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Welcome back to The Signal, a weekly letter where I share stories, trends, strategies and insights to help you level up as a creator and win on the internet.
Today’s topics:
Starting a Cult
Big Instagram Changes
GPT 4o, Gemini 1.5 Pro, and more.
Before we dive in, you may have noticed that I haven’t sent out the newsletter in a few weeks. That’s because The Signal is, for the time being, no longer a weekly newsletter.
Instead, I will only be sending it out when I am positive it will bring you value. I won’t disturb your inbox otherwise.
Let’s get into it.
It’s Time to Start a Cult.
I think you should start a cult.
No, I’m not suggesting you go and brainwash impressionable people into crime and deviancy.
But I am suggesting that you borrow some elements of what makes a cult successful for your business or brand.
Some of the best brands and creators, do just that. Let’s take a look at some examples.
David Goggins and the Enemy.
Part of what makes a great cult is sharing a common enemy. The cult-fandom of David Goggins hate mediocrity. They demonize it. They’re terrified of it. And that has a deep psychological effect of bonding his community members.
Trump’s cult fandom was strengthened over a common enemy in the legacy media and political establishment. He pushed an “us vs them” narrative that fostered a strong in-group identify amongst his followers.
Beyonce used her platform to advocate for social justice issues, feminism, BLM, LGBTQ+, etc – which aligned with the values of many of her fans, creating a shared sense of purpose and community.
What is the enemy you share with your audience?
Apple and the Love Bomb
“Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differenty…”
This is a quote from perhaps the most masterful marketing words ever created.
Why is this Steve Jobs narration so brilliant?
It’s a concept called The Love Bomb – a ritual an author called Douglas Atkins introduced in his book called The Culting of Brands.
See, cults give recruits a sense of belonging, with unwavering love and acceptance. They celebrate the very things that make you different. Cults sell belonging. Because the desire to belong is hard-coded into our DNA. Jobs understood this, and embraced it, helping to build a powerful sense of community and identity amongst Apple customers.
Stan Lee and Community.
How did Stan Lee build up one of the most iconic cult fandoms in history? Through storytelling, authenticity and community.
The characters he created and stories he told evoked an emotional connection with his fans, who then fell in love with his charisma. His enthusiasm for comics endeared him to fans.
But his community building is what really helped propel him to cult-fandom. Stan Lee was very active in his direct engagement with fans, through fan clubs, conventions, and his “Stan’s Soapbox” column in his comics, where he’d communicate directly with readers.
So when you’re thinking of your brand, make sure to consciously incorporate some of the elements that make cults successful: a clear and unwavering mission, strong community engagement and belonging, and emotional storytelling.
Instagram has Changed, a lot.
I’ve been active on Instagram for over a decade now, and this last few weeks marked some of the biggest changes I’ve ever seen being made to the platform.
First off, the platform is giving more visibility to small creators - this could be a real opportunity for many of you reading this right now. The size of your audience matters less and less.
In the past, when you’d post a reel on Instagram, it would be recommended to a small subset of your followers. If that performed well, Instagram would then recommend it to another group, including non-followers. If that performed well, it would recommend it to a wider group, and so on and so forth.
How it works now, is that Instagram will now show your reel first to a group of non-followers, which will help the algorithm decide whether to push it out further and further, and to whom.
This furthers the Tiktokification of Instagram, which a lot of larger creators are not happy about.
I’m unemotional about any changes to any platform. Social has always been about experimentation and adaptation. I’ll help you to stay on your toes and make the right moves.
Instagram is also now prioritizing original content, which I think is a great move. It does not hurt curation accounts, much like the ones I run (Metav3rse and Eluna) – but straight repost accounts (like Hidden NY and others) will need to rethink their strategy, because straight reposts will no longer be discoverable by the algorithm.
Why is reach down on Instagram in 2024?!
If you browse Threads, one of the biggest complaints you’ll see amongst creators is that reach is down.
Yes, Instagram has definitely been making changes to their algorithm. There are a lot of other reasons why this may be the case (we’ll get into them in a future issue) – but the main reason that I believe reach is down is two-fold.
Competition. There are now SO MANY talented creators and brands active on the platform. All competing for the same eyeballs you’re after. My instinct tells me supply is outpacing demand on the platform. There is something like 95 million posts shared on the platform every day. It will become increasingly harder over time to earn the precious commodity of attention.
Consumer behavior. As the CEO of Instagram Adam Mosseri has reported many times – there is less consumption happening on the home feed, and more consumption happening in the discovery feeds (reels tab, explore page, what your friends share in DMs, etc.) - which means, as I alluded to before – you essentially have to re-compete against the algorithm with every post.
I try to reverse engineer my own behavior on Instagram. I follow 1,000 accounts, many news and feature accounts which post all throughout the day. When I open Instagram to consume, I generally swipe only a few times on the home feed before going into DMs, explore, etc. So if a post by someone I am following isn’t in the top 6-8 recommended by the algorithm, it’s likely I’ll never see it. At scale, this compounds. Which is the top reason I think reach is down.
GPT-4o and Gemini 1.5 Pro
What a week in tech. OpenAI announced GPT-4o, and Google followed up with some major updates of their own.
I’m not going to get into all of the details.
If you’re interested in that, I cover it all on Metav3rse and Eluna. I recommend you following those pages if you want to stay ahead of the curve when it comes to emerging tech.
I do want to cover the 3 updates that I find most interesting for our community.
GPT-4o and Project Astra. The arms race is fully on. The tech world is in heavy competition to build the best personal AI agent. GPT-4o and Project Astra are quite similar in their ambition – and a likely preview of the next generation of Siri that will be announced next month.
Gemini Flash. This is actually a really impressive model, and absurdly cheap to implement. This is now a leading choice for developers who need a lightweight, yet highly capable LLM integrated into their product or service.
Generative AI in Search. Google is revamping their entire search product, with expanded AI overviews, more planning and research capabilities, and AI-organized search results. This video is worth a watch to understand what’s coming.
Personal Updates
LA for Meta
I just got back from LA where I filmed something very, very interesting for Meta.
I am not sure when it will release, but suffice to say I think it’s something that is very much the future. I’ll keep you updated on any announcement.
Pulse Updates
This one I am very excited about. Pulse is an ideation and research tool for creators. It identifies and tracks the latest trends, stories and content ideas for any vertical or niche.
The final touches are being made on the website, and we’re prepping for a June release. You’ll be the first to know when it’s available.
Paid Community
I am starting a paid community with Mr. Grateful and Digital Jeff.
More on this next week, but it’s a reboot of Unsigned. The new website launches early next week, with new pricing. So if you wanted to get in early and lock in today’s rate (over 50% cheaper than it will be next week) now’s the time.
The community will consist of weekly live calls with me, Domenic and Jeff.
We can’t teach a course on what we do. The tech and content world moves so quickly that it would become outdated in a month. The live calls allow us to field Q/A to a small gorup and present the most current trends and best practices while also getting a chance to connect with the community daily.
Cannes Creativity Festival
I’ll be in Cannes from June 15-21. If you’re going to be there - respond directly to this email and let me know – let’s connect!
Quick Hits
This section includes things I have found interesting and helpful this week.
‣ Rowan shares the most impresses use cases for GPT-4o that we’ve seen so far.
‣ Ali announces the successful editing of DNA in human cells with gene editors full designed with AI.
‣ Jon showcases a very creative workflow for creating fully rendered 3D characters from a simple sketch.
‣ Bindu explains the brilliant business strategy behind open-source AI.
