you, like, in, in the weeds, right?

I mean, your differentiator is that, you know, you are a practitioner, so you probably wanna continue as that. Exactly, yeah. I... When I left Bon Appétit in 2020, I started consulting immediately and haven't stopped consulting since.

So I consult with brands on their social media. The longest, I've worked with Cava for five years now as a consultant for them, and so that is sort of, I stay sharp, I work with them. I'm pretty, like, in the weeds there, I would say. And then that, it all works very symbiotically, [laughs] I would say, 'cause I get ideas working with them, or I'm talking to social managers and I'm hearing sort of what on-the-ground issues of like, "Huh, like, our Facebook posts are performing really well right now."

I'm like, "That's interesting." Like, I'm gonna look into that for the newsletter. And so it all sort of, like, works very nicely together. And then I work with brands sort of more on an advisory or speaker, going to speak at off-sites, that sort of thing.

Right. But how do you think about that? Because, I mean, you have a lot of s- How many subscribers do you have? 110,000.

Yeah. So, like, how do you think of that balance? Because you can, you know, you can keep building this and, and it become, like, a very big business on its own, but there's alwa- you're, you only have so much time and energy to, to focus. But you think that the consulting...

'Cause, like, sometimes people do consulting to get to where, to supplement, because it takes a while, particularly if you have a subscriptions f- focused model. Those, those tend to take time. I mean, you c- you convert, like, the true believers immediately, and then it becomes, like, a bit of a knife fight. But how do you think about that?

Well, I think I... You said it almost for me, where my, I don't wanna say edge, but I am a practitioner, and I do it too, and I think that, that the audience sees that, not only in the work, but also in just how they think about me. And so to stay sharp, to s- have good ideas, I find it to be necessary to consult and to work with brands and to hear what's going on, and to not be a reporter, because there are lots of reporters who write about social media, and they're great at it.

But what I think sort of helps me in some way is that I actually do it too. And so I think it's always gonna be important that I also do it too. Yeah. And you have a job- And we'll see...

board too. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, as long as you can keep everything going, it's great.

And you have a job board too. Do you do an event yet? I h- have not done an event. I've done happy hours, but no, no events.

Something, something I'm thinking about. You should do an event.Everyone does events. You gotta do events.

[laughs] I mean, once you have, like, you know, there's, there's a lot of social media managers. I always think the best, like, events are when you get particularly you zero in on a, a job title within the organization. It's ideal if they feel mildly aggrieved too, that people don't understand them. Like, I saw this with, like, ad ops.

Ad ops was this little area within publishers where people dumped problems, and people didn't really understand what ad ops did, you know? And getting ad ops people together was, like, really great because, like, there was only, like, a couple other ad ops people in their organization, and then all of a sudden there was, like, hundreds of ad ops people, and they were like, "Oh my God. This is amazing." They could nerd out.

I... Totally, and I see that already when I, when I throw happy hours. I think my goal is to figure out what that sort of summit-type event looks like. And, and you mentioned Lenny.

Like, Lenny is a big inspiration for me. I think that what he's built is, is so amazing, and I know he's done the Lenny and Friends Summit, and that's a, that's a big inspiration for me. Yeah. I mean, you have an agent.

This is, like, a new era, right? Like, you've... We had newsletter people with, that are signing with CAA. This is very different for me.

Explain that. I mean, you're, you're, you're not... Are you, like, building... Are you, are you, are you, like, a one-person operation and trying, or do you wanna build, like, a, like, a company?

Great question. I feel like I'm probably right smack dab in the middle of thinking about that, so I don't have a perfect answer for you. I think my, my belief up until now has been I'd like to do this by myself for as long as I can. Yeah.

And maybe I'm feeling that as long as I can right now. [laughs] That stretch. Yeah. And so I take the responsibility of putting out really good work all the time very seriously, and if that ever feels like it's faltering, then I need help.

And so I'm at that, I think, stage where [laughs] I can still put out good work, but I'm working on the weekends and working late at night and not having much of a life outside of scrolling and writing. And so that's something I'm thinking about right now, of what that looks like, of keeping it feeling personal because I think you mentioned Puck- Yeah... earlier. Like, I like reading Puck because I feel like I have a, a relationship, that's in quotes, with the writers in some way.

And so how do I sort of keep that while also building something that's gonna be sustainable for me long-term? Because I want to keep writing this. I, I love writing. It's the best job that I've ever had, but I am in that sort of stretch zone right now where I'm like, "I need a little bit of help."

[laughs] Yeah. Yeah. I... So many people reach this.

It's like good news is you've, like, you've succeeded. It's like, and then it's like, oh, no, you have to make the most consequential of decisions, which is, like, which direction to go. Like, some people wanna build what looks like more of a traditional business, and some people wanna have others who just help on things that they don't have any sort of particular leverage doing, you know? Mm-hmm.

Like- Mm-hmm... selling ads or maybe even organizing, d- handling the event organization itself. But it's, it's a hard decision, I think. It is a hard decision, but I did...

My husband just started working with me. [laughs] So that will- Oh, really? Yeah. [laughs] So that will be, that will be- Bold.

[laughs] I know. Fam- We're in a family business. [laughs] This is, this is great. I mean- [laughs]...

what, what antidote to the, the scale era that has been ending now for, like, 10 straight years than family businesses to replace them? Mm-hmm. Doesn't get any better. [laughs] Awesome.

I think that's about all I had to discuss with you, Rachel. This was, this was really great. I like, I love what you're doing, and I just think that there's, there's so many opportunities for, with all the, like, doom and gloom around the media and stuff, like, there are so many opportunities in areas like these to build, like, a meaningful, like, business around these kind of niches at the end of the day. I say a lot, like, I think every industry should have its version of a LinkedIn bio of, like, you know.

My husband comes from a production background. Like, a production, like, for the people who work in production, a newsletter that helps them do their job. Y- There's so many, I think, there's a lot of want for something like that, I think- Mm-hmm... of making people feel seen in their jobs and not trying to cover everything, and instead going really deep into one, one area.

Yeah. I, I think all industries should have it. And particularly, yeah, like, like practitioner. Like, the problem is- Exactly...

most people who are good at the thing can't do this thing, which is, like, reliably create content, whether it's writing. That's why I think a lot of people gra- gravitate to podcasts. It's easier than writing. And, but, like, most people can't stay on that treadmill, right?

Like, they can be really good at... Like Re- Lenny, I don't think Lenny's, like, the best product person who's ever, like, graced, like, the earth. But his superpower is that he is a product person, and he knows what it's like to be a product person. Mm-hmm.

He'll have empathy for what product people are like that non-product people will not have, and he happens to also be really good at the content piece. And I think that, that can be kind of rare in a lot of fields, but it's very powerful. That's fair. I agree.

I agree. Awesome. Well, thanks so much. Appreciate you taking the time on a Friday.

Yeah. Thanks, Brian. Nice to meet you. Cool.

Thanks. Yeah.