Ep1169: Lauren Freund: Engagement Over Reach

Lauren Freund has spent the last few years inside her dream company, leading social media and influencer marketing at Canva. She describes why traditional influencer playbooks—optimizing for follower counts and reach—are increasingly outdated, and why she now screens creators for deep engagement, relevance, and the ability to truly carry Canva’s message. For her, the messenger is as important as the message, and influencer feedback is anchored in objectives and CTAs, not rewriting their voice. On the brand side, she runs every idea through a simple but demanding filter: why share and why care—why the company should post it, and why the audience would genuinely care. From there, she uses each platform’s “success signals,” like shares/saves or time-on-post, to decide when to use video and when carousels outperform. Lauren closes by reflecting on working at a product she genuinely loves and how the ever-changing worlds of social and AI keep the work exciting and experimental.#20MinuteLeaders #SocialMediaStrategy #InfluencerMarketing #CreatorEconomy