Hello hello hello, my creator nerds!

And an extra special welcome to the 20 subscribers that have hopped on board since the last issue, welcome to the party!

For some context for the new peeps in our fast-growing community, Cmd+Shift+Create is all about getting you fired up to keep creating content. Every Wednesday, I cover a story that’s commanding the creator space, shifting the landscape, and then I cover a creator who is crushing it in their niche and deserves more eyes on their content.

My goal with these weekly issues is to spark conversation, hear feedback and thoughts from you incredible readers, and overall, get the entire community hyped up to keep the content creation ball rolling. So thank you to all the new readers joining our community, I’m pumped to hear from you fine folks as you settle in! If you want to meet me (Luke), reply to this email, and let’s find time to chat, I always love hearing about creator journeys!

Now that we’ve welcomed our new team members, let me tell you what I got going on in my life. We’re about one week away from the corgi puppy coming home, and I’ll be sure to bless everyone with a picture as soon as we know which pup we’re gettin’! At the same time, we’re only a few weeks away from launching the beta version of our creator matching system on CreatorPad (if you want to be one of the first creators in the world with your hands on this tool, reply to this email and I’ll get you on the list 👀), which will be a massive stride taken for our very small team! Outside of that, it’s onward and upward, as always!

Now let’s dive into the latest stories in the creator space!

-Luke

Influencers Commanding Trust 🤳

Influencer marketing brand, Izea, is back with its yearly Trust in Influencer Marketing report, and as always, it’s chock full of goodies. Interviewing over 1,200 people, Izea covers prioritized platforms by different age groups, they uncover how many influencers certain age groups follow, and even shed light on purchasing habits and ad language effectiveness. Let’s check out the details:

• The first stat they jump into is regarding platform usage. I was surprised to find that over 50% of respondents use IG, FB, & YouTube. I thought that this was interesting being that TikTok does not fall into the above 50% range. But I think this may be because only 20% of their interviewee database was between 18-29 years old. Something tells me that number goes up as you lower the age group.

• On this same slide, you can see the usage of social platforms over the last three years. One thing that stood out to me is the usage of every platform across the board has fallen, with the exception of LinkedIn.

• Everyone in the group of interviewees follows influencers, which is no surprise if I’m being honest. I’d be more interested to learn what influencers these folks follow, and what they consider to be influencer content.

• The above stat is even more impressive when learning about how these influencers drive sales to their audience. Over 50% of respondents have purchased a product after seeing it used by an influencer. Now that’s wild and shows the true value of influencer marketing. Work with creators, and get your product into the hands of customers. 🤝 

• The next page makes me smile, because oh my god ad copy can be so bad sometimes. Over 50% of respondents believe that creator content is more influential than traditional ad content.

• Celebrities are out, creators are in! 61% of respondents say that they trust sponsored posts from creators more than an ad pushed by an A-list celeb.

• For folks under 45, the best way to get them to buy a product is by influencer posts. I’m genuinely confused by the fact that people still buy products from TV ads. I honestly couldn’t tell you the last time I watched a commercial outside of the Super Bowl (shoutout YouTube Premium).

• While we know influencer marketing works, as with everything, there are different strokes for different folks. For 26% of girls, TikTok & Insta are the best bets for ad placement. For 28.5% of guys, you might want to align with a creator for a YouTube ad.

I didn’t cover all the nitty gritty, but these were my biggest takeaways from the report. If you want to read it yourself, you can go ahead and check it out here! Did you find any of the above to be surprising or stand out? Let me know your thoughts on this report by replying to this email. I always love to keep the convos rolling!

Florida Bans Social Media for Kids 📵

You read that right, and no this time it’s not a joke. Florida has signed a law that will ban children under 14 from having social media accounts, and at the same time, require parental permission for 14 and 15-year-olds to create accounts on those platforms.

Let’s get into the need-to-know: