From one LinkedIn creator to another! In Ep. 146 of Earned, Conor Begley sits down with digital media vanguard Jim Louderback—editor and CEO of his “Inside The Creator Economy” newsletter.
In Ep. 146 of Earned, Conor Begley sits down with Jim Louderback—editor and CEO of “Inside The Creator Economy” Newsletter. To start, we dive into Jim's remarkable career spanning from management consulting to leading iconic media entities like PCMag, VidCon, and Revision3, and Jim shares invaluable insights for anyone navigating the media landscape. Jim then reveals his secret sauce to maintaining authenticity, creating compelling content, and leveraging AI tools such as ChatGPT to enhance the creative process. Next, we hear Jim’s innovative approach to event planning, emphasizing the importance of the attendee journey and creating lasting impressions. Switching gears, Jim highlights the increasing significance of digital creators and the transformative potential of AI tools like DALL-E and Midjourney. Jim explains how these technologies can democratize content creation, allowing a broader, global audience to share their stories online. We discuss how platforms like CreatorIQ are incredibly helpful for managing and scaling influencer marketing programs and underscore the importance of community and engagement in today's media environment. To close the show, Jim shares his passions outside of writing, which include technology reviews, as well as helping older generations travel as smoothly as they did in their younger years.
We’ve included a couple of highlights from the episode below, but be sure to check out the full video above, or tune into the podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen!
The following interview has been lightly edited for concision.
Conor Begley: So I know that you've been using DALL-E and some of these other AI tools for image generation. I think that it's potentially the next wave of disruption that occurs within the media industry, whether it's longer-form content, shorter-form content, video content, etc. How do you expect that to interact with the world of creators over the next decade?
Jim Louderback: Well, I think what we see with a lot of these tools is that they're not replacing all of the human creativity and ability to tell stories and everything else out there, but they're enabling [people] in different ways to do a better job or a quicker job or to get to the heart of storytelling more quickly.
I ran magazines back in the newsstand days. I used to sweat over the cover images and the cover lines, because when you walked up to that newsstand on the corner or in the airport and you saw my PC Magazine with a great image and a great cover line, you'd be like, “oh my god, I’ve got to buy that.” So when I first started my newsletter on LinkedIn, I didn't put any art in. I have no artistic ability, I can't draw, I didn't have money to hire a designer or anybody else, and I'm just putting the text out there. Then, once Midjourney started coming out and DALL-E, I was like, “Oh, I could have some fun with this.”
And so I started thinking about the image that goes along with my LinkedIn newsletter as my magazine cover, and I started coming up with fun images to go along with it. That's something that added to the experience of my newsletter that I would not have done. It didn't take anybody's jobs away because I wasn't paying anybody to do this, and so when I think about AI over the next four or five years, I think it lets creators do what they do better. It'll turn a good creator into a great creator, and a great creator into a superpower.
But what I also think it will do, which is scary to creators, but also ties into my whole vision of “anybody should be a creator if they can,” is it will let people around the world who don't know how to edit video or have something to say and really aren't sure how to say it, it will help them do it more. It will enable a whole new group and class of people to become good creators in whatever media they want. And it also has the ability to do translation, which means that somebody in Indonesia or in India or in Zimbabwe can speak in their native language and make videos and reach not just the people that speak their language. Only 16-17% of the world speaks English. But through this, over the next five years, you'll be able to reach everybody with an internet connection in their language, and if your content is universal, you can really expand your audience.
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