Today we talk about Instagram's new 20-slide carousel feature, TikTok's Spotlight feature for movies, and an interview with Kristen Bousquet with actionable strategies for content creators looking to monetize.
Show Notes:
You can now share 20 slides in one Instagram post (The Verge)
TikTok Spotlight (TikTok)
In this episode, we chat with Kristen Bousquet, a creator monetization coach who helps content creators and influencers build profitable businesses. Kristen shares her journey from starting her business during the pandemic to creating a thriving membership community that combines the intimacy of one-on-one coaching with comprehensive educational resources.
Kristen started her company after selling her first business for $100k at 25 years old, and since then has been able to generate over $450k in her creator business as a microinfluencer. Soulcialmate’s goal is to educate entrepreneurial creators on how to turn their online influence into a profitable, self-sustaining business through "Soulcial Scoop" podcast, creator membership ("Soulcial Suite"), and coaching programs all while keeping the "soul" in "soulcial media".
We dive into her podcast, Social Scoop, where she discusses social media news and offers actionable tips for creators. Kristen also shares her innovative "anti-pitch" method for connecting with brands—focusing on relationship building over cold pitching. She offers insights on identifying your unique value proposition and why it's crucial for standing out in a crowded space. Kristen's passion for animal rescue also shines through as she discusses her experience fostering dogs and her commitment to making a difference in the lives of animals.
Whether you're a seasoned creator or just starting out, this episode is packed with practical advice and inspiration to help you take your content creation journey to the next level.
Links:
00:31 - Instagram expands carousel posts from 10 to 20 slides.
03:17 - Introduction to the interview with creator coach Kristin Busquette.
07:03 - When and how content creators should start monetizing their platforms.
10:28 - Explanation of the "anti-pitch" method for building brand relationships.
18:37 - Importance of a unique value proposition for content creators.
00:05
Welcome to the Instagram stories for Saturday, August 10th. I'm your host Daniel Hill and this is the weekend edition of the Instagram stories. Before we get into the podcast interview that I promised, the biggest news of the day is that Instagram has announced you can now share up to 20 slides in one Instagram post. If you're familiar, Instagram carousels, sometimes called photo dumps, have been around since 2017.
00:31
but you could only add up to 10 pieces of content to each carousel post. Instagram has now expanded that to 20, which is more in line with TikTok, which actually supports posts of up to 35 photos. As a reminder, Instagram carousels do have the ability to pair songs with your slides and to do collaborative carousels that allow multiple users to add to their content to a group of photos. Nice to see that Instagram is expanding this from 10 to 20.
01:01
Although frankly, I think that's way too much for one post. At that point, you should use something like Google Photos and create an album and share that with your friends because are you really gonna swipe through 20 photos? That's a lot. Just my opinion. And one more piece of news I wanna talk about has to do with TikTok. Have you ever seen a movie that you're interested in watching on TikTok? Maybe you saw a movie trailer or you watched someone give a review of a movie that you were interested in seeing.
01:28
Or if you were like me, you saw part number 82 out of 250 from a movie and you sat there and watched the clip like you had never seen the movie and you don't have the movie on your giant TV that you could just watch in there instead. No, you wanted to watch that little clip on TikTok instead. Well, good news. TikTok has a new feature called TikTok Spotlight, which sort of combines the power of TikTok with IMDB and a lot more.
01:55
I'm going to let the TikTok team explain that. Here's the clip. TikTok is the place where fans come to discover and share the things they love. But imagine if there was a way to take direct action after seeing a TikTok about your favorite movie or television show. Introducing TikTok Spotlight, a one-of-a-kind product feature that allows you to harness the power of TikTok fan communities for your films, TV, and franchises.
02:20
Here's how it works. All of the fan creations about your movie or TV show will now feature an anchor link. Users can tap that attribution link. They'll arrive on a custom in-app destination where they can discover more, like synopsis, cast, official accounts, and related creator content. Users can take action, like buying tickets, watching streaming options, adding to favorites, and more. Looking to amplify your fandom with fun and easy creator rewards, you can encourage users to create their own fan content.
02:50
And with your analytics dashboard, you can monitor emerging trends and tap into on-platform fan conversations. TikTok Spotlight is launching globally to help TikTok communities co-create around their favorite entertainment content. So see your fandom come to life on the For You feed today. I think this is a cool idea and it saves me opening a separate window to go on IMDb to find out more about the movie.
03:17
We are going to take a quick break. When we come back, we are going to have an interview with Kristen Bousquet, who is a creator coach. She helps content creators monetize. So if you've ever thought I might want to make some money from the hard work that I'm putting into social media, you're gonna want to hear this interview. Oh, hey, welcome back. Let's get right into the interview with Kristin. Today on the show, we have Kristen Bousquet. Kristen, welcome. Hi, thank you so much for having me.
03:45
Kirsten, for people who might not be familiar with you, can you tell us who you are and what it is that you do? Yes, I am a creator monetization coach as well as a creator myself. In 2020, when the world was seemingly ending, I was starting my business, Social Mate, where I work with entrepreneurial content creators and influencers to teach them how to monetize their online influence to build an actual profitable, self-sustaining business.
04:16
Now I know you have a membership community as well. Can you talk about that a little bit? Yeah, I originally when I first started coaching, I was doing a lot of one-on-one calls and I really loved the intimacy and community that it brought. It really strengthened so many of my relationships but the one issue that I found was that I was booking so many of them that I was on the phone all day long saying a lot of the same things over and over again.
04:42
And eventually I realized it wasn't necessarily going to be sustainable for me to do long term. So I moved on to actually creating a course. And the course again was really great for the education piece, but I really missed being on calls with people and like actually getting to talk and hang out. And so one day I had the idea to create a membership where we basically have all of the kind of community and support that we would get from those one on one calls.
05:10
but it's even better and more amplified because we have so many creators that can do this with each other. It's not just me coaching one person. And then we also have a really big educational kind of aspect to it as well, where we have resources and community forums and all of that as well. So it married the intimacy of one-on-one calls with the education of a course. And honestly, it's been the best decision I've probably made in my business. I love that.
05:40
I actually found you because I was looking for podcasts similar to mine. And I think yours was, or is unique because you talk about social media news, then you dive into things that content creators really have been struggling with or asking you about. Can you talk a little bit about your podcast? Yeah, we started the podcast in 2021, mostly just because this is actually when I had my course and I really, again, was missing having
06:09
that moment to talk to people about social media and creating content. So I actually created the podcast. It's called Social Scoop. And in the first five or so ten maybe minutes, we go over all the social media news because we all know that it's very ever changing. And every time you log on, it feels like there's something different happening. So it allows you to really take that moment each week to figure out what the heck is going on.
06:36
But for the whole rest of the episode, we're really giving actionable tips and diving very deep into specific topics for content creators to actually, again, help them create better content, but also build a business that is going to actually be profitable and something they could, they could potentially quit their job and live off of. Let's talk about that. So if someone is starting to build an audience, whether it's on Instagram or a different platform.
07:03
How do they know if they're ready to monetize, if they're ready to start reaching out to brands with pitches or ideas to make content for those brands? This is such a great question because I think the answer is not exactly what people would expect. A lot of people think, okay, when I hit 10,000 followers or when I have this engagement rate or any other...
07:26
metric that we pay attention to as creators, they wait for a specific moment to say, okay, I'm big enough now, I can actually start doing this. I think at this point in 2024, that is just not the case. So many brands want to actually work with a lot of these smaller creators, maybe even more than they want to work with the bigger creators. Typically, the nano creators and micro creators just have so much more rapport with their audience because
07:56
have conversations with so many of them versus someone who has a million followers isn't very likely to be actually conversing with every single person there. So definitely don't let follower count stop you. I would say you're ready to start reaching out to brands when you feel like your content feels like it's good to you. When you feel like...
08:20
very proud of your content. You're just on fire because the content is so good. People are loving it. You're making all these friends. People are coming to your page and sending you DMs. Like, when you feel that consistent, I just call it like you feel like you're on fire, you will know, okay, brands are going to want me now. Things are rolling. Things are going really well, but it's definitely not like a specific stat or number that you really have to watch out for. Interesting.
08:47
I have felt that way in the past, but I certainly haven't felt like that with the algorithm lately. But maybe that's just me experiencing that. I feel it's very inconsistent, so hard to get a level of fire where you feel like, okay, things are falling into place. When someone feels that they are at that point where they're on fire, how would they approach reaching out to brands?
09:11
This is another question where I feel like I have a very, a lot of the times when you're scrolling through TikTok or scrolling through Instagram, you hear a lot about sending cold pitch emails to brands, even so far as a lot of creators or coaches sharing the emails of who you can reach out to. But you have to think about it like this. The people who are at these brands, if you are publicly, if they're publicly getting their email shared to
09:37
thousands, potentially millions of people on the internet. Can you imagine what their inboxes look like? I truly would not want to be them. So the way I look at it is I don't want to just be another email in this inbox that is very likely just going to get deleted unless I'm doing something absolutely insane to stand out. The copy and paste pitch templates at this point, I just don't think that they're...
10:03
very useful. And honestly, I actually don't even teach cold pitching at all to any of my students because I do think it is a waste of time. We very often just don't get responses to them. So you spend all this time copying and pasting, but maybe you customize a few things in your pitch and all of that seemingly doesn't really get you anywhere.
10:28
So in, I spent the whole year just experimenting because I was for years sending out cold pitches. I was like, I don't understand why I'm not getting responses. This pitch is beautiful. Like it tells why I love the brand. But again, everyone else's pitch looked exactly the same as mine. And so what I did in 2021 was I actually started experimenting with LinkedIn and Twitter at the time. And I was really trying to find the people that worked at these brands that I wanted to partner with.
10:58
and get to know them just as people and have conversations with them that were immediately me asking them for something because that can feel aggressive and almost make people feel a little used and we have to again remember that there's humans on the other side here. After a whole year of experimenting with that, I found that for the amount of cold pitches that I'm sending, I was getting a much lower response rate and success rate than
11:25
all of the LinkedIn and Twitter messages that I was sending and these connections that I was building. So I later on in the year and in the beginning of 2022, I really solidified a framework that I now refer to as the anti-pitch method. And it's really a method that isn't necessarily the instant gratification of you send a pitch, maybe the brand says yes, and you get your money and everything's great. It's more about networking and relationship building so that...
11:54
Again, the people on the other end, you know them, they know you. When a new partnership maybe comes up, a new campaign that they're working on, they already know that you exist. And they're like, oh, let's get Daniel on this. Like, he would be perfect for this versus you having to send out all of these cold pitch emails. So for me, it's more about relationship building. And LinkedIn has actually been a really great place for that.
12:19
We are going to take a quick break. When we come back, Kristen explains exactly what her anti-pitch method is and how you can get started with it. So stick around. Good news. We are back. Continuing with the interview with Kristen Busquette. Here's Kristen explaining her anti-pitch method. She does in order to work with brands. Okay, so explain what you do if you don't mind a little bit more. So say there's a brand that you want to work with. You really like their product or their service.
12:47
You've been using it for a long time and you think, I would love to create content for this. So you look up maybe who's in the marketing department at that company, who's in charge of perhaps influencer marketing, and you send them a connection request, right? Is that how you start? Yep, yeah, there's actually one step before that that I would recommend doing just to make this process again, feel as organic as possible for the person on the other end.
13:11
What I usually like to do, I call it warming up the brand. And this is like after you've found the brands, this is almost like the second level, the second step. Warming up the brands, essentially just interacting with them through like social. So maybe on Instagram, obviously like making sure you follow them should be step number one. You'd be surprised at how many people don't do that, but then expect a brand to give them thousands of dollars.
13:36
It's very simple, give them a follow. And then I typically will turn post notifications on or story notifications on and actually spend some time interacting with their content, just organically. And then I also really love to, if it's not too big of an ask for me and like the way that I would do it, I really love to organically include the brand in my stories, because a lot of the times that will go straight to their DMS and they'll be able to say, oh, wow, this person actually.
14:05
likes us enough to share us organically, they're getting absolutely nothing out of it. But now they've seen my username a couple of times and they know that again, like I'm actually interested in the brand. I'm loyal enough to the brand or interested enough that I'm willing to do like free work for this. So that's warming up the brand. Then what I would do either like at the same time as that or a little bit after that is I would go on to LinkedIn after I've made sure that I've
14:35
And I would find the people like you said, an influencer marketing, that's like the best title to find. But sometimes the companies aren't that specific and it might just be like general marketing person. But you'll find someone who works in the department that would probably be the person that's hiring you. Typically, when I send that connection request, you have a little area to write a note. And in there, I'm writing a note that shows that I'm paying attention to what the brand has going on, but I'm not asking them for anything.
15:04
And that's again, I think where another mistake is potentially made. A lot of people are like, oh, I'm going to get in that little connection note and say, Hey, my name's Daniel. I love this podcast, Mike brand, and I'd love to partner with you. Do you have any campaigns coming up? That feels the same as a cold pitch, right? So there's not a big difference there. Here, I would more be saying, Hey, I saw this new product that you came out with. I saw that you're cruelty free.
15:30
super excited to hear more about it and follow along with the business. You're just complimenting them saying, hey, you're doing a great job, love it, and moving on. I typically will keep all of this in a tracker just so I can say, okay, I connected with this person at this brand, and I already did the warm up process. Now I'm ready to move into the next step of the process, which is more of this warm up kind of
15:57
action on LinkedIn. So now I'm going to be watching with those people that I connected with what they're posting. And I'm going to, same as I do on Instagram, go in there, interact with things that they're sharing, maybe go comment back and forth. The whole point of this warm up process is I just want them to see my name or see my handle in as many places as possible, but also as many times as possible. That is going to be really proving to the brand that like I am
16:26
It's almost like the squeaky wheel gets the oil. So after you've spent some time doing that, typically what I like to do is actually try and invite the brand into kind of having a more one-on-one conversation. So I'll go over to the DMs on LinkedIn and again, just compliment the brand. Maybe there's something new they're working on. And then I'll just invite them to potentially get on like an intro call where we can meet each other. I can hear what they're working on and
16:54
Once I've heard on that call what their goals are, their priorities are, it's so much easier for me to say, hey, this all sounds really awesome. I'd love to be a part of it. Are you okay with me sending a proposal with just some ideas that I have? After I send that proposal, that's typically where I'm hoping to wrap up a partnership. It always, I guess, looks a little bit different. It's not always that quick and perfect. Sometimes brands don't wanna get on calls. Sometimes there's no campaigns they're working on, which is why I say it's not always instant gratification.
17:25
Got you. Have you ever experienced it where there's a brand that you really want to work with? You think it would be a great fit and you just can't get people to either respond to your connection request to accept them or respond to DMs or how have you dealt with that? Yeah, yeah, it's definitely not uncommon. And the other thing too is like some brands are they maybe have a profile for the company on LinkedIn, but like they as the marketing person, maybe you don't have a LinkedIn or they're not active on LinkedIn. So
17:52
The way that I look at it is if I can use the anti-pitch method and in instead of cold pitching, I'm always going to do that first. Secondary to cold pitching, I'd actually rather use like Instagram DMs to have these same type of conversations. And then lastly, I would fall back on cold pitching. But honestly, it's very rare. I honestly don't still don't remember the last time I've sent a cold pitch between LinkedIn and Instagram DMs, you really should be able to
18:19
find someone who will respond to you in one of those places. That's great. You talked about in a recent podcast episode before you get to this point where you want to pitch brands that it be really clear what your unique value proposition is. Can you talk a little bit about that?
18:37
Yeah, this kind of goes along with the idea of you sending a lot of cold pitches and brands getting the same pitch from everyone. It's always, hey, my name is this, I'm this type of creator, I'm from here, I love your product, but we're not really doing anything to set ourselves apart there. A lot of the times I fall back on my unique value proposition. What is it that makes me unique and valuable to...
19:04
this specific company. I think about people that have certain content styles that they do. Like Remy Bader is always a really great example that I use. She created that whole realistic Zara Haul series on TikTok and she is known for just like funny try on content.
19:22
So that for me is a huge part of her unique value proposition. If I'm American Eagle or Abercrombie, I know I'm going to hire her. And that's probably the type of content that I'm going to get. And no one else is doing it in a way like Remy Bader is doing it. So how can you either showcase like your content format is different? Maybe it's something in your personality. Maybe it's your target audience. I know for me, that's actually a huge part of my unique value proposition is
19:52
My audience is all content creators who are trying to monetize. So when I work with a brand that has a company that helps creators monetize, there's no better person for the job versus me just saying, I talk about social media. So get specific and don't be afraid to really hone in on that target audience or that content format or again, something in your personality that is really going to set you apart from all of these other creators that are applying for the same job says you.
20:22
I really liked this and I want to just drill in a little bit and selfishly apply it to my own unique value proposition. I was thinking as you did this in a podcast episode that I listened to, what is my unique value proposition? And I would say that mine is I focus on sharing social media news with content creators and social media marketers who don't have time to stay up on all the changes with the platforms. And that's why they listen to my show because they can get it in a bite-sized piece. Now would you take that and put that in your bio?
20:52
it first off, let me back up. Is that a unique value proposition the way I've described it? Or should it be shorter or different or what? I think it's a great one. Actually, I think if you were to say, Oh, I help get the news to these people. Great. But okay, there are a lot of other outlets that do the same thing. But I think you targeting it in a way that like you do it quick for people who don't have a lot of time. That could definitely be something that sets you apart. So I think that actually looks great. And where I would put it, honestly,
21:21
it would become like my whole personality. I would put it everywhere. So definitely something that you could share in your bio, something that I would share throughout my content, like the theme of my content might be around people who don't have a lot of time. Let me do this quick and easy and make it convenient for you, easily accessible for you. And then I would also be definitely putting it in my LinkedIn profile so that when I am connecting with brands using the anti-pitch method,
21:48
they know that's a big pillar of mine in my business. Obviously, if you are still sending cold pitches, that's a great place for it as well. And I would be more focusing deeply on that than I would, I'm a creator and I love your product. I would more be saying like, this is who my audience is, this is what's important to them, this is what makes my audience different and applicable to you versus maybe someone else that might be sending you a cold pitch.
22:18
Now will someone ask me for data to prove this? Because to be honest with you, the data that I have is just people who have sent me DMs telling me this and people who have written the reviews on Apple podcasts that I read and that's what I've pulled out of it. But I've never been able to run a report to say, oh, 50% of my audience is content graders and 50% is social media marketers. I don't have that level of data. Does that matter? Or do you think me just going off anecdotal evidence of reviews and DMs that I've gotten is enough?
22:47
Yeah, I definitely don't think you need any sort of stats. I'm also in the same boat. There's no way for me to measure everyone as content creators or everyone is not. I just know, again, based off of the DMs, the podcast reviews, the content that I get the best responses on, all of that allows me to make like a generalization. And I think that's fine as long as you're very confident, as long as you know that's actually accurate.
23:14
I think it's totally fine to go off of without any sort of data. And another thing you could do to prove this, if you really feel like you needed to is in maybe a media kit or a portfolio, you put screenshots of some of those DMS or some of those comments or podcasts reviews to show exactly who these people are and what it is that is a struggle or a need for them that you're solving. Okay. We're going to take a quick break, but when we come back, Kristen is going to talk about whether or not this applies to other types of content creation.
23:43
not just for social media. Welcome back. This is the last part of our interview with Kristin, where she talks about if the anti-pitch method that she explains can work for other types of content creators, not just those who make content for social media. One last question, because we talk so much about creating content for brands in terms of social media, does all of this apply for podcasting as well? Is that a completely different set of skills and a completely different strategy?
24:08
Actually, no, and this is a question that I get very often is, oh, I'm on YouTube, can I still use this method? Or I'm a food creator, can I use this method? At the end of the day, you are gonna be cold pitching, whether you're a podcaster or you're a fashion influencer. So moving over to this anti-pitch method is really not gonna be any different for either niche or maybe different platforms. It's really applicable to.
24:34
Um, anyone who's creating content online that wants to actually connect with potential brand partners. That's great. Kristen, where can we follow your journey online and what can we look forward to you creating in the near future? Yeah. You can find me online pretty much everywhere at the same handle. It's K-B-O-U-S-Q. And looking forward to in the future, honestly, I have to say I, my membership is my baby. It is my main focus.
25:03
for the whole rest of the year. So we'll be continuing to improve that and build that. We're actually, we've been doing a series on Instagram where I'm publicly building it. So you're getting to see a lot of the behind the scenes on how I'm actually building it and what the results are. So that's really all the excitement I've got going on this year, but it's very exciting. We'll have links to all of that in the show notes. Kristin, thank you so much for being on. Absolutely, thank you so much for having me.
25:29
That is it for the interview with Kristen, look for links to everything she talked about in the show notes. That is going to be the end of today's episode but be sure to come back next time for Mosseri Monday where we break down what the head of Instagram shared in his Ask Me Anything. Be sure to come back next time for more social media news, strategy, other important information that you need to know, and other voices that are not just mine.
30:03
Kristen, I know you do a lot with animal rescue. Can you talk about that a little bit? Yeah, I got my own two dogs through rescues and I really loved the experience. And through that, I learned so much about how overpopulated it is with the dogs, especially in the South where I live. And so I started to get a little bit more involved with rescue. In 2022, I started fostering dogs and we fostered probably about 30 dogs at this point.
30:33
I have one actually sitting right next to me who is about to get adopted this week. And actually last year our dog that we had who is our foster, we foster failed and we kept her. So it's very rewarding, but it's a lot of fun. Permanent member of the family. That's fantastic.