Heads In Beds Show - When To Use A Content Creator vs An Influencer To Grow Your Social Media Reach

Episode Date: April 9, 2025

In this episode of The Heads In Beds Show, Paul and Conrad break down the difference between a Content Creator vs an Influencer and how BOTH can lead to success when installed into your vacation rental social media marketing plan. Enjoy!⭐️ Links & Show NotesPaul Manzey Conrad O'ConnellConrad's Book: Mastering Vacation Rental MarketingConrad's Course: Mastering Vacation Rental Marketing 101🔗 Connect With BuildUp BookingsWebsiteFacebook PageInstagram🚀 About BuildUp BookingsBuildUp Bookings is a team of creative, problem solvers made to drive you more traffic, direct bookings and results for your accommodations brand. Reach out to us for help on search, social and email marketing for your vacation rental brand.

Welcome to the Head to Med show presented by Buildup Bookings. We teach you how to get more vacation properties, earn more revenue per property, master marketing and increase your occupancy. Take your vacation rental marketing game to the next level by listening in. I'm your co-host Conrad. And I'm your co-host Paul. All right, Paul, what's going on? What's happening? level by listening in. I'm your co host Conrad. I'm your co host Paul. All right, Paul, what's going on? What's happening?

Well, it's a spring break, you know, we're in the springtime of things, whether your kids are actually home. Hi. That's me. Or they have been home previously. It is where we're getting it's almost Masters week. That's always a fun thing to look forward to. But it feels like this is when the pressure starts to ratchet up in the industry a little bit i think and especially in those beach markets spring break has started to happen there certainly um i feel like this is kind of the last hurrah for maybe some of those midwest markets where we're getting our second or third dousing of little snow that sticks for you know 24 hours makes our lives think about winter and then go

back to spring. So how are you doing? How are things in your neck of the woods? Yeah pretty good can't complain the weather's definitely turned here so I feel like the the winter and we had a very cold winter for us here is very much in the rearview mirror like Like April has brought some good weather and some good vibes here. So I'll take that. Yeah. A fun, I would say like a medicated space. I think that some of our clients are probably not in the best space to be honest with you in terms of like where their demand is and where things are headed. It's so funny how disparate outcomes can be, you know what I mean? With respect to how people focus on their marketing or their growth. And you talk to two people, you know, back

to back, I'll have client calls all day. And, you know, that's kind of been my experience so far this week. And I'll hear kind of some bad news on one call, and then we help out another call and things feel pretty good. So it is a it's a lot different than it was a few years ago, that's for sure. Where everything we hopped on was just like, yeah, everything's up and to the right. It was like almost like, you know, as the expression goes, shooting fish in a barrel. By the way, that expression, I don't know if you watch Mythbusters when you were a kid.

I learned later what that expression means, shooting fish in a barrel. It's actually really hard to hit the fish in a barrel. By the way, that expression, I don't know if you watch Mythbusters when you were a kid, I learned later what that expression means shooting fish in a barrel. It's actually really hard to hit the fish in the barrel. What happens is you shoot the fish in the barrel and then the shockwave gets every like stuns the fish and then they go up to the top. I don't know if you ever seen like dynamite fishing or whatever, same concept. Thor's stick of dynamite in the water and like it doesn't actually have to hit the fish. They just all go to the top. So there you go. That was 21, 22. The fish were just floating in the top. The bookings were just floating to the top of the barrel and you were just grabbing them off the top. And now it's like, you've actually got to put bait in the hook,

put it in the water. The fish has actually got to bite. The guest has actually got to click something, make a reservation. And now there's a lot more competition. So very different. As I go in each call, I'm almost candidly a little nervous at times where it's just like, how are you doing? Everyone's doing a little bit differently. How are some people doing? And the answer is good and bad depending on where you are in the world and where you are in your business. And we were talking about before we hit record, but the talent and the skill of the operator, you know, I think is separating itself maybe a little bit, you know, over the past four or five months, there's been a pretty clear separation. Like the

top companies are still going to do pretty good. Maybe they'll be down a little bit year over year, but they're in good space. And the people that were kind of doing more of the bare minimum are going to be, you know, veering off in perhaps a more negative direction. So it makes it fun. That's for sure. I think this will come up, by the way, the day before the Masters. So real quick, give us a Masters pick. If you have one off the top of your head.

We didn't have this in the outline. So we'll see how correct you are. Oh, I like the way we're already playing right now. I always will. I'm a big Rory fan. But I am going to go with and we've had this discussion, I'm gonna go Waco Neiman. I'm gonna go with the live guy just to just to throw the it is I will see how he plays. I think they got a

tournament coming up here. But I that's my pick. We'll go to our course this time. How about you? Give me give me the sweet give me Ludwig. He's gonna get the job done. Only a second one his second one. But I think he's I think he's got to figure it out. He already won this year. But he's coming in good shape. Yeah, give me give me if I could do like what is horse racing? I think you picked the top three. You get like one. Yeah, or something like that. So if I

get get Rory for a second and maybe of course, you know, Scotty for a third is a pretty safe bet. So those are kind of be my top three. But I walk I could see it. We'll see but he hasn't proven anything yet So I'll leave my yeah, could it happen? Of course it could happen. Do I think it's super likely? Yeah, I don't know about that He maybe puts too much pressure on myself Okay well some social media stars in there and that's kind of the topic of today's episode which is social media and a pretty fun one with This been my docket for a little while

but I didn't I think it's been sitting there for a while because at least I feel like personally that influencers, this is not my marketing lane. This is not the direction that I go in when I'm doing a campaign for a client. I never directly head to influencers. Of course, we've worked with influencers in the past. Many of our clients have, whether through us or through another agency or service.

I've seen the benefit of working with an influencer, but I didn't exactly know, hey, could we really speak on this super confidently when it's not like my day-to-day thing we're doing on social media? But I heard a quote the other day that I thought was quite interesting, and that kind of led to a little tweak to this idea and maybe a little bit more of a deeper dive into exactly how this could go. Leveraging the idea of an influencer versus the idea of a creator. And I will say one thing that I wish every vacation company had that we worked with was a creator. So let's define those really quickly. Maybe the difference between an influencer and a creator. And then I think we

can maybe make some sense of this idea as it relates to doing better social media marketing for your vacational business. So I'll kind of think of it this way. An influencer is an influencer because of the reach they have on their own account, their own platform. And you're hiring them in a way, almost like a spokesperson, almost like your traditional way that you thought about hiring a celebrity pre social media days. It's like, I'm going to hire George Foreman, RIP to sell grills because he has a ability to connect with people and people want to buy the product because of his salesmanship basically. Now we've got that same thing. And again, many of them so so-called social media influencers, a bit of a hot button topic at times, people have very

negative views of these people, but let's just say they have reached, they have influence because of who they are and the people that follow them. A creator, I think the reason I say that I really kind of prefer this is that this is what I think I actually want a lot of social media content around, which is someone who understands the platform natively and can create posts, can create video content for the most part when we focus in on something like Instagram that connects to that audience. Now, someone could be a great influencer and a great creative person, a great creator, or they could kind of be more of a good creator and maybe they don't have a ton of influence, but it doesn't mean they don't replace your business.

So again, we're going to break through that over the next 20, 30 minutes or so. But any edits to those ideas or concepts on influencer versus creative before we get going? No, I think that that's that's hitting it pretty well. I mean, I think the influencer is kind of the flash in the pan. The I think the creator is more of a long, it's a longer play. So I think, even if you're just thinking about it for the immediate impact or the long-term impact,

however you're looking at it, I think it is you really put into the right words there, what we're looking for and how they are different because I think that's really what we're trying to focus on is that these are two different roles and two different things that you can look for and seek out as you're looking for more of a social media. Some some force on that side of things. we had in our outline. I think this is a good way for the listener to think about it. An influencer has following, an audience, engagement reach, so they're actually reaching people and they have typically a large enough following. We'll talk about relevance in a second. And

the value that you're getting from an influencer is distribution. Same way you might think about any advertising platform, whether it's Google, whether it is advertising on Facebook and Meta yourself, whether it is advertising on any platform, you'd think I'm paying money or I'm giving something of value and exchange my message, my content, my information is being shown to a wider set of people. That's in theory what an influencer can do. A creator in my mind is more of production. So it's almost like the company that you might hire, think about like the old TV advertising days, you would hire an agency and that agency was perhaps very skilled in production. And then they would be taking the production of whatever

commercial they shot for you, let's say, and then giving it to someone with distribution. So it's like I could give my TV commercial that I shot to CBS or NBC or something like that, and then they could show my message to more people. Super Bowl ads being, of course, a fun one that we've done on the podcast before. Now I would say, obviously what can happen is that someone could be both.

Someone could be skilled at both production, making a video, and then putting it out on their own social channels that would then get a lot more reach. And I think, by the way, all the best influencers are either A, skilled at creating the videos, or B, they have a team that's helping them create the videos and get a lot more reach. And I think, by the way, all the best influencers are either A, skilled at creating the videos or B, they have a team that's helping them create the videos and get a lot of reach.

But I think you should be careful not to over-index on the fact that someone is, quote-unquote, just an influencer. So the example I always give, and this is, you know, we're gonna get there eventually, so why not get to it right away? Someone that has a lot of reach may not actually be the right fit for your business

because their audience may not at all match your distribution, right? So like, an example that I might give, if we go back to our TV media example for a second, a lot of reach may not actually be the right fit for your business because their audience may not at all match your distribution. So an example that I might give, if we go back to our TV media example for a second, I'm sure you get the same kind of ads I do because you and I watch similar content. We watch a lot of sports stuff and I get ads for the same businesses over and over again, the same types of things over and over again. When I go on, if my wife swaps in her profile on YouTube TV, the ads she sees are completely

different than the ads I see. So if you hire the wrong influencer, it would be the equivalent of like, running a wedding dress campaign, for example, a video ad for a wedding dress campaign in the middle of, I don't know, UFC fighting. I'll just give an extreme example, not even a UFC fighting fan. But is there some audience in the UFC fighting community

who needs to buy a wedding dress? I'm sure there is. Is it much of them? I can't imagine that that would be the case, right? So it's like, that's what I think a lot of vacation rental managers fall into, which is like, well, I put this content out on an account with a lot of followers.

Maybe there's 200,000 followers that this person has. They stayed in my property for free. I gave them the stay. Why didn't it work? And it might be because you're trying to sell wedding dresses during a UFC fight, right? It's just not the right audience for that message. So it falls flat and you go, well, this influencer thing

is a scam, it didn't work out, that sort of thing. Whereas contrast that with like a much smaller thing, maybe a small YouTube channel that talks about planning the perfect wedding. And then you put a ad for your wedding dress in the middle of that consent and maybe 5,000 people see it, but you get 10x, 100x, 50,000x the right reach because it's actually in front of the right people. That's where I think the influencer thing goes wrong right away is that we get enamored with the big number of this person has 200,000 followers. And we assume that those 200,000 people actually care about what our product is, what our vacation is. And it's often not. And I think that's where the

first mistake comes in there. So what's kind of your experience been with that over the years of this so-called social media influencer? I think on the social media side, it is a lot about the vanity metrics of things. So I think it is easy to get enamored with the numbers and that 2000 looks like a really big number and it's always bigger than the 20,000, but you do. I think it's where we've talked about even in some of our, in the, I think the terms, you know, kind of the terms and definitions of social media,

talking more about reach and frequency. And reach is good, reach is important. Frequency, understanding that that's as important. And I think again, if you're showing that high quality content, certainly you want it to be seen more frequently. I think so often we do, we just get pulled into the thought of, oh, well, this person, it's about the name, it's about the person. It's not, I think it's what

social media is about. It's about being a big personality and it's about having a big personality, be able to finding or growing that big personality. But that's not practical in marketing. I mean, it is. I think you have to think about it logically. And yeah, when we look at things, of course, hitting the right 500 people or 1000 people or 1500 people is going to be way better than trying to flash in the pan and hit 100,000 people. I think that's

the one thing with any type of marketing, everybody says, well, let's get a bigger budget. I think the only thing you can guarantee that you're going to do with a bigger budget, you're going to waste more. So that's,. So, I think that's especially true on the social media side of things. So certainly, we have to think about the power of high quality content as opposed to just high numbers of people. And I think that's where we, again,

we kind of just jump into the, I'll throw it back over to you to talk about when is the right time to hire a creator as opposed to that influencer? Well, I think I think you nailed it. And I think hopefully people are kind of getting picking up what we're putting down at this point, because the next time you get a DM from someone, you know, let me stay for free, and I'll give you two social media posts or something like that. Again, great, that sounds great on the surface, but like examine the audience. I think that's the first step to kind of put a close to that idea of influencer. Before you're going to hire someone, consider,

is this person actually relevant for my audience? Is this person actually influential amongst people that I think are going to be booking my property? So I think that's the kind of first thing to get to work. But the reason I say the content creator can be valuable is that they could, in theory, have no reach, or in fact, you could hire a so-called creator, content creator, to run just your account on social media,

meaning your vacation account on social media. They themselves could have no following and they could do a phenomenal job and get you a lot of reach because they understand the platform. They understand how to film the content in an engaging way. They understand what sounds maybe people actually are trending right now and what sounds are going to get reach. So there's so many different things that you can do, I think, with a solid social media content creator that again, I wish this was inside of a lot of different companies that we work with, because I find what we're doing lately, a little bit is kind of trying to train someone boots on the ground to maybe get up to speed and get some video content. My kind of belief lately is like, I'll take something over nothing. So I'll kind of work with that person and try to, you

know, get going a little bit more. I wish though, you know, I wish it wasn't as seen as a very deprioritizing thing. It is interesting, it's much easier for me to convince a client to spend like $5,000 on Google Ads than it is to spend $3,000 on video content, like to create video content. It's funny how just like the client's perception of what's the most valuable is like, well, I'm buying ads, those are working, let me keep doing that, unless you feel some reason to stop it. But when I say like, let's go invest money into this thing, like social media content, video creation, that's going to help us in this other way, they seem to have more resistance. So it's the same number coming out of the account, but there's something about people's perception of how it's going to work that

I think can perhaps paint their point of view a little bit too narrowly. So anytime you're hiring a content creator, I think that you can use them for a lot of different purposes. Obviously examples being like the social media feed itself, of course, but anything on the website could potentially be benefited by a social media content creator. You could have a little video tour of all your properties. I often reference Wander as a great example. If you go on the Wander website and click on a lot of their property listings, they have like a five to 10 minute tour of every single listing on their website. Incredible. Like with, I guess, kind of a model of some kind, or when I say

model, I just mean someone walking through the property showing here's what's nearby in the area. Here's what the kitchen is like. Here's what the bedrooms are like. It's just a very like human like view of the property. And I think those ads or those video content, excuse me, show off the property in a way better way than a typical just set of photos. Hey, here's the bedroom. Here's this. Here's that. Here's that. Now we need photos. Don't get me wrong. But I think it's becoming more and more where it's like, wouldn't it be great to have a photo set and a video walkthrough of the property as well that kind of shows people what it looks like? Isn't that kind of the ideal scenario to have both there?

I think the answer is yes. But I think we've gotten stuck in the idea that like, well, Airbnb and Virbo require photos. So I got to do photos, right? That's not negotiable, but the video is almost seen as more of like a, you know, we talked about this in previous episode, but a nice to have, not a need to have. I would argue that like going forward, it's a lot more of a need to have than maybe you think. And if you're not building that into the budget or building that into your marketing plan, you might be in a bad spot. So that's kind of my read on it is like the creator itself could be very valuable, even if they don't have a lot of reach and then it's up to you to get

that reach, you know, on your own social channels, what's kind of been your experience on that, on that vein, before we go into the formatting side of it. Absolutely. It's, I think when it comes right down to it, content is one of the most difficult things to produce. Whether it's written content, whether it's visual content of any kind, whether that's video, whether that's imagery or anything. So certainly that's something that almost everyone struggles with. I think you hit the nail on the head with trying to train someone up. It does seem

like it should be easy and you can. You can do it to a rudimentary level or a very straightforward level, best practices level, that's fine. But really getting someone up to leveling up the visual appeal for your business, it does, it takes that investment. And that's what we're trying to do. We're trying to interrupt people, interrupt that flow, interruption marketing, especially on the social media side of things. So it isn't just about having that face that we recognize. It is about something that's going to really allow you to capitalize in that initial ad

and then on your website and then, heck, within your properties themselves, I mean, utilizing some of that imagery if you have an on-site office, kind of taking it, doing that day in the life type of opportunity, I think it is. It's something that we can see that storytelling is going to play a much bigger role in how we market moving forward and I think not using that content that is built for social media. When you have a content creator, they know how it needs to be produced, whether it needs to be a vertical video, whether it needs to be a horizontal 4x3, anything like that. So I think that that's also very important in understanding and getting the most out of that

content long term. Yeah. Well, here's a good example. I just, I just Googled this to make sure this was still the case. So if you go to Gary V's YouTube channel, it currently has 4.6 million subscribers, go to the videos tab and then click on oldest and Gary's first video they posted was 17 years ago. And the production quality is basically terrible, right? It's like him, you know, looking at a camera, probably a webcam, or who knows, it might have been like an actual, you know, film camera that they had to like convert and upload, you know, it's so long ago, right? But very low, low quality compared to where he is today. No edits, no cuts, just like him renting the camera for one minute, 21 seconds about Google buying Jaiku. I don't even know what this is or cut 2.0. So I don't

have to go watch the video and understand what it is. But like, think about that. Gary's been posting videos for 17 years on social media. And of course, now we look at it and everything's perfectly polished and the edits are amazing, all this kind of stuff. But if we told Gary back then, like, oh yeah, you're not gonna be a social media content creator.

You're not gonna have 4 million subscribers. He probably would have believed it back then, maybe, right? Like, oh, that seems almost ridiculous, you know, 17 years ago that that would be the case. And now look at him as kind of like this consistently, you know, hey, he's producing videos nonstop, been doing on social media for two decades now, you know, and look at all the reach that he gets today. And you know, not someone that I watch much of anymore. I have watched some of his videos in the past. But you know, good example, I think of like, someone who's been doing it for two decades, and we're seeing it now, like, look at all the success he's had, but he's been grinding away and putting up videos for that long period of time. So I guess that's the way I think about it a little bit too, is like, let's just say your first 100 videos are not going to be amazing. Whether it's short form video that you're doing cabin walkthrough, your first 100 are going to be very good, but you almost have to do the 100.

You have to do 100 bad ones to understand what the decent ones are going to look like, what the better ones are going to look like, and then eventually you'll find your footing. I think having that expertise within your business when it comes to doing video constant creation and having that be part of your core offering is akin to having a great photographer on your team, akin to having a great copywriter on your team, akin to all these things, right?

It's like so valuable, I think, to have that be part of the business. The influencer thing is almost like leaning on a crutch in a way, right? Like if that influencer does a good job, then it's like, okay, every time I work with them, maybe there's some marginal lift or boost that I'll get from sharing

with the right audience again and again, but it's gonna kind of wane over time. Like you're gonna have to keep finding new influencers. If your brand itself is the one that's actually memorable that people want to stay with or they want to book with, that's a much better scenario, right? Cause then it's like, I'm not tied to one specific person or persona or influencer.

It's like, oh, people know me because of my brand has become the thing that's known. And that's kind of like the utopia, I think for any small company, any small business, is the people are drawn to you. I always think of it like a magnet, like they're drawn to the properties, they want to go stay there. They're choosing them over the competition. They're not even going to Airbnb and looking

because they know, oh, I saw this video of this property. I want to go stay there. And I think that's like the thing that we should be all after. And I think you can get there by influencers helping you. Absolutely. But I think you want whenever possible to have more of that creative mindset within your company of like, how can I produce better quality stuff? How can I get more people to care about it? And I think that's why it's so valuable to have that of that creative mindset within your company of like, how can I produce better quality stuff? How can I get more people to care about it? And I think that's why it's so valuable to have that skill inside your own business, for sure. But yeah, anything to add on there.

And then I have a few things to like watch out for because I've seen this before. I think in anything you're doing, it's co-branding. And it just feels like, I mean, it is, you're never going to differentiate your brand by just using that influencer. So again, there are very few things about just influencer marketing that I'm a big fan of.

And I mean, it's some of the things that the measurable, the direct attribution there, that I certainly struggle not being able to find that. And you can find the right metrics to measure to understand what type of brand lift you're getting. And I get that. But yeah, I think ultimately, it's not just you that's benefiting, it's the influencer that's benefiting and maybe more in some cases.

I think that's if ultimately you are a launching pad to them getting more business in the space, that's fine. However, you can really figure out a way to get the most benefit for you. I think that's great. But ultimately, you're never gonna win. And I feel like you should win when you're when you're doing something like that. You shouldn't just be kind of at least a 5050 player. And that's that's what I maybe that's what doesn't sit right with me that the fact that they people are getting a free stay and they're

getting all these things. And sure, they are spreading it across their audience. But you also I mean, I fact that people are getting a free stay and they're getting all these things. And sure, they are spreading it across their audience, but also, I mean, I think you hit the nail on the head with it wanes over time. And if they're growing their audience, great, but ultimately it's gonna be the same 50, 60, 70% of the people that you're gonna continue to hit. So if it's the right people, awesome. If it's not the right people,

then maybe you didn't hit the right influencer, and then maybe you're looking more for that influencer creator hybrid. Yeah, yeah. Well, here's some kind of pitfalls or red flags that I've seen. If you are considering working with the influencer, we've touched on some of the obvious things, right? The relevancy of audience, you know, all those kind of pieces

on that side. But if you have the things that I've seen over and over again, look out for fake engagement. You know, this has happened to us more than once, you know, clients that we've worked with where, you know, maybe it even looks good on that side. But if you have the things that I've seen over and over again, look out for fake engagement. You know, this has happened to us more than once, you know, clients that we've worked with where, you know, maybe it even looks good on the surface, you do a quick high level of review and you go, okay, there's real engagement here. You know, maybe there's some audience there that I care about. And then you would deeper dive and you go, wait, why are all the likes coming from India from supposedly an influencer based in Florida, for example, you know, it's like,

that doesn't make a lot of sense. Then you kind of dig out of the hood and you realize there's a lot of fake engagement there. I do think Instagram is probably continuing and always trying to do a better job of actually frailing out, weeding out, excuse me, the real people on their platform versus the bots, but I mean, they make mistakes, right? Like there's no guarantee and it's relatively easy to quote unquote fake engagement. So I think that's a fair one. Some of these creators, you know, this is the piece where I think it can get very contentious. Boy, they have a lot of confidence in their ability to drive traffic and not always their ability to actually deliver on that. But that's one side of it. Keep an eye on those contracts. Read the

contracts. If there's actually a creator or an influencer that is sending you that stuff, make sure you understand what you're buying. We've had situations come up, for example, where we had a client work with someone where the post was active on their feed, but for a limited amount of time, I think it was like a week or 10 days or something like that. So they put the post up there, they get some level of engagement and reach out of it. And then they just pull rip cord. They're just like, Yeah, I just delete it after a certain amount of time. Like it doesn't stay there. And I'm not talking a story. I'm talking like an actual post on the feed that was there and then it was gone. I've also seen contracts or terminology about

you can only use it for a limited amount of time. You can only use it with my permission. You can only use it for six months. You can only use it for 12 months if they do make a video for you. So a lot of things there actually understand what you're buying and just know at the end of the day, right, everything there is negotiable. The more audience reach they have and the more you want it, the more they are going to dictate the terms, the more that you're dictating the terms, the better off you are. But my view is like, if I'm giving you this for free, I'm paying you

for your time to produce this video content, perhaps even again, like we're talking about posted on your social channels or some reach that comes from that. I would say it's reasonable to assume that unless, again, you really need them a lot more than they need you, you should be able to own that content and use it for, you know, a completely reasonable length of time, at least several years, right, to be able to use that content and value from it. No different than, you know, an actor in a movie or something like that, right, they're getting paid for their time. Maybe they get some payouts in the back end, but it's like, that's what

you're getting paid for, right, is that we're making this thing, people are going to see it, and I'm getting more benefit from it. So yeah, just really understand what you're signing up for. And you don't have a situation like I had last year where we're using this video for too long. It's our best performing video, ad creative in this entire account. And then we get an email from the influencer, hey, you got to take this down, per our contract that you signed on XState. You agreed to only use this for one year. And I got to take down a good performing ad over silliness. And I'm trying to work with the person and say, hey, this is actually helping you too.

And could we negotiate some additional payment and stuff like that? And the answer was no, they didn't want that anymore. So that's always a tough one. I think too, one other thing that I didn't have in the outline, but it's super valuable, give very clear direction, you know, on what you're actually expecting,

the exact quantity of what you're after, you know, again, very, very common. I think that the influencer will, I won't say cut corners, but like, they're gonna try to put out as little content as possible. I guess like that's kind of their incentive loop in a way. You want them to do as much content as possible. It's like you've got to agree on some middle ground. That's a win-win on both sides, of course. But, you know, I've seen some crazy stuff where it's like, I'm going to do a story post and this and this and that's it.

I'm going to do three posts and I'm charging you $2,000 plus. I expect five days in this vacation offer for free. Again, who's dictating the terms of the conversation depends a lot on like how much reach and influence are actually giving you. But I think you should just be very clear with it. And you're probably better off, you know, in most situations, having the contract on your side, you control it. And then you're telling them how it's going to go, not the other way around. As with all things, though, you know, it's like, you know, you and I are big sports fans, right? It's like, sometimes the the star quarterback gets to dictate the terms of the contract, because he knows that he's very much in demand, and he can sort of dictate how it's going

to go. But that's pretty rare, I would say, right? It's very rare that like Kim Kardashian is going to send you a direct message and be like, Can I stay in your vacation for free, you know, in exchange for that. So I think you should just focus on the ones that actually give you the right reach and you tell them how it's going to go not the other way around. Would you feel more comfortable going after someone with a smaller reach, as opposed to someone with a larger reach, if

you thought it was going to be more? I mean, obviously, if you thought it's gonna be more beneficial, but even if the cost washed out at some point, do you think that that's a better option of going with someone that you have more control over? I think that's one thing that on the social media side of things, you're going to pass the sniff test. I think vetting and going through and checking the actual engagement, but there's something to be said for that.

So do you think it's easier to pass the sniff test with a smaller influencer or going big and trying to hit that big number? Yeah, yeah. I think that's the piece where it's just like, you know, at the end of the day, it's like, it has to make sense for you, it has to make sense for them.

I'm a big believer in that. Like I'm a big believer in like win-win. You know, I've thought that kind of my whole career. It's like, if it doesn't make sense for the influencer, great, understand that. Like I can empathize with in like win-win. You know, I've thought that kind of my whole career, it's like, if it doesn't make sense for the influencer, great, understand that, like I can empathize with that if it's like, Hey, that's not enough for me to, you know, drive out there and do this and you know, my reach is my time is limited, I can only choose what partners I need to work with.

And if you're not a good deal for them, they shouldn't work with you. Right. Like I think that's part of it too. It's like, if the influencer is desperate, that's probably a good sign that like, you know, like you're probably more in control and you might think of them more as a creator, unless as an influencer, if you're not getting reach out of them. Because I think, you know, to kind of bring us to a close here, that's what that's what matters, right? What reach am I getting out of it? What content am I

getting out of it? How is that actually going to help my business grow? And I think that hopefully what you think of it as more of a long term engagement, right? It's not like one thing is going to set you off or set you up for success in perpetuity. There's always going to be, you know, pluses and minuses or, you know, good things, bad things about these engagements long term. And I think you need to think about socializing awareness play. And then these audiences that you're almost, you know, borrowing it away or kind of leveraging it away, maybe we can say it that way, are going to help you get there. But only if you have the right pieces in place. So that's kind of, you know, my thoughts there.

I don't know if there's anything else you want to button in before we tie a pretty bow on this one. But I think I think about these things a lot differently now than even I was last year. And influencer versus creator, I think a lot of vacational businesses could really benefit from doing more video creative content. I think that picking the right influencer is key, but I no longer believe that that is the only way to success or certainly the only way to get a lot of reach on social media. I think you can do a lot of it with the right creator in your business. And yeah, give some serious thought to that. It could certainly be something very part-time. It could be a contractor. It doesn't have to be a full-time employee that's doing these kind of

things. But I think there's a lot of growth that can happen on social done the right way. And if you bring the right people into the mix. So yeah, one checked off our list here, Paul. We've kind of put this one into the fire here and got it all cooked up and ready to go. And we need one more thing from the listener, which is hopefully we've influenced you a little bit,

influenced you enough that you want to leave us a review. So go to your podcast app of choice, iTunes listeners. You're where we get the most downloads. Spotify listeners, you're where we get the most downloads. Spotify listeners, you're where we get the second most downloads. Therefore those two platforms are appreciated or review there the most. Go there, click five stars, leave a five star,

leave a little friendly comment. I read them all, warms my day when I see one come in. It's like, oh, that's awesome. I got a review there. Really, really makes me happy. It makes Paul happy too. So all good stuff there. We'll catch you on the next episode.

Have an awesome rest of your day. Thanks so much.