Welcome to The Social Hook: curating the best of the creator economy
Welcome to The Social Hook, a bi-weekly newsletter for creators and anyone interested in navigating the constant changes in the Creator Economy. My name is Nic Christensen and I’ll be overseeing this new curation-focused newsletter (available Tuesdays and Fridays at 8.30am if you want to subscribe - click here if you want the twice weekly email).
Media is evolving quickly and the platforms – TikTok, Instagram and YouTube – are at the centre of that change.
In Australia, our creator economy is worth some $900 million, but too often the industry still talks about influencer marketing like it’s an afterthought for most marketers/media planners. Zenith's Jason Tonelli rightly pointed out at the AiMCO awards last week this is no longer the case).
So welcome to The Social Hook, a curation tool focused on creators and their role in a rapidly evolving Australian media landscape.
When it comes to creators, the media coverage of the creator space often fails to answer some basic questions. Coverage might answer who this influencer is, but often only at a surface level that hasn't delved into questions like: who is their actual audience, where are they, how engaged are they, and what is the content that is driving that engagement?
One obvious example was last year when Melbourne creator Leah Halton nearly broke the record for most TikTok views. At the time the 12-second video picked up some 700 million views (it has since passed one billion views), but most of the general media coverage didn’t go much beyond the idea: “isn’t it interesting that this model from Melbourne trended on TikTok”.
@looooooooch Summer😊#Inverted
♬ Praise Jah In The Moonlight - YG Marley
The reality is that Halton is one of a growing legion of creators who are building significant audiences (in her case 13 million and growing) and increasingly impacting our wider media ecosystem.
But it’s not just Halton.
Look at how Israeli creator Max Veifer’s interview with two nurses dominated the news cycle for days. Or Olympic diver/podcaster Sam Fricker and Abbie Chatfield who have both respectively interviewed Peter Dutton and Anthony Albanese recently in what is a clear attempt to mirror Donald Trump’s Joe Rogan creator-focused podcasting strategy.
Or go more micro and look at last month’s interest rates decision. Finance creators like Michael Rusli are outpacing traditional business journalists in terms of their social audiences and ability to drive key economic conversations online.
@michael.rusli We have FINALLY got an interest rate decrease. but what does this mean if you have a mortgage or looking to get into the property market? Calculator used: https://moneysmart.gov.au/home-loans/mortgage-calculator Let’s break this down in simple terms. If you want to make sure that you’re on the best interest rate for your mortgage or find out your borrowing capacity based off your situation head to the link on my profile and I can connect you with my reliable mortgage brokers. Disclaimer: This is not financial advice and is for educational purposes only.
♬ original sound - Wealth By Michael
To that end, we’re launching with a deep dive into the creators who won at last week’s AiMCO Awards, a perfect opportunity to highlight and profile some of Australia’s most influential creators (yes, including Princess Honeybelle, the pet creator that won Australia’s most influential creator award).
If you want a broader sense of what you’ll get from The Social Hook please check out our About Us section or the test newsletter we did in the past fortnight.
Each newsletter will have four sections:
- What Your Boss Is Reading: (Smart stuff from national/trade media, which will help you impress your boss)
- The Hook: (The Creator Economy story of the day)
- The Hold: (The five things from the Creator Economy that you need to read)
- The Conversion: (Smart business insights on influencer marketing where we will also give you some practical stuff like Hot Social Jobs)
The other thing to be upfront about is while The Social Hook is independently owned, it is being supported by Fabulate as its commercial sponsor. The platform, which last week won best influencer marketing platform at AiMCO for the second year in a row, is allowing The Social Hook to publish some of the Fabulate Discovery data and insights (as Fabulate does, and will continue to do, with other media outlets) to help open up conversation on creators.
In the past five years Fabulate has built a central place in the Australian creator economy. The Social Hook will be drawing on insights from Fabulate Discovery (see above Leah Halton graphic as an example) to help readers understand some of the nuances of the audiences that creators are reaching. Fabulate will also have paid editorial within the newsletter, which will be clearly disclosed.
The Social Hook drops Tuesdays and Fridays at 8:30am, helping Comms and Social pros stay ahead. Feedback? Reach out!
