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70% dollars from 10% audience
(4 min read) Optimizing for content quality on Instagram gets Gigi Robinson higher value deals. Featuring Adobe, Riverside, Anchor, iMessage, Karat, QuickBooks, and Collective Speakers.
Avi Gandhi
December 29, 2023
As I’m out for the New Year, this article is a remixed reprint of one of my first Creator Logic interviews. I didn’t really have the same structure back then, so I’ve redone it for the current format. Enjoy, and happy New Year!
Gigi Robinson
Gigi Robinson is a multiplatform Creator, public speaker, model, designer, photographer, and entrepreneur who talks about socially-impactful topics like chronic illness, mental health, body image, and women in business, as well as the Creator Economy.
We met via LinkedIn, where she is a voice of the Gen Z Creator community.
Let’s get into it!
Links
The Business
Breakdown
As of Feb 28, 2023
Observations
Instagram drives 70% of Gigi’s business, despite only housing ~10% of her audience.
As a photographer, I've always loved Instagram. It's been so much fun for me, and I just think that it really yields the more traditional side of influencer marketing...
This year, knock on wood, if all things go well I will land the biggest deal I've ever landed, with Nikon, which is literally so full circle for me. It's like - you stuck it out. You stayed the course. You did the work. You did your 10,000 hours. Finally I'm at this point where all the dots are connecting.
This implies:
Content, influencer, and speaking buyers spend a lot of time on the platform, despite my preconception of Instagram as a B2C platform, and
The size of her audience is not the driving factor for her buyers.
Similarly, LinkedIn brings in 15% of her revenue despite being ~3% of her audience. Clearly, the audience on LinkedIn has sponsorship spending power!
Linkedin is not necessarily a brand deal platform where you would do an ad. It's about the people that you meet and the connections that you build…so I have been on Linkedin for years.
Importantly, she doesn’t just cultivate relationships with her audience - she also cultivates her platform relationships.
She sometimes even gets brand and speaking opportunities directly from platforms, via her Strategic Partner Managers - so having those direct platform relationships can literally lead to revenue.
Brand buyers seem more interested in what she has to say and how, than how many people her content reaches organically.
REACH ISN’T EVERYTHING.
It's not the performance marketers who are reaching her, but the brand marketers. The quality level of her work also helps her stand out.
When I work with brands, I actually shoot 4K on a DSLR, like a fully produced photo shoot, for my ads. I've never strayed away into the iPhone-level content for ads, and it stuck out. It's really paid off. It's what's scaling my brand now.
The Stack
Editing - Adobe Creative Suite
Asset Management - Google Drive
Design - Canva + Adobe Express
I try not to fix what's not broken. I think all of these things work really well and I'm not going to force my team to use things that don't make sense or that are more difficult.
Podcast Production - Riverside
I think it's just the first one that I went on that I liked...
Other reasons:
Riverside's Self View isn't off to the side and so doesn't draw gaze away from the camera
They've advertised with her
They have clip editing features she likes (but doesn't use because she has an editor)
Podcast Distribution - Anchor
It's easy
It's free
She's shopping around for a podcast monetization deal that will likely include hosting, but it was a great place for her to launch and grow initially.
Communication - iMessage
We're iMessage girls. I've tried Slack. I had a team subscription, and it just didn't stick. I think the girls are just... they're youngsters, Gen Z, and they're like "I'd rather text you, it's easier". I have a million group chats based on projects, based on location, based on our team meetings.
Bank - Chase Business
That's what's the most local and most convenient to me. It works, and I honestly didn't really research...I just walked to the bank and I just opened the bank account.
It seems convenience trumps specialization for Gigi, on the banking front. It wasn't even something she thought about
Credit Card - JetBlue Mastercard, Karat
I love JetBlue and I fly mostly to LA and West Palm Beach or Miami for my trips, so it's just easy and I get great points. I get to fly places for free, and it just works for me...I do have a Karat card and I use it every now and then. Just...I'm not finding a value prop there, like other than another credit card, and I also have a Discover card and I have an Apple credit card that I use.
I'm sensing a theme here - again, convenience trumps specialization
Finances - QuickBooks Online + CPA + Financial Advisor
You guessed it...convenience
She started out doing her own bookkeeping, but now has a CPA
QuickBooks lets her track bills, send invoices, and even get paid directly (though she dislikes their 2.9% credit card processing fee)
Representation - Collective Speakers
Sees value from the credibility of a speaking agent + their bringing her business
Has spoken with other agencies and management companies, but opted to have her day-to-day team handle the rest of her business because she finds negotiating brand deals to be pretty straightforward
Content & Operations
In 2021, I interviewed my friend London Lazerson...he's a total baller, and I interviewed him on my show and I asked:
"What is your biggest piece of advice to scale your business as a creator?"
And he said:
"Delegation"
Gigi employs a team of young, female college students - all part-time and paid $15+ hourly - who work with her to produce her content, manage her socials, and deliver on her brand deals. They include:
Copy editor - Penn State
Video editor - U Washington
Executive assistant - NYU
Executive producer - NYU
Multimedia producer - Parsons
Designer - Parsons
By delegating work to a part-time, up-and-coming team,. she's able to scale herself beyond just content creation, and can source more business opportunities for herself. In my experience, this makes her an outlier among video creators, many of whom are less willing to outsource aspects of production and would prefer someone else handled their business.
I'm curious if this is a generational trend. Do millennial creators look up to Artists, while Gen Z creators look up to Entrepreneurs? 🤔
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