I recently met John Coogan (see his youtube channel here).
He makes youTube videos that explore tech, startups, and occasionally historical figures in depth. He was awesome, and he met up with a group of fans to debate how to accelerate techno-capitalism. It ended up just being a meetup, but I was ready for the debate.
What I realized talking to John was that he was a freaking leader. He was holding court. It was so fascinating seeing an influencer close up. But thankfully, there weren’t 1000s of people there. There was just a group of less than 20 that was there.
So I got to see how he operated and how he talked, and I was very impressed. I suggested to him that if we were back in Roman times, wait, no, medieval times, he would be a small warlord. He would have a castle, and all of us would be in his army. This doesn’t apply to all influencers. Some influencers don’t have as much ideological pull as a guy like John Coogan has. Also, he mentioned that this was his first meetup and that the purpose of it was to get people to meet and get wind of investments and just try to grow the community. I mentioned to him that you should have a big call to action.
What I see is that most influencers have small calls to action.
They have short sighted calls to action.
Like “Buy my merch.” “This person sucks. Go tell them they suck.”
Influencers could have bigger, more epic calls to action. They want their community to grow, so help them grow. Help them organize and mobilize into crazy cool projects.
John mentioned that for calls to action, he was thinking about how you should be able to monetize at different levels his audience. Like having something to buy at every level. He mentioned that some influencers have special meetups that cost a bunch and how it’s inefficient because
Later, when I pushed on the point of how his followers are like a small army he wasn’t excited.
I think there is something there. Influencers have way more pull with their followers then they are able to realize.
Influencers shouldn’t try to monetize their audience.
They should try to build an army.
Then go after something big.