Where are they now?

Our second minisode of the sixth season of “The Creative Influencer” podcast is available today for download on iTunes, Spotify, and premier platforms everywhere. In this minisode, Jon asks the question “Where are they now?” about the influencers turned court correspondents that gained notable followings through their coverage of the Depp/Heard trial.

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A transcript of the episode follows:

This is the second minisode of the sixth season and is a follow-up to our last miniisode about lessons learned from lifestyle influencers turned court correspondents during the Depp/Heard trial.

We ask the question “Where are they now?” about the influencers that gained notable followings through their coverage of the trial. In doing so, we also can make some observations about the importance of maintaining your outside lists and website, which was a major lesson learned in our first episode this season with our interview of Angela Engel.

The first influencer that grew their following considerably during the Depp/Heard trial was Cami Twomey. She created over 125 news anchor style updates during the trial. Her videos attracted more than 47 million likes on TikTok.

Cami’s work is a great example of having an easily replicable format that translates well to other content. Her style of superimposing her head over B-reel and pictures like a news anchor allowed her to churn out as much content as she did during the trial, and then do the same thing with other current events. In this way, she has been able to ride on her surge of engagement and continue to produce content that continues to receive high view counts.

Instagramer House Inhabit, who surpassed 1 million followers by taking sides with #TeamDepp, gives a great example of having an infrastructure of a website, newsletter and blog in place. House Inhabit is able to leverage these existing platforms to continue to engage with her followers in addition to and outside of Instagram. She also has a podcast and posts other content on her website. House Inhabit is a good example of diversification in your content and your channels and how having that infrastructure in place is important for your current and future growth.

Another Instagramer, Devotedly.yours, posted hundreds of times during the trial and attracted millions of views to her stories. A self-described Egyptian American single mother of two, she posts lifestyle content related to her beauty brand. While decidedly on brand to continue to focus on lifestyle posts, her commentary on the Depp/Heard trial was the only departure from this. She amassed much exposure, but in not providing other related content, such as pop-culture commentary like the other influencers I’ve profiled, she risks not continuing that momentum.

The overall observation that can be made about the trajectory of influencers that went big during the Depp/Heard trial is that you never know when you will grab onto lightning in your content—but when you do, it is important to have an infrastructure in place to reach your followers outside of your traditional social media channels and to continue to reach then with content that is similar to the content that your followers expect.