Allie Eklund, LTK Creator - Building a Business Beyond the Follow Count

So what's something that you're finding yourself teaching creators right now? Cause that's part of your business as well.

Right.

I would say definitely that finding ways to monetize and have multiple revenue streams.

So.

Like I said, with this content, there's so many ways to make money off of the post.

And I think a lot of people focus on brand deals.

And brand deals are a large part of my business, no doubt.

And especially with LTK offering the brand deal side of it, it's only doubled or tripled.

But I think everyone focuses on, okay, what brands want to work with me? What brands are going to pay me? But really, the switch is...

with the audience that we already have what do people want to see what do they need to know more of what are they shopping for what do they look like where do they live and the follower count doesn't matter i have friends have millions of more followers than me and we have the same analytics right so i'm so big on Forget about the following count and focus on the data behind the followers that we already have and then find a way to double or triple monetize that because again, TikTok pays a creator fund, Meta pays a creator fund, LTK will always have commission on basically everything.

And then the brand deals will come next.

I

think it's

hugely misunderstood.

And I think the engagement is really interesting because now that all the social platforms have moved to purely algorithmic feeds, which means there really isn't a following feed anymore.

That's not a concept that exists.

And then you have that overlaid with so much synthetic content.

We have found in our studies that 87% of people say they actually can't tell what's real online.

So it's like you're seeing someone for one time.

Even if you follow them, that does not mean that you're going to see them again because that's one signal in a bucket of signals that they're looking at to see what they're actually serving you.

And so the game now is to get those people back to a place where you can actually reach and re-reach them.

And so then actually providing that hospitality service, because honestly, anyone that I'm following, screenshotting, whatever on social media, I'm trying to make my life better.

I either want to look better, be in style, know where to go.

People are there to serve themselves.

And so then how do you play into that and be the best servant of the people? and giving them all of the information so i think people think of it as like oh i'm maybe i'm giving something away for free to the brand by tagging what it is that i'm wearing or using on the other side you're like no that equals freedom and it actually equals more engagement and it means that you don't have to hope and pray that a brand is going to have a deal i will tell you like i i you know yesterday i was a lot of earning calls for our partners those brands are living and dying by the earnings calls they have one bad quarter or you know one quarter that all of a sudden just the market doesn't like what they're doing they drop by five percent and all of a sudden their discretionary budgets are cut