Good afternoon, folks. We're gonna get started in about two minutes. So hang tight tight, we'll be starting soon.
Good afternoon folks and welcome to filling the TikTok gap. Our debrief of the 2022 Digital Innovation Fund. Cooperative impact lab was started in 2018. And we incubate projects that help address infrastructure gaps within the movement. We collaborate with other movement organizations to try and build power that lasts beyond an in between electoral cycles. We have a three pronged approach for the way that we approach the work. We do a discovery phase where we try and figure out what are areas that the movement is neglecting, or gaps that need to be filled. And then we try experiments working with cohorts to find solutions. Sometimes this means going back to the drawing table. But when we find things that work, we bring them to scale. One thing we found missing within the progressive ecosystem was a concerted effort to use emerging media platforms such as tick tock, there's a big gap in the movements digital playbook, especially compared to the right. And so we're really excited today to come together and share some of our findings that we've found about the platform to discuss the state of the platform's use for the progressive movement, and also to offer solutions and ideas about how we move forward. As we dive in today, we have plenty of space for questions. So please feel free to ask questions within the chat box. And we'll have a q&a session at the end. Before moving forward, I also want to take a moment to give a big shout out to our partners who we would not have been able to make this years or last year Digital Innovation Fund happen without so big thank you to alliance for Youth Action Movement, voter project, community change action, vocal media, way to win piece by piece strategies and propel capital. Really excited to introduce one of our funders, Sarah Williams, who is the founder and CEO of propel capital. And so with that, I'll hand it over to you, Sarah.
Thanks, Kemi, it's great to be with all of you, innovators this afternoon. I just wanted to say a couple of things about why we got involved in this project. A lot of it will, I'm sure resonate with many of you. But we all know we're living in a time of multi layered crisis for our democracy. And we're doing it in a world that is changing rapidly. And at propel, like many of you, we believe that connecting with people year round in ways that really resonate with them yields great dividends, it increases community cohesion, it builds an informed and engaged citizenry, it makes people more responsive to accurate information when it's time to vote. And so to do this, we have to bring dynamic content to people in forms that their platforms are already on and forms that they're interested in. And we were really excited to invest in this fund and the cooperative impact lab, because we believe that this real time experimentation is essential to doing that. I mean, there's so many platforms are emerging all the time, we don't know where people are going to be finding content. My teenage kids were recently showing me the corn tastic video, which probably everybody on this call has seen, but me or at least that's what my kids would have said, but the kid who loves the corn on the cob was missing some of his teeth. And he's just, you know, adorable saying it's corn tastic. And it was, you know, the second most viral video of last year, and we have no idea what content is going to catch fire. And having, you know, people kind of focus, grouping it in a room just feels like not the most compelling way to do it. We need creators that are from the communities that we're trying to reach that are speaking to their peers that are using their own stories. And so it was just really exciting for us to see how cooperative impact lab was able to move money quickly to these projects and experiments, and then use the learnings to help inform, you know, broader community that kind of mechanism for getting the funding out quickly and then fostering that creativity just feels like a terrific investment. So I'm hoping more people in philanthropy will be joining this kind of funding and that will be able to hear a lot of these creative stories and strategies for reaching people in 2024 and beyond. So thanks, look forward to hearing from everybody.
Thank you so much, Sarah for championing this project. I'm also excited to introduce one of our other champions, Carmel Pryor. She is the Senior Director of Communications at Alliance for youth action where she works to build the strategic communication skills of local youth and cultivate Youth Power across 18 states. Before the Alliance Carmel implemented social impact communications and campaigns at the local, state, national and international levels for NGOs, foundations and consulting firms. Thank you so much for being here, Carmel.
Thank you, Kemi. Hey, yo, what's up? Uh, I am so excited to be a part of this briefing with all of these amazing people. You know, at the Alliance, we literally every day firsthand, we see the brilliance and creativity that youth organizers bring to the work of building Youth Power, and speaking truth to power, in hopes of creating loving, safe and thriving communities, not just for young people, but really for all of us. And when local youth led organizing is trying to, you know, have use their creativity to reach young people, youth led organizations and the organizers within that they cannot flourish and tap into their full potential, if they because of capacity issues, and because of limited resourcing. So they aren't able to have the impact that they want, the impact on their communities isn't fully realized without that resourcing. And from our vantage point, as the Alliance, oftentimes we see, and I'm sure you all see this as well, that communications, particularly digital communications, and data, they fall by the wayside when organizations are under resourced, despite these things, having the potential to really leverage the voter mobilization efforts that youth led organizations need on the ground. And I'm so excited to be here, because this partnership with Cooperative impact lab has really been a game changer for the Alliance Network organizations that participated in the Digital Innovation Fund cohort. So you know, just want to give a shout out Detroit action, Chicago votes, Ford, Montana, loud light, and Washington bus all participated in this in 2022. And, you know, we met with all of them. And we're with them along the way. And they told us, you know, they were able to strengthen their digital infrastructure, they were able to leverage their organizing teams in exciting and innovative ways through this program. And they also created authentic content that connected with their target audiences, who were previously hard to reach through traditional digital channels before. And Hello, young people really turned up and turned out right. And 2022 alliances, network organizations really prove that that year round organizing really pays off, and that young voters are committed to fighting for our democracy. And so if we want to keep young voters and the millions of young people who turn a voting age every single year, then we have to proactively meet them where they are, and engage them in an authentic way. And TikTok is one of the best places to do that. Digital Media is one of the best places to do that. And that's what's so unique about the Digital Innovation Fund is that they understand, to connect with youth, we cannot solely rely on campaigns that are only active for a few months before an election or rely on influencers that may not have the right message, right? We need to fund infrastructure that unlocks the creativity of our youth led grassroots organizations. So they can build relationships with content creators, and connect trusted messengers of which youth organizers are with the right message on the right medium. I, you know, over the years at the Alliance, we've heard time and time again that young people are done with campaigns and candidates who just parachute in a few months before an election to pander for their vote because it feels so transactional. And it's our youth led grassroots organizations who show up every day, day in day out every single year to care for their communities and connect the act of voting to issues that directly impact the daily lives of people and mobilize them to action. But they need tools, they need training, and they need the resources to do this work. And so it's just really exciting to see how many people showed up today to this briefing. Thank you so much. It gives me hope that we are leaving these transactional ways of getting out that youth vote in the past. And we're following the lead of youth organizers who will continue to use their creativity like on TikTok to fight for transformational change, of which digital media is a key part. So thanks for We're having me today and looking forward to the rest of the briefing.
Thank you so much, Carmel, thank you once again for championing this project and this program. And like you said, right, we need to invest in beyond the electoral cycle rather than playing catch up in an even numbered year. And so one of the things we're really excited about with this year or last year's Digital Innovation Fund is to really learn how the progressive movement can leverage the platform, learn the lessons and the tools so that we're better equipped for community based organizing, as well as for the next cycle. So the four main questions we jumped into this program with is to figure out what actually makes a good piece of content, we wanted to learn if using external creators, like micro influencers was more effective than in house creative content. If g the algorithm supports geography, pick specific content. And then as well as the average cost that it takes to create a piece of video both in terms of staff time as well as dollars, we put out an open call. And within a week, we had over 50 applicants from these 50 applicants, we picked 13 amazing organizations listed there. And what we did with our groups is we front loaded them with trainings, we taught them about how to make good content, how to get started on the app, how to build your pipelines, how to start connecting with influencers, and what the real timelines look like. Our grantees also had access to one on one coaching for both technical support as well as strategic support. And then they receive $15,000 grants in order to create content to pay their staff to do so or to pay micro influencers. Over the course of this program.
And within less than two months, we produced over 82 pieces of content 70%, which were created and distributed in house, we had over 1.2 million views, 180,000 engagements, and what was really cool is that our cohort was diverse. And that diversity when it comes to both geography, as well as demographics. It allowed us to produce some diverse strategies and learn more lessons that had hadn't previously been tested in terms of how to engage with the platform in the best ways. So within the content itself, we saw all sorts of diverse content strategies that pinpoint what actually makes effective content, we talked about things or we learned about things like information driven content versus narrative driven, and more metrics that my colleague Ben will talk about in just a moment. But really, with this program, we were able to bring together various siloed pieces of experts and practitioners, and really show that there's not only an appetite for using this app and other emerging media platforms, but it also yields as well it actually has result when we chose to trust our frontline organizations, our creatives and our movement talents, we were not disappointed. So about really excited to introduce our program manager and researcher for the Digital Innovation Fund. Ben Resnik. Ben is a strategist and communicator at the intersection of politics and tech. He was the senior director of insights and Innovation at Main Street, one of the first agencies to apply micro influencer strategy to political and social network. Previously, Ben was at Product Manager at swing left, and a former presidential speechwriter. Happy to introduce Ben.
Thank you so much Kemi. And hi, everyone. It was such a pleasure to be part of this program. And I'm so excited to dig into our findings with you. Let me start by emphasizing why the Digital Innovation Fund work is so important. There is a vicious cycle with innovation in the progressive digital space because early in the tactics lifecycle, there's little evidence of its effectiveness. Because it's early in the tactic's lifecycle, there's little evidence of effectiveness, it's hard to secure funding, but because there is no funding, there's no way to get evidence of effectiveness. The Digital Innovation Fund set out to break that cycle, and we showed definitively that TikTok can be leveraged within the progressive movement. We started with the basic was practical, that still unanswered question, what does good progressive TikTok content look like? Because of how to structure algorithm works. Good content means two specific things before everything else. First, the number and length of a videos of us. And second engagement rate, likes comments shares, your program may care about voter registration or persuasion or any number of metrics. But if people don't watch and engage with the content TikTok will not show it to a larger audience. Full stop to be as direct as possible, until we have a better movement wide understanding of how to reliably produce TikTok content that is worthy of strong organic engagement, more complex tests like turnout of persuasion will always fall flat. Because as often as not, the content itself will be subpar by the standards of the platform. So returning to that question, what kind of progressive content performs? Let's start with storytelling. Next slide, please.
So we divided our cohorts at two pieces of content into whether it's simply shared information on how to vote, which we called strict information. Next slide, or explained why to vote which we loosely categorized as narrative, narrative content deployed direct to camera storytelling, as well as skits and memes and other techniques to make the information contained, more relatable and engaging and compared to strict information. Next slide please. We found that narrative content was the clear winner. Narrative content produced higher average engagement than strictly informational content overall in 12, out of 14 subcategories where you can bear directly. Next slide.
This trend also held up when looking at views, which is arguably the most important metric on the platform narrative median views exceeded strict info overall in eight of 12 subcategories where we can compare directly. This is hugely important because strictly informational content is often the default for new political entrance to TikTok. That means that many pilot and research programs may actually be shooting themselves in the foot and putting out subpar content that isn't up, set up succeed by the platform standards and suppressing their own results in the process. Next slide, please. We also looked at the kind of audience the content sought to attract content produced by the cohort was pegged to a combination of issue like abortion, geography, like Kansas, or identity and like API have heritage to power their messages or didn't explicitly include any of these elements. Next slide, please.
Overall, identity attended content was the clear winner for views with a median view count of 2.7 times the cohort median. Interestingly, issue based content was kind of a loser. Not only that issue focused videos, it barely half the cohort median views. But issue pended content that was also strictly informational, was some of the worst performing content of the entire cohort, which again, is important because that's also some of the common political content out there, especially in early days. As you may have noticed, geography specific content didn't perform especially well either. And with organic TikTok content, you can't guarantee where in the country or the world a post will be viewed. And that is a problem considering how important geography is to our work. And it points to an even greater challenge. We saw pretty clearly that opening a fresh TikTok account, posting some content and hoping it reaches the right people at scale just doesn't work. Groups like the Better Internet Initiative and Accelerate Change are piloting some really interesting structural and organizational models to get around this problem. And I strongly encourage you to look into their work as well. But we found two tactical approaches within the cohort that can also help. Next slide, please.
The first was boosting which is paying to get your organic content on more people's feeds. Boosting content lets you geo target, and it was cost effective it had around a 1250 CPM, which is very competitive with digital ads on other platforms. But the boosted posts didn't just get more views. They got better views. boosted posts across the cohort drew more engagement than on boosted posts overall and within almost every content subcategory we examined. Next slide. And in the case of one Grand Teton National Black Worker Center, views and follower growth went up after their boosting programs, even for posts that weren't boosted. The possible takeaway, being that boosting introduces posts not just to a larger audience, but a higher quality audience, which behaves in ways that freedom virtuous cycle in the TikTok algorithm. Excellent.
The other key tactic was working with micro influencers instead of creating content in house. With their built in audiences, micro influencers have demonstrably higher views and better engagement, which isn't surprising. But interestingly, influencer posts also weren't that expensive to produce costing average around $900, a piece in the cohort. And they took almost exactly the same amount of time to produce as in house content as well. About an hour and a half per post though, obviously with different tasks involved. What was key to these posts with relationships and flexibility. The most effective micro influencer posts will born of long term relationships based on shared affinity, not factory farming content, but instead creating a genuine organizer, pipeline and ladder of engagement and thinking long term. The best posts also will add creative freedom, not over editing creative scripts, making sure they understand what you're trying to accomplish and letting them translate it for their audience. If there's a theme here, it's we are live In a post Facebook world on TikTok, you can't just open an account, repackage a broadcast TV ad and expect it to get anywhere. And in my opinion, that is good messaging, and persuasion can no longer be transactional, it must be relationship driven, consistent, long term and holistic. If we can learn that lesson from this platform, the reward isn't just better TikTok content. It means harnessing a new persuasive language of digital advocacy, narrative work and political change for the entire progressive.
Thank you so much, Ben. Thanks for sharing some of their findings. And folks, if you do want to take a look at our report, we will be having that on our website cooperativeimpactlab.org Live shortly. I'm really excited to introduce one of our grantee organizations Detroit action, and their executive director Branden Snyder. Born and raised on Detroit's east side to a working class union family. Branden has been involved in face electoral and community organizing projects throughout the United States for over 10 years. Previously, Branden was the deputy organizing director in charge of youth voting for the Hillary Flint, Michigan 2016 presidential campaign, the deputy campaign director for the groundbreaking Gilchrist for Detroit City Clerk campaign, as well as the statewide director for organizing for Michigan united. Branden's commitment to democracy and racial justice is fueled in part by his experiences as a Detroiter and that of other Detroiters who have endured poverty and the criminal justice system. He believes in the power of bringing our communities together and challenging leaders to go from victims to victors by engaging the systems and policies that impact our lives. Happy for you to be here with us, Branden handing it over to you.
All right. Thank you. What up though? Can you hear me? Well, my, my, my sound has been really weird today on my air pots. Perfect. All right. So what, uh, Bill, I'm Branden Snyder. I'm the Executive Director and trade action. As we mentioned in the introduction to plasma trader, my family moves to the sea in New Orleans as a part of the greater immigration life period itself, but also for the product, the good job to neighborhood. Schools are one of the things that, you know, we're super interested in trying to actually how do we build people power? And how do we make sure that we're on developing leadership and development bench of multigenerational Wafi ratio folks in order to build the the working class, multiracial democracy that our communities are. So anti trade action, what that really means is that we put black and brown communities at the foot, we build power within our communities to ensure that elected officials are held accountable to their constituency. And to ensure that resources and investment, one key issue that we care about are directed to the frontlines on issues like you know, affordable housing, you know, clean water and safe infrastructure and workforce development, and public safety. So we've had a long history using social media, developing videos and developing content. But this year, we came into the year wanting to figure out how do we use tick tock in other mediums to be able to educate our our base as well as to be able to show celebration and be able to make sure that we're showing that civic engagement and democracy building can be fun. So in the spring of 2020, others last year, we use TikTok. To recruit new fellows and gltn canvassers. We saw that our social media platforms had a maximum effect spin you know, for sign up goals, we applied for the Digital Innovation Fund in order to build on that previous work and be able to find new access points to connect with young people to connect with people across the board it really to engage in a battle and just invoke but to be able to organize them for year round. Action in an organized so our program tested you know how to effectively recruit engage young people on six out to take take action on key campaign issues, while also shifting the narrative, one power and the importance of building a multiracial democracy. So our core strategy focused leading up to the midterms really focused on pushing our voter pledge and focusing on vote chip LinkedIn TikTok ads into our code and trade in Metro Detroit auto audience maximizing signups and maximizing impression with the help of our friends with our friend Lauren E. Scott, who's in the audience and who you know helped really drive the work you know, we we're able to track tracking traditional metrics, like views and impressions, likes and shares while also tracking you know, acquisitions and non digital metrics like in person engage So really using TikTok, to build an online to offline program, he he tested two assets, you know, a couple of videos, and then you know, quickly leaned into, you know, the higher performing videos that matched, you know, real common TikTok things, you know, personal stories, working cameras, and quick edits. We also paired those ad campaigns with strong relevant call to action, that that were connected to our year round organizing. We ran programs, you know, back in October, from the middle of October to right after the election, we spent about a little over $5,000, it really generated over half a million, actually five 500,500 92,000 impressions. And through that we generated about 300, new volunteer signup. So all of that came out to be about a cost per acquisition about $6.09. So this suggested a couple of things for us. One, that tic tac TikTok ads could be effective and could be efficient as a as a digital acquisition tool. The other thing that is suggested for us is that the click through rate and completion rate, we're you know, we're phenomenon and truly important for us to be able to do online to offline organizing, especially in a short timeframe. You know, I think there's a few other things that I want to lift up before, you know, my time one of them is that like, every single person that signed up, who acts through our ad campaign, were incorporated to our, to our CRM, the band, or every action, and they were encouraged to participate in offline action. So coming to a training, you know, when world view we're on hard skills, getting bogged in actions, getting involved in our canvas program, volunteering in our, you know, across the board on election work, so going back to vote, tripling becoming a member of the organization, and again, you know, our traditional vote triple A model, making sure that they're telling their friends, relatives and neighbors, about the election, about the stakes of the election and making sure that the friends, relatives and neighbors are ready to vote. So, you know, while we had done both tripling on social media in the past, you know, we had, we didn't have that direct connection to the band, and, but we were able to, you know, contact and use that contact information in the band 1/6 time, we were able to really connect folks, you know, through text messages, through mail, and through social media, so using the TikTok ads, using those digital ads, to build our list and to expand our list and to really supplement the list that we had. You know, so the Digital Innovation Fund, you know, really allowed us, you know, with this partnership, and not just, you know, you know, get dollars and you know, in you know, run a program, but actually think about how we're using research and how we're using the research to refine our work, you know, so through that we were able to revamp and elevate our TikTok program, you know, we were able to think about how you want to use digital content in the future. And then through that digital content work, we really also were able to think about, you know, our long term, you know, some of our long term goals on how we want to be able to use, you know, take title in off site. So what you see here is, on this slide is one of our, one of our videos that we that we did when we first launched our program, you know, we engaged a lot of our members, we engaged Michael, influencers, we engaged a number of folks in the community, you know, using these funds, but also really just, you know, engage in our approach, you know, testing out our online offline program, asking people, how did they want to talk to their neighbors? And how did they want to talk to their friends about what they saw? And, you know, and what they want to be? How did he want to be involved in this election? So some of the numbers that you see on the side, you know, you know, through this program, we got about 50 pledge cards, so people who complete it, fully completed the pledge, pledge to vote program, you know, add members, so people who run this program, you know, decided to pay $5 a month, $60 a year, as well as, you know, 27 volunteer time. So, so when we talk about this, this particular number, we're talking about people who came out and wanted to knock on doors with us during the election. One thing, you know, I just want to, um, lift up is that, you know, we like, like any program, we faced a few challenges. So we before the election, our ad campaign was cool, because we use the word vote and attacks. You know, we were told that we were in violation of TikTok policy, despite the fact that other campaigns were using the word vote, written in there at that was one of the people who were able to. So we were able to learn from other folks in the cohort, and how they address that issue. And we were able to pivot from those conversations and from the working with that big cohort. You know, you know, we were able we weren't prepared for TikTok to really pull our ads on such short notice. You know, and some of that, you know, you know, have We have more time, you know, from some of these things, so revamp it, you know, we could have been, we could have been able to create alternative plans, in case our ads reporting period more quickly. But, you know, again, the, the resources and relationships that were generated from this program really allowed us to think creatively. And, you know, we're hearing, you know, what other people were doing in place. So, you know, I just, I'll just close and leave it at that is that like, you know, you know, you know, our work, you know, really, really, this is important for us, you know, we want to be, we believe in using digital as a long term solution for our, for our program, long term bridge to do to engage people from walleye activist, from being able to engage people, you know, into the organization, you know, permanently. And we believe that what the pandemic envisage in the trends in our community, this is opportunity for us. And we hope that we've learned a lot, you know, that that supplements are organized, and it allows us to build power. And so we think, this operate, you know, we really appreciate this, this grant and support from CIO. And so now we have a framework that, that expanded what's possible to do within digital organizing, and it's possible for how we tell our stories. So I'll stop right there. And I'll pass it right back.
Thank you so much, Branden, I was really excited to hear the way that you're able to use this platform, right to actually mobilize folks in person and connecting the digital organizing to your data team to be able to follow through and connect people from Yeah, just seeing an ad in order to get them to register to volunteer with y'all. So I'm really excited to introduce our next speaker, Linh, when the executive director of Run AAPI, Linh has traveled the country working for political candidates up and down ballot, including Bernie Sanders, Cory Booker, Senators Ossof and Warnock and recently advised the launch of Beto O'Rourke's campaign for governor in Texas. He's also managed several successful local campaigns in Houston, sending elected women of color to Austin, Texas. He's now focused on rewriting the cultural and political narrative of young Asian Americans at Run AAPI. Lin, thank you so much for joining us.
Thank you, Kemi, it's good to like be here with y'all. I'm like, super, super excited to jump into this.
I'm so happy to be out of the candidate organizing space, and actually flex on some more creative organizing, which is like what we do with RunAAPI. And as Kemi mentioned, so I'm the executive director of run pronoun she her and I'm based here in Houston, this is home for me. I'm also a first time mom decided to raise my baby during a very major election year, that was a lot of fun, a lot of learnings. I would run as y'all can see, so we're a political home for young Asian American and Pacific Islanders. And we do this work as a hub of organizers as advocates as creatives from our community. And as y'all can see, our co founders, Brad Jenkins, who's now the president and CEO of AAPI Victory Fund, and Chloe Bennet, who's an actress and activist, you know, we really started this is just a few years ago, but we started as like a very literal social convening space in Hollywood. And it kind of became like this, like social gathering of like young Asian celebrities, who like wanted to get political. And this was after 2016, where, you know, we we saw a new precedent, in 2016. And for the Asian American community, we felt that there was just no place for us or that at least in that year, we felt completely ignored. And we just weren't seen in in a very linear political way. And so now for RunAAPI, we're, we've kind of an y'all can guess this, but we've kind of moved away from that space, and really understood that identity representation, and especially for young Asian Americans, you know, needed to grow beyond entertainment and need to grow beyond Hollywood. And so, in 2022, and we're very young organization, y'all grew a very small team, as you can see, but last year, after quite a few different polls, case studies in the field and like to be very honest, just being very, very online. And obviously listening to our community. You know, we we needed to launch some type of Get Out the Vote campaign that specifically spoke to young Asian. And if we go to the next slide, please. That's where we launched the give a fuck about midterms. And it was so interesting launched this campaign. And if y'all can, like gather from the messaging here, we needed to make sure that whatever this GOTV campaign became we wanted to build the right bench of trusted messengers, you know, people that are that are, have Yes, like the influence and the persuasion in our community, but But folks that just like really understood the stakes of the election, and for folks that that, you know, do this work in Asian American identity and storytelling, I mean, historically, it's just always been a challenge for Asian communities that, you know, and we've seen so many headlines in the past couple of years, you know, telling us that, like many Americans, like simply cannot name any famous Asian people. And I don't know if if any bill had seen any of these polls or these headlines. But for the most part, folks just either couldn't name a famous Asian American, or it was names like Bruce Lee, or Jackie Chan. And it was just so clear, this is like as recent as 2021. And so it was so clear to us that when we're thinking through who our cultural influencers are, and people are very out of touch, and we have to take the time to be intentional with how we do this. So for us, for Run, we took it a step further last year, early 2022. We went back into the field and just like went back and talked to young Asians and asked if they could mean any, any political figure, any Asian cultural figure that they actually look up to. And 40, it was 42% that came back and said that they could not, they couldn't answer that question. They didn't list anyone. And coming in second place we're in this like, kills me inside. Coming in second place was Andrew Yang, who ranked the second highest even then I think he was ranked wrong 2020 Something percent. So we're going to give a talk about midterms for us meant that we wanted to work, it was going to be so much more than working with influencers, you know, we wanted to build the right slate of creatives who not only understood our cultures also understood our changing political power, but also understood that you know, how to own our narrative shift that Asian Pacific Islanders like they're actually voters. And of course, like we all know, this, y'all their attendance for a reason. But we we all agree that you know, content is king, right? So in finding the right micro influencers, like there, there shouldn't even be good. There's stuff needed to be good. Next slide, please. And so, like we were just so grateful for the cooperative impact lab. And like I want to be honest with with y'all, you know, like, in the past few years, we've been so intentional with the grants that we applied to, we'd be funders that we want to partner with and work with. And with Cooperative impact lab, like they just trusted us. We like pitched like this, this like pretty big, broad idea. And they very much let us run with it. Because this campaign for us, we had no plans to be on TikTok. We were very small team, we had near the end of the election cycle, we had no funding. So the capacity for us was just super, super limited. And again, we actually didn't apply to this grant. I think it was until like the week before the deadline. When like a friend of mine here in Houston that I think y'all, you know, should apply to this. It just fits in like the ethos of a run API. So here we are. So we had a chance to find and to work with five different Asian creators. We had a Filipina a Filipino food and lifestyle blogger, she's based out of the Dallas or the DC, Maryland, Virginia area, we had a South Asian dancer, we had a native Hawaiian conservationist, and we had an Indian American athlete and disability rights activist. And the screenshots that y'all see here, we also had a Taiwanese, Japanese American nail artists. So again, like a very broad range of identities, but we like wanted to showcase like the nuances of our culture and like how young Asians actually exist today in America. So we have like a killer crew of people. And the game their content was like, pretty non political in nature, but we knew that they were they were super trusted by their followers. So they helped us connect the dots with Asians with their followers who either have like never considered themselves being political, or we had a lot of feedback and like specifically in the comments of people telling us up we were voting for the first time or like they finally registered didn't know how to do it. So it was like the The engagement was just so valuable. Um, and as I mentioned earlier, to me, we wanted to work with micro influencers who had like these like intimate followings, whether it was, you know, 50k followers, 100k followers are 250 followers, but we knew that their audience it they, they tend to be more loyal, and they tend to be more engaged. And we saw that with each of the posts that they had created with us. So these collaborations, we produced 12 pieces of content that totaled just under 275k views. An average open we don't think you Kemi and the total cost has been mentioned earlier. That was roughly 900 or so, per post. So I'm like getting into, like, the challenges and I think the biggest takeaways for us, like it was kind of set earlier by Brandon. But I mean, for us, like late funding was always a challenge. It's a blessing and was also a challenge. You know, our team, like, we were like, hyperfocus, heading into November, new opportunities came our way, including this, this grant. And so we knew one like, this is something we had to do, but just figuring out internally, the time and the effort that we could give to this, that that was a challenge. And because of the timeline, you know, with late money, you know, we were also hoping more of like a runway to create and to build, and like really building meaningful relationships with our influencers. I mean, these are people that none of them said no to us, you know, when we did the pitch, like they understood what we were getting at. There was actually a few of them that that actually most of them I'd said, they were trying to find, like their political lane. And so the opportunity to get involved with us was just it was just great timing. And then, of course, like the, the timeline going into election day, you know, we y'all know this in content creation, we wanted to leave as much open space and as much trust as possible with their creators, but a lot of them actually wanted feedback. And we just kind of We almost ran out of time. And a couple of things I wanted to share with y'all, you know, because our team, we took a lot of time reflecting back on this campaign, you know, a couple of things that I think we would have done differently one. And for folks who know, the Asian diaspora across the country, it is just, oh, man, it's so vast, it is so nuanced. It is so different geographically, that we wish we would have taken a little more time to do that recruitment more intentionally, that we had reached the right pockets of America, I'm here in Texas, you know, there are a lot of Southerners that do the content creation, but that we wish we had time to actually find them. And then we also wish that we might have set the expectations a little differently with our influencers that yes, like the the ultimate like call to action was like we need a young agents to go vote. But we wanted to build perhaps a greater purpose, so that this work could continue.
And I think the last like couple of things that I wanted to leave with y'all because as we're thinking through for Run AAPI, I mean, this is this is just going to be programming that we're going to continue to it has to be. So we've already started fundraising for this program to continue, which again, was it was just something that wasn't on our radar, like five months ago. And the story that we want to continue telling, and especially on a platform like TikTok, is that, you know, young Asians, like they are voters, they are progressive voters, we just have to figure out who they are and where they are, and really like what they care about. And I don't think this is this is actually come out as a official analysis from 2022. But young Asian voters, they still lag behind their peers. You know, and like, we're, I've always believed that with young Asian voters, we're like the sleeping giant, we just like, gotta wake them up. They're they're there, though. And the other focus for us for Run is that not only do we want to continue this programming, but we have to keep building this bench of Asian creators, and we have to know who they are and bring them into the fold. And I mentioned this just a minute ago, but no one said no, to us. You know, that was one of the questions that Ben knew and asked us when we're doing our recruitment for influencers. No one said no to us. And it was so clear that, you know, so many of these creatives exist, they're waiting, and they're looking for these types of opportunities. And of course, like to be able to offer some kind of compensation, like y'all like we got to live by our values. So we're just we're grateful that we came across this opportunity to really build on what we were what we had started in 22. That's it from us.
Thank you so much, Linh. The work y'all did was amazing. And we're really grateful to have you on board. I also want to give a quick reminder for folks, if you have any questions that you have from any of our panelists, or folks to come, please feel free to ask a question in the chat box, that q&a section. So I'm really excited to introduce our final panel of experts to really help contextualize this work for us. First, we have Mikka MacDonald, who is a political communication specialists, writer, designer, Illustrator and creative director at community change. She has led multiple high budget progressive initiatives serving in a breadth of senior management roles, and she's had her work and ghostwriting appear in a number of publications from the New York Times, Washington Post, Vox and many more. We also have Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman, who is an innovative consultant and executive coach with particular expertise in the use of emerging communications platforms for organizing advocacy and politics. She previously served as the president of new media ventures, a nonprofit venture capital firms that invest in early stage progressive innovation. And she's also the founder of one of the founders of global consumer watchdog, some of us. And finally, well, not last but not least, we have Madeline Madeline Twomey, who is a campaign veteran, seasoned digital communications professional and runs a bowtique digital consulting firm, Rufus and Mane, Madeline serves as an advisor and founding board member to Gen Z for change, and is an adjunct professor at the School of Media and Public Affairs at the George Washington University. We're also joined by Ben who we heard from earlier, our program manager for the Digital Innovation Fund.
So let's jump right into it. In preparing for this cycle of the Digital Innovation Fund, we found that many organizations were doing individual pieces of the work, we had influencer marketing, content creators, trainers, etc. But all these pieces working in silos. What is necessary to bring all the pieces of the puzzle together to establish a progressive movement on emerging platforms, such as TikTok? And I'm going to hand it over to Madeline to start.
Sure, um, I think the thing that I would impart on this community as much as possible, is that we really do need to move away from creator only investments on TikTok. I did, I've done creator work in the progressive space since 2019. I did it on Biden, I'm so thankful for this, you know, this program that allowed organizations to invest in their own channels, and I want to see more of it. We can't just do create our own work. I think so often, we feel like, you know, our own brand of our organization maybe isn't important, it's about the work. But the way that consumers work online is that social presence and following counts is validation. So we need to build our own media channels, and get the right information to those audiences. So that's something that I would love to see more of in the future.
Thanks. This is a great question Kemi. So my view is that the social media landscape is evolving more rapidly than ever. And my roots come back from like, I didn't actually go to an attorney, but like noi days was kind of my start in politics, and also early analyst, Institute analyst group days. And it feels to me like we had a real edge back then, in the movement around technology and digital innovation. And we've lost that edge. As a movement, we really need to get that edge back. Like we think about the amount of money that the progressive movement spent on Facebook, and TV ads in the last cycle. And you compare that to the amount of resources we put into TikTok, those should have been close to on parity, like TikTok, is getting the attention minutes that Facebook gets right that and instead, it was probably more like 100 to one. I mean, that's just absurd. It's a little, it's honestly a little bit embarrassing to be working in a movement that is so far behind on TikTok. And I'm so happy and like excited about the work that Sal and all of the members of this cohort did. And it's like the very tip of the iceberg of what we need to be doing. So the first thing is that we need funders funding this work. So the earlier speakers said like you it's very difficult in a small community organization, if you don't have funders who are putting the money in to let people experiment, and to do the cutting edge experiments, as Ben said, where we don't already have the proof of effectiveness. But you just have to take on faith that when you've got a behemoth like TikTok, with the attention, minutes that TikTok is getting, there is something there, right? And we have to figure out what it is rather than say, well, we shouldn't put money because we don't know exactly what the thing is yet. Right. And the second thing I think we really need to invest in which cell has also done a fantastic job with this program is around beginning to build a community practice. And this call is part of that right? Beginning to get the kinds of people together in the room who are working on the platform who are excited about working on the platform. There are individual innovators in organizations who need support and resources and to be talking to each other about their best practices. And it's kind of like, again, sort of new Organizing Institute analysts group kind of model of bringing those innovators together early. So that's those are some things that I'm excited about.
Yeah, I think just underlining both of those 10 What you just said around kind of the evaluation pieces. And I feel like for platforms like Facebook, and Instagram, and we have LinkedIn and Twitter, the metrics are ones that we use here are the ones they're the ones that also feel really comfortable to people in power. They can be put really nicely on a grant report and with something like TikTok I think the like our entire movement, and everyone is still trying to understand we know it's powerful, but we don't know exactly how to use it. And it also like specifically has the opportunity to give more power to folks who like traditionally aren't given seats, that strategy table so we're talking like, especially like low income people of color folks can like, become stars over ate without necessarily having like the exact like resume or pedigree or have those connections to places in power. And I think that also threatens the status quo a little bit. But being able to invest in that and being able to like help support those new political leaders and make sure they're backed is going to be really exciting. And having as many Baynton possible as possible in the mix is powerful.
And you have anything to add on?
Right? Not that hasn't been said better already. Know, the piece to amplify, for me, is the we need to think about this holistically. So much of this development is happening in silos. The burgeoning micro influencer agencies know how to create a drumbeat of content, the nonprofit organizations know what to say and how to talk about it. The Influencers, or you know, really talented in house content creators, know how to translate that into the language of the platform and of their specific audiences. It feels like all of those are being developed in parallel in the sense of both going forward and not touching, we really, really need a regular convening of best practices specifically for this tactic, but also spreading from applications within TikTok as a channel to broader applications for communications generally, and and relationships with our voters and organizers to you know, it's very easy to think about taking the broadcast TV ad and someone just cuts it. And now it's a TikTok ad. Congratulations. Have you ever heard of someone finding a good idea on TikTok and having it expand out to broader comms channels outside of TikTok? I haven't yet but there's no reason that it shouldn't be there is such raw, powerful organic potential, not just for like ripping stuff and putting it on another platform, but for thinking about what is effective, why it's effective, and how to get to the right people and meeting them where they are. That is going to take a degree of holistic thinking for comms for digital for entire campaign organization structure that I think is vastly overdue, and hugely powerful if we get it right.
Thank you all, on both Madeline and Mikka, you mentioned a little bit about how oftentimes we're focused approach TikTok. They look at the same metrics and measurements that they are used to looking at other platforms. So what that many organizations and campaigns tend to focus on working with celebrities, or influencers with giant followings in the meet in the millions. So when they fall into that strategy, what is lost by not engaging those mid level and micro level influencers? I'm going to open up for anyone to start with
Mikka kick us off,
I'll go first. Um, I think for us, that's something that community change and community change action really wrestled with. So we were super stoked to be able to partner closely with a gentleman named Ashwath at Social Current, their Gen Z led firm that really focusing on this type of work. And one thing, you know, from the top that we were looking at looking at our budget, and we're like, Okay, how much of this money is going like directly into the community, we're trying to, like uplift and empower being, in our case, like low income people of color, and how much of it was potentially going into like big tech or into groups led by folks who didn't necessarily reflect the diversity of the electorate or like, frankly, our audience. And so what we decided to do, kind of like, there's so many pieces to this pie, but we decided, like the part that we really wanted to go in on was how do we expand that electorate by reaching the folks who don't have that celebrity status who don't necessarily haven't necessarily been invited into the political system. And so we really focused on kind of those mid level to lower level, like following wise creators, and gave them a shot and let them run with it. And overall, like we're thinking about evaluation pieces, and how that goes into that to like, our campaign, we're lucky enough to have it do extremely well. And that the you know, those numbers, those like vanity numbers look, like very good again on that grant report. But I think the piece that was hidden so far program started in 2021, and ended up with several million on like the views and the engagements and but the number that we were really excited about was we had 82, individual content creators to and those were 82 content creators who were from backgrounds who might not necessarily have been given a spot at the table before and what we were trying to do that is really hard to put in a grant report and make into a vanity number is figure out a way to build like longer term paths to political power. So like, my resume is college educated, unpaid internships, I've been in the political space I've been invited to these tables. Like I am an Asian white woman usually living in Washington, DC millennial, I should not be deciding what content is like the most relatable to an 18 year old black woman in Georgia, we should be hiring the 19 year old black woman in Georgia, even if she doesn't have celebrity status. So that was what we tried putting in our various small reports. But our slice of the pie.
If you wouldn't mind me piggybacking on that, I completely 1,000% agree with everything that you said, I am skeptical of like, the biggest, biggest influencers. And I think that the tendency to think in the space that influencer work means working with, like the equivalent of the Kim Kardashian is actually a lesson we've learned incorrectly, from the corporate space where like, eyeballs are enough, you know, you're gonna go to the grocery store. So if you just put a notice a recognizable face next to a product, people will walk by it, but it's no guarantee in the political world. Meanwhile, in the micro influencer space, they are, in my opinion, a sweet spot where they are large enough to have like demonstrably have, like demonstrably have the skill to build an audience and engage with them. But they are still small enough that there actually is engagement. And if it's coming from their account, it's coming from exam and not like a paid staffer, you know, that there is that two way street, that genuine relationship is especially powerful and TikTok, if you've ever opened up the comments, you see people giving as good as they get. That's like some of the most effective stuff that you can do. micros are like, the best of that, in my opinion, probably even better than than the biggest names out there. And they're accessible and scalable in terms of reach without being too expensive. And I think it's just the sweet spot of like, the highest quality content with both in terms of reach and Polishness, while still being authentic and powerful, and that we can't afford to lose that.
And I would I would add one other thing, just a different angle on this. I agree with everything you guys have said. But also, we should be thinking about these programs, not just in terms of the immediate video content on the number of views it gets, but also capacity building and the micro influencers today, some of them are going to be the mega influencers of tomorrow. And are they going to be producing better and more political progressive content? If we start with them now? Yes, like, do we only provide professional development for the executive directors of nonprofits? Or do we also provide professional development for the staff members and the potential future staff members of nonprofits like we do all of these things, right. And we should be investing in these 1000s of young people of color, who are speaking to their 10s of 1000s of people, not just in the mega wealthy folks who are the hot things right now.
And I'd love to piggyback on that, too. I mean, some of the folks that you're talking about, if we're not investing in them, they're going to stop doing this work, right, because they need to pay their bills. So I think a lot about those small creators that we should just, we should just pay a retainer for them to keep doing this for the next 12 months or the next 24 months, or else they're gonna go get another job. The only other thing I would say is like, I'll disagree a little bit with Ben, I think I've done influencer work kind of at all levels, from top top to the very small, I think it really needs to be an all the above approach. I think the thing that TikTok allows us to do is to really create movements, because of the way that the algorithm is is right, we can reach people, we can reach everyone b that is on the platform with our content if it's good enough. And so if you are able to have the same messaging and talking points from the micro influencers to the mega influencers, that's how we create actual narrative change and to create movements.
Thank you all. This discussion is really exciting. And I do want it to continue a little bit. So sorry for bleeding over. For folks who do have to drop off we are recording so you can see a copy of anything that you miss later on. But before we move on to a little bit more of a panel discussion and answering questions, I do want to leave some time for a quick message from our executive director at cooperative impact lab, Kate Gage. So Kate, if you'd like to come on board and share a little bit about what we're trying to do next. That'd be great. Thanks,
Kemi. Yeah, I'll be really short because this is great. Thank you, everyone for joining. This has been fantastic. I love this program so much. And I'm so glad we were able to do it and do it in collaboration with so many funders and partners and orgs. And I really want to thank the CIL team and our CIL advisors on this. So Kemi, and Valeria, and Ben and Taren. And I just want to say this, this work is not done. We are really excited to try to keep doing this. And as Kemi just mentioned, and everyone and I think that was a really great point to build on, is we need to be doing this across 2023. Right, we need to be continuing to invest in these leaders in these organizations. I'm so grateful to all of you for lifting up the importance of the organizational messaging in addition to the importance of the creators and the influencers. So we are actively working to build out a 2023 program and Looking for both partners, folks that want to help out with the supporting the organizations, organizations that need funding. And then of course, that that the funder side to make sure that we can be supporting these, these leaders and helping with those creative payments. And then I think just really, as we've learned from this, this demand signal of you all being on here is huge for us. And I think, really want to make sure that by the end of this year, too, we have some really clear playbooks that can be shared, continuing to do this. So it's not just for the grantees, but also for the broader community. And there's just so much energy here and so much to learn from everybody on the call. So I just wanted to say that I just say, please reach out to us on cooperative impact lab.org, or just reach out to any of us on you know, the internet, we're around. And please just jump in. We'd love we love the more logos, the better. So please jump on and join us. And Kemi, back to you.
Thank you so much, Kate. Thanks for folks who are sticking around with us. Okay, so for the panel, we have one more question. And then we still do have some q&a questions that folks asked in the chat box. So we saw in 2022, that TikTok was banning political ads and actively suppress content about voting, contacting many campaigns, and like we heard earlier, from organizations such as Detroit action, so with this political reality is investing in tick tock work really a viable path forward for the progressive digital strategy, and turn off started off with you.
So sorry, sorry, can you repeat the question?
Yeah, no problem at all. So I just was talking about how TikTok has been cracking down on political speech. Right. And so should we really be investing on this platform? Is that a viable path forward?
Yeah, I mean, I think like, it's certainly annoying, right? And it's gonna cause problems for some programs. But this is a question to me of like, is TikTok a platform we should be putting $100 million into or $500 million into it, this was not even remotely close to $100 million? Like, I don't think it I like the gap between even in a worst case scenario, content crackdown, the gap between what we are investing and what we should be investing is still enormous. And, you know, it may be that it leans like slightly less directly electoral. Or it's more volunteer recruitment, unless broader persuasion or something like that, like those are things that we still, like, I don't know, because we have not put the money and as a movement into investigating and experimenting and figuring out where the effectiveness lies. But I would be, I'm very confident that we should be spending an order of magnitude or two orders of magnitude more money on TikTok than we are under the worst case scenario.
Any other folks want to share some thoughts?
I have a kind of controversial approach here. I'm not that worried about the suppression on TikTok. I know that there's been studies that show it specific to the political space, my response to that would be everyone gets suppressed on Tik Tok. Every single creator has had their profiles pulled. Every creator has, like people creators that don't work in politics, right? creators have backup accounts for that reason, multiple backup accounts, every single crater has had their content get pulled. And usually there's not an understanding of why. So I think it's just the nature of the platform. And I think we just need to get comfortable with that idea that like, half of our content is getting get pulled, we can edit it, we can repost it and not worry about it too much.
Yeah, and just as importantly, even if TikTok were banned tomorrow, which by the way, I don't think is going to happen. The lessons of the platform have broad applicability elsewhere, you know, TikTok has sold vertical video and that, like people have been saying for years that that was like a huge next thing. Even if TikTok was gone tomorrow, people would move to reels God save us people would move to YouTube shorts, people would immediately create a clone. The lessons the nature of the relationship is piloted by TikTok will remain, I would argue strongest on TikTok as long as it's a thing, at least for the next few years and goes through the normal social media agent cycle until the next folks figure out the next big thing. But to say, oh TikTok there's a chance TikTok could be turned off tomorrow Therefore let's not do it is like saying in like the year 1900. Like, you know we're in it no to like oh, I don't think the biplanes are the way that people are going to get around like obviously not like we're working on other stuff, other stuff is going to happen. There's been this massive innovation, we've taken the first step forward, have to invest in everything that happens next.
Yeah, and I think you know, what's in it, especially like just underlining the points that other folks have said, and even thinking about it from like a broader kind of progressive framework point of view. I think what this what TikTok has offered us is an opportunity to really build and really strengthen our muscle memory as organizations as individuals who have political power to start learning how to like shed that political power and share it. I think like, especially for something like TikTok, the folks who are the best at it, I'm going to talk about Ashwath from Social Current. And again, because he and I were like very tight partners for the last like, year and a half, he's probably sick of me by now. But you know, they at the time, we started putting together when he was leading an organization based out of their dorm rooms in college. And I think what we what in what I'm trying to pull there is that we need to start, like recognizing different forms of expertise. And we need to start learning how to decentralize how we spend money and how we, like share our power. And if we're like, going into some class reproduction, and bringing like the same people into the same campaigns or for expanding the electorate by allowing other people to have paid roles in our strategy. And so like, again, even if TikTok isn't here tomorrow, this kind of muscle memory that we're building is going to be important, it's going to be necessary. It's no secret that if the progressive movement is going to keep growing and surviving, we're going to need as many brains in here as possible, no matter what their resumes look like, and how many degrees they have. And I'm just really excited about it. I have personally learned a lot from everyone on this panel and everyone that I've worked with over the past few years around this emerging platform in this new space. And I, yeah, I'm just grateful for all of it and excited to see how it continues.
Fantastic. Thank you all. I also low key lied. There's one more question that I really want to lift up from an audience member. So if you have just one more minute or two to share, they said "We'd love to hear your thoughts about platform innovation, and what digital places are on the what digital places are on the horizon. Given the volatility of TikTok, we are looking to do media testing on other channels and through different mediums, thoughts on early responses so as to not get caught on platforms that could turn on organizers."
I'll just put in a pitch for Discord or Twitch, which I think are like Discord is already a place that it just was a very interesting one. Because it's both a place where influencers have their own, like communities, they hold their community. So it's related to Twitch and TikTok, like TikTok influencers will have a discord community as well. And it's an organ, it's a pure organizing tool, in the same way that people use Slack or WhatsApp or whatever to organize your volunteers. You should, I think should I think in general, like the idea that anybody still uses slack to organize volunteers is wild and Twitch, I mean, Discord is just like, like 1,000% better than Slack for everything related to organizing. But I think it's a platform that we need to get familiar with. It's obviously still it's growing very quickly. its user base is very large already. And it's going to I think it's it gets on the rise, which it's more is a little bit more like sort of another version of TikTok in some sense, right influencer driven and creator driven streaming video, but also growing very fast. And they're I think they're a big segments of the population that we don't like, sort of like a lot of people, it's a little bit feels a little segmented like anybody who's a gamer is on Twitch. And then there's like large segments of the population, including people who run progressive organizations who like basically don't know what Twitch is. And I think that's, there's a disjunction there. That's a problem like it's a really good way to, to find it's a place to find a lot of voters and potential voters that I think a lot of like, leaders in the progressive movement don't think about a lot.
I think our I agree with all of that. I don't know if this was a cop out, answer or not. Because honestly, I feel like every day I'm betting on a different platform, and then I just change it. But I'm also nervous better. I think for us, we're we're focusing kind of again on the creator and so like by we're banking, that by building like those long term relationships with individual creators and kind of like during that unsexy work a little bit. And this is again, like myself with social current and Ashwath. That, you know, if and when new platforms start to emerge, the creatives are going to try and bring their platform to or bring their like audience and bring their selves as a performer as a content creator to these new ones. And so if we can kind of focus on them and like follow them to the new ones that might be better. I also think it's, you know, we're not obviously the only space like trying to hack this. And I yesterday, we're excited to be with like the herbage public health school, where they were trying to, they were comparing notes with us around like how they're organizing, like public health and COVID response on these new emerging platforms as well. So I think like as we're kind of placing our bets even if mindshare just day to day, like reaching out across disciplines to and seeing, like where other folks, even if they don't immediately have a political ramification, although COVID Does, obviously. And trying to like follow them to
there was just a study that showed that YouTube has more watch time and again, any other platform, which includes like the Netflix's of the world. So I would say my shout is YouTube shorts in particular. So to Ben's point, the TikTok l algorithm and the focus, I would say the focus more on the algorithm than the vertical video, but both have influenced the way that every other platform, Instagram and YouTube in particular are also thinking about their platforms, so reels and the algorithm driven, algorithm driven feed on Instagram. And then YouTube shorts is the YouTube version of that. It's vertical video, and it's algorithm driven. So I would say YouTube shorts 100%. YouTube shorts is also focusing a ton on monetizing creators in that space. And they're incentivizing creative creators to create content there. And YouTube traditionally has been really good at incentivizing creators to be on their platform. So I would keep an eye on that and focus there.
Just just a little bit on that. I'm sorry, Ben, let me just, I It's interesting to it. Sometimes there's not a clear distinction, I think we think of like, oh, Instagrams been around for a long time, YouTube has been around forever, right. But they're actually rolling out new products that take up a lot of consumer time, and are very different experiences for consumers and creators. And like, I mean, another example I'm not an expert on, I actually don't really use Instagram myself. But like somebody pointed out to me, Instagram, DMS might be the largest one of the largest direct messaging platforms. And that's relatively recent, it's much more recent than the Instagram feed. Right. And so like, when they roll out big new product verticals like that, we need to think about that sometimes as an entirely new platform that needs to be innovated on. Right? The YouTube shorts, that being obviously the other example.
In a similar vein, I would keep a keep a close eye on WhatsApp. It is, you know, especially for like first gen and immigrant communities, it's a really, really important thing. It also is, you know, one of the best examples of like dark social, which is for the uninitiated, like that's all the links and information sharing that isn't publicly available and trackable. And yet, there are innovations happening on WhatsApp that are around building communities building sort of subscriber bases, that were sort of in the early innovation stages of that, in general, so even more so with with political work. But what WhatsApp and discord and like all of those other sorts of tech space modern social network verticals have in common is they're really, really good at finding and consolidating hyper niche groups of people with shared interests. And that is incredibly important for political organizing and activating. So I would, I think that some cool interesting stuff should happen with the WhatsApp from the world of this cycle. It's a really powerful on ramp for organic engagement.
I think that's totally right. And I also just want to emphasize that like, we need the community of practice around those kinds of things, too, right? We need to be people are experimenting with WhatsApp in various places in the movement. But is there a central place to share those learnings? And for newbies who are coming into him or like now we want to use whatsapp this cycle to like learn what's been effective? I don't think so. That needs to exist, we need training programs. That's true for all of these different platforms. And I noticed that Valaria put in in the q&a, you know that Sal has talked about discord, Twitch, WeChat, WhatsApp, and so on. And so we'd be excited to do diff cohorts on these other emerging platforms, I just want to lift that up. I am not currently on sales payroll, I did a little bit of consulting on this program last fall. And funders, you should be investing not just in TikTok, but you should be also investing in the early stage innovation on these other platforms, running, you know, funding a cell cohort, a diff cohort on these things, like it's a hugely important place to be investing right now with massive funding gaps.
Thank you so much, that sounds I think, like a pretty good and natural place to end it. Big thank you to all of our panelists and speakers and collaborators on this project. Like I said before, we would not be able to do it without you. And for folks who stayed on board in this leading over section. I also appreciate that as well. As mentioned before, we'll have a recording available. And we'll be posting our findings online on our website. There is so much room for you to join us in what it looks like in 2023, whether it's as a grantee, as a funder as a partner, as a collaborator, as a thought partner, or trying to build a ha where we can really get ahead of what the progressive movement looks like on emerging media platforms. So please feel free to reach out to us, Valeria left her email in the chat box for everyone. You can also email dif at cooperative impact. lab.org. But with that, thank you again for joining us and we'll hope to see you soon. Take care
