If

an area like if you can explode a home that way, if you fill like with a fan or whatever, like Tata, I'm going to get a call. So yeah, I think with influencers in particular, I have been an influencer. I don't love that term, but it is the thing that I think people immediately understand what it is. I also think about like content creators or subject matter experts influencers, just more of a broad umbrella for a lot of different skill sets. I have been on that side. I've also worked at the companies who need people to speak on behalf of the company while not also being employed there. Right. I think, and I mean, Justin, you've experienced this. When you work at a company, I think you are obviously the most knowledgeable about those products and services because you have the most time to dedicate to those products and services. And there's this layer of, well, you work there, of course, you have to say nice things. And there's a trust, like, I think I've, I made a commitment all those years ago when I first started in developer relations. And I think I've held true to it, which is, I am never going to come up here and say something that is factually inaccurate. I am never going to blanket represent a product and say it's the best without understanding your situation. I have, on a number of occasions, a different product for customers. It's like, well, this isn't going to solve your problem because of X, Y, and Z. Go over here. That's the only way I think you keep and maintain trust, credibility. And that's here. I mean, my reputation is based on authenticity and my credibility and my reputation. I am not going to violate that or my commitment to the community for a paycheck. I'm just not. But still, there's this, there's this thought of like, okay, well, are you the most like, have you actually utilize this outside of the company? And often you haven't. And so a lot of times companies are looking for folks to either create that content, do deep dives. And that can be long form content, a blog, a tutorial, a video, or short form content. It's, you know, a social post. A, a, a LinkedIn post, a video and TikTok or Instagram. And really, it's not just about this is a great product. That's awesome if it is. But it's more about how do you utilize this? Where is this useful? What are the pros and cons about that? And that type of authentic voice for companies is priceless. I mean, they need it. But there's a lot of challenges with that. Yeah.

in the year of AI can generate pretty much anything. How much of that is still, like, because I feel like the platform, platforms play a huge role in any sort of dev rel marketing. And like, if the platforms are falling apart, you don't really have the reach or the credibility of the platform. Like, yeah, I can't guarantee that a post is gonna go anywhere. Yes. Right? Like, there's so much of that that's just out of my hands. But also the fact that like AI, any text box on the internet AI can fill it. And they can generate credible people, right? That don't exist. And in personas that don't even exist and say like, Oh, this is someone that will tell you all the things you want to hear and can earn that money. How much of that plays into this? What companies are willing to pay for?

Didn't the conference do that though? Or they generated some people? Yeah. Like last year, wasn't it? What was that conference? Well. They generated women

speakers, right? It was women speakers,

but it was the same idea, but it was in that case trying to slight the gender skew, so to speak. But it's still the same premise. Like, let me generate somebody to seem credible, so that we seem credible. Right. Right. And they almost got away with it.

Right. But now, I mean, once we remember who they are, they are ruined forever. And. We

already forgot their names.

No, it's the best question. And it's like the first thing that people ask, right? Why would this be valuable? AI can do this. And it's yes and no. I mean, yes, you can generate content through AI and I'm sure it will get better. But that plethora of content developed by machines is actually making real human authentic voices more valuable because as the market is flooded with this content that is generated, I don't know that this is... If it comes from someone I don't know, then how can I trust this content? But if it comes from you, I know you. I've seen you. I already trust you. When it comes from you, that is so much more valuable. And so we're actually seeing the opposite of what you would think the, the existing newsletters, videos, influencers are commanding even higher prices, because people know and trust them already.

I can never out content create AI and computers. They can make us so much more. I'm like, I have to be really focused on, I want to make this thing and it's going to take me three hours. And what other thing am I not going to do for three hours? But then if I'm getting started today, where do you even go?

It's not about, I mean, quantity. You're never going to beat a machine on quantity, right? It's about your unique voice. I think the thing that separates influencers across the board, and we see this, like, when I place for a client, I'm not just looking for, can this person actually reach this number of eyebrows? Obviously, that is important, but it's, are they experts in this specific niche? What is their voice? Are they trusted? Who is their audience? And is their audience dialed in, right? There are newsletters that you can go place in a, a, a, a, than you can through Freeman and Forrest. But the clicks and the impressions are worthless to you. And so, you know, we really focus on high value, high impact impressions. You're really dialing into these are specifically the people who are either going to buy and or use your products.

And full disclosure, like Emily, you've reached out to me to make content on behalf of someone. And I was never an expert for any of those companies. And so it was like, yeah, this doesn't seem to make exactly.

Yeah. And so that's, it's really important to me to, to work on that and to make sure that, that authenticity holds and that the, the creators that we work with are going to be the best ones matched with each company. That's, that's the sort of magic of Freeman and Forrest. Matching

your, your hitch. Yes.

That's

cool.

I

think we need more of this honestly. I think that it is a challenge for brands. I feel bad for some of the brands out there. They want to have the ability. They don't know how to do it internally. Maybe they don't even have the resources to staff up or employ that person or persons. And sometimes you need somebody inside the company that can think holistically and say, well, this exists, but I've got to put the work in. I've got to go out and interview all these different places. I've got to ask them for proposals. I've got to essentially learn as much as I can about every potential channel or content source. I hate to like label people as these, you know, just widgets kind of thing, but that's the truth. We get, we're in that, in that regard as well. You know, we get reached out to from folks and for us, it's really about, can we help them? And what is their, who are they trying to reach? Do we actually talk to the people they're trying to reach? Is their message clear? Are they in a mature state where we can even apply help? They need help, but maybe they need a change in order for our help to be adequate, you know? Like we can only give you attention. We can't give you the guarantee. Like Justin was saying, I can't guarantee this article goes somewhere. You still have to do the work being you, the brand, your landing page, your marketing, your product, who you are, your actual literal brand, not just your logo, has to be where it needs to be to capture, not just simply get pointed to.

But think about at a company, like I'll pick on the large companies who struggle with vendors. A cloud to onboard a vendor to one of the major tech companies, six month process takes forever. So to do that with 20 influencers is impossible. So for us with the larger companies, that's a huge selling point. It's like you write one check, we handle the rest for you. And then two, yeah, it takes an entire... This is a full-time gig. So, unless you have a resource for a full-time role to actually scope out influencers, maintain those relationships, make the placements, look at scheduling, look at the type of content, you're not going to be able to do it because we're just experts. I mean, at this point, I know so many of the influencers where they play, what plays well on their different assets. That is something I could have only learned by doing this 100% of the time. And so yeah, there's just it's been phenomenal learning how this actually operates and the best possible ways to get the biggest ROI for for companies

When you say assets, you mean like someone's social network, right? Like where they have a presence or whatever they reach people.

Yes. So that's how I think of like changelog is an asset, right? You all are influencers, but it's like a mini to mini relationship, right? But changelog has many influencers and you all have different podcasts, right? Justin, you're associated with this and other pods, other sort of, yeah, YouTube channels, et cetera.

What assets were surprising to you that people wanted to reach or that you're like, because like, are people advertising on podcasts as much in 2024? Is it newsletters? Is it, I mean, I think that if people had text message access to everyone's phones, right? Like you guys had a group chat, like that would be like the most intimate sort of like, Hey, I want to influence like, you're not influencing you, but hey, I want to tell you about this cool thing. Right? Like that would be an amazing thing to have for people. But also on the other end, it's like, I have a blog and, and hardly anyone comes to it. So

great question. And circling back to what Jared said at the very beginning, yes, it proximity with text messages, sure. And to intimate to fat, like it's a violation at that point, right? And so it's finding this balance. The assets that do the best are newsletters and LinkedIn. Those are the ones that get the highest number of impressions and specifically the highest number of click throughthroughs. So if you're working on something like getting someone to actually play with a product or experiment or sign up, that's sort of the path where you're going to go. On the other hand, there's awareness campaigns, right? There's companies that are doing amazing work, but they're primarily known in Europe or Latin. And so they want to come into the American market and That's where you would see a lot more of just a brand lift and see sponsorships of podcasts and more things where you're not like Actually clicking through that's not the primary goal. I'm

way back on the concept of all of this AI slop has made humans more valuable like I'm just I'm just rev as a human I'm reveling in the fact that at least for now that differentiating factor is like they can't copy that you know Like they can they can put out all the stuff they want to But the robots cannot copy our actual humanity at this point and And so that connection is real. That humanity is real. And as much as if you are a content creator, the more human you can be, the more voice you can have that is you, the better off you are versus trying to churn, I guess, or to crank. Absolutely. Where you can't win that battle.

Well, let's take AI out of it for a moment. You know, a lot of times people, especially people who are just brand new, either to the industry or to actually sort of learning in public, they'll say, well, what's the value of my blog posts? These things have already been written, but it's not written by you, right? We all come with specific points of view, specific experiences, personalities, you know, people who really resonate with me aren't going to resonate with others and people who resonate with others aren't going to resonate with me. And I think it's finding your voice and really being true to who you are, that's the key to this. Not trying to fit a format. I think people, and I'm seeing this a lot, and I prefer not to work with them. It's like people will try and rise really quickly and build an audience very quickly through. Being kind of mean or cutting things down or people down being extra spicy. I think being an influencer, you want to be like jalapeno hot, not ghost pepper hot. And it just doesn't. good. Not just for brands, but these aren't people that I want to watch or be close to. It's

like the emotion hacking. You need the engagement, so you play on people's emotions and the quickest emotion that someone will engage with is hatred. There's like, oh, I hate this. I have to reply. It's like, oh yeah, you can hack your way into that. To your blog post point though, I have so many people that asked me about writing and maintaining a blog and I love encouraging everyone like go own a domain and write a blog, but you don't write for someone else. You write for yourself. Right. It doesn't matter. It's been said a million times by other people. You've never said it and you need to say it for yourself and you're writing the blog post that you can think through the thoughts and you could develop the rest of the idea and write slowly and be a little bored with it. Right? Like you have a bunch of drafts and you're like, I want to pick that one up again. Oh, I thought about that background process is finally finished. I can go finish that, you know, a couple of paragraphs and post it. So it doesn't matter who reads it and why. Cause you wrote it for yourself.

Yes, exactly.