This Simple Trick Got Zohran Mamdani Over 500K Followers

Gabbi Zutrau was Zohran Mamdani’s ManyChat wizard, helping drive tens of thousands of clicks and thousands of email subscribers from Instagram — all via automation, and all for just… $318.

But she’s also so much more than just an automation expert! Gabbi took a brand new Instagram account from zero to 5 million views in just six weeks. And she used one simple trick (yes, really!) to help Zohran’s Instagram grow by over 500,000 followers heading into his primary night win.

For context: Zohran hit 1 million followers on election night. That means more than half came from that single tactic, in the lead-up to election night.

In this episode, we dig into:

How Gabbi grew her own account from scratch
The role she played in Zohran’s digital strategy
Why campaigns should invest in digital early
What authenticity in politics actually looks like
One key shift campaigns can make to get more out of social media

…and so much more.

Listen to the full episode right here, or wherever you stream podcasts.

If you prefer video, you can also watch our full conversation:

Find all episodes at HelloMergeTag.com or wherever you stream podcasts.

Links

Gabbi’s Instagram | LinkedIn | Website

Gabbi’s First Episode on the pod where she discussed her ManyChat work

Relevant press

Rachel Karten’s Link In Bio

Campaigns and Election

FWIW

Big thanks to our sponsors:

Civic Shout. Learn more about the great work they’re doing to help Democratic campaigns and progressive nonprofits build their lists ethically at civicshout.com/partners.

Episode Transcript

This transcript was automatically generated and has not been copy-edited. While it can serve as a helpful guide to our conversation, it may contain errors or omissions. For the most accurate representation, we recommend listening to (or watching) the full episode.

Josh Klemons: Gabbi Zutrau was Zohran Mandani’s many chat wizard helping drive tens of thousands of clicks and thousands of email
Gabriella Zutrau: Yeah.
Josh Klemons: subscribers from Instagram all via automation and all for just $318. If that sounds interesting and you haven’t already, go check out episode 38 of this podcast where Gabby and I dove deep into the what, the how, and a whole lot more behind that part of the campaign. But Gabby is so much more than just a ManyHat power user. And I am thrilled to have her back on the pod today to talk about what else she’s been working on and what else she’s thinking about in the digital space. So, first of all, thank you for coming back. Um, you started an Instagram account.

Josh Klemons: You can correct me. I’m sure my numbers are a little bit off, but give or take six weeks ago and you’ve already racked up give or take 2 million views on the account. So, first correct my numbers and then tell us how did you do that?
Gabriella Zutrau: So yeah, my new Instagram account, Extremely Online Friend, uh I started October 5th, so a little over six weeks ago, and the number is actually now at about five million views. Uh, five million views in about six weeks.
Josh Klemons: Okay. Wow.
Gabriella Zutrau: Yeah.
Josh Klemons: H how like walk walk us through like let’s start with you already have some big accounts so like could let’s let me be blunt could you have done this if you were starting your first account or did you
Gabriella Zutrau: Um, how did I So, I definitely did a little bit of the ladder, but it’s that
Josh Klemons: use other accounts in order to be able to like leverage that their reach to like grow your own please do Huh?
Gabriella Zutrau: is not where the majority of my views came from.

Gabriella Zutrau: So let me let me start from the beginning a little bit. Basically I mean I have been working in organic social media in like the political world for almost a decade. And like I I developed all of my organic social like skill set through working on political accounts, working for elected officials, pretending to be elected officials, um working for uh campaigns and advocacy organizations and what have you.
Josh Klemons: Heat.
Gabriella Zutrau: And so then when I got a dog about Oh my god. I think four years ago today. Oh my god.
Josh Klemons: Happy birthday, Edna.
Gabriella Zutrau: Oh my god. It’s your gotcha day. Whoa. Uh when I got um when I got a dog four years ago, I was like, I cannot have this become another social media project for me.
Josh Klemons: Still time to celebrate tonight. That’s okay.
Gabriella Zutrau: Like this needs to be completely offline. I’m just gonna like love this animal. And of course, like I’d be remiss if I didn’t hold her up to the screen.

Josh Klemons: If you’re listening to the podcast, this is the moment you should definitely go to YouTube because Edna’s on camera and in all of her glory.
Gabriella Zutrau: Yes, she’s very sweet. Um, but I got Edna and I was like, “No way. This is staying offline. This is just for me.” Because I was like burning out running up to like 20 different social media accounts at the time. So, I was just done. But then, you know, you get a really cute dog, your friends and family are going to be like, “Let’s see the dog.” and I just wasn’t posting enough about her. So, they were like, “You have to start a social media account for her.” I was like, “I really don’t want to.” I was just hemming and hawing. And then I gave in and started an account for her. And then like not going to not going to embarrass myself by giving my dog a bad social media presence. So, within like a year and a half, one thing led to another and she was just like racking up followers.

Gabriella Zutrau: So now she has um like hundreds of thousands of followers across platforms, Instagram, Facebook, uh Tik Tok, a little bit of YouTube, a little bit of threads. Um and we reach millions of people every month. We do a lot of sponsored content. Um and it’s just like a real enterprise. Um and yeah, that was all from nothing. And most recently, I worked on uh Zoran Mandani’s campaign and like helped them kind of tweak certain things on their social to help them max out and reach the most people. And I definitely want to talk more about that a little bit, but um like I really wanted to prove to like my clients and my friends and my family that like this isn’t just a thing you can do if you’re already famous. if you’re already an elected official or like a famous candidate in a famous race. Like this isn’t something you can only do if you’re like a really cute dog. Like this is actually something anybody can do in 2025 Year of Our Lord.

Gabriella Zutrau: Um like and and you can do it using just like standard best practices and like experimental thinking and authenticity and consistency and like the right brew of those things together will grow you an audience. Like your content is going to get spat out onto the feeds of the people who are meant to be your audience because they’ve interacted with content that’s similar to what you’re making before. Um, so that was my like theory and and I also have been um being like a huge b**** like my friends and family who are interested in starting a content creation practice or like growing a page themselves but are like I can’t do it. Like it’s too late for me. I don’t know how like like this this doesn’t work for normal people. And I’m really like I’ve been telling them like no no no it really does like it’s like do this this and this and this and you’ll see. And I think it’s really tough for people to like have that blind faith that the process is going to work for them if they’ve never had it work for them before.

Josh Klemons: Yep.
Gabriella Zutrau: Whereas like I I have had the privilege of like walking into big pages and like using the tactics and the strategies and like watching them work and then also starting Edna’s page from zero watching it work. But I think everyone was like, I’m not a really cute dog. I’m not already famous. And they give up before they even start. So that was kind of the purpose of me starting this page was like a to give myself a professional platform that wasn’t my dog. And b like to prove to everybody like no, we can actually do this. And so that’s how it started. And I was pretty explicit about that from the beginning. And I had a lot of my friends and family be like, but Gabby, like what if it doesn’t work? like won’t that be so embarrassing when like if your stuff flops and it the account doesn’t grow and I was just like that is not a concern of mine like it’s going to work like I have the blind faith because like I’ve been practicing this religion for a long time um so that was the idea and I just kind of started and there I did not um I didn’t like email my email list about it being like follow me I didn’t post on LinkedIn which is where I Like I’ve been getting a lot of social media attention lately.

Gabriella Zutrau: I didn’t I didn’t push it out anywhere but Instagram and totally did repost from Edna’s account when stuff was relevant or I felt like it could pop.
Josh Klemons: You did do that for I saw some collab posts that were like giant
Gabriella Zutrau: Um I totally did do that but again that’s I’ll I’ll tell you where most of my views came from and that is not it. I also like posted I was working on I was supporting some of the like Zohran creator uh machine that we have there were there were definitely reposts where he reposted stuff of mine um or like you know I
Josh Klemons: uh being Zorum or like the campaign did.
Gabriella Zutrau: didn’t I didn’t repost my own stuff like someone else on the campaign did I reposted other people’s stuff for them but I was like this is a conflict of interest I won’t be reposting my own stuff.
Josh Klemons: Are are you sure? No, just kidding. Yeah.
Gabriella Zutrau: Um, but yeah, and like so some of that it like does come from literally having like networks of creators and like people outside of Instagram for sure, but again not where even like not not where a fraction it’s where it’s where a fraction of my views came from, but not millions of them.

Josh Klemons: Right.
Gabriella Zutrau: So where did the five million come from? Uh mainly one source which is trial reels um which I’ve been telling Josh about for literally months.
Josh Klemons: Trial rails. I knew about them, but I had not seen them work. I mean, I’d seen them work a little bit, um, but not the way you had seen them work. Um, yeah.
Gabriella Zutrau: Yes.
Josh Klemons: Walk us through because I I still most people in my experience have no idea what a trial reel is and they are missing out on a huge opportunity hiding within Instagram. So walk us through what it is and how you use it and is it complicated.
Gabriella Zutrau: So, it’s not complicated, but it’s still a little bit of a black box. Um, I will also just say just to peique your interest further so you keep listening to this podcast. We used trial reels. I introduced them to the Mom Donnie campaign back in May. And from May to June, so the last two months of the primary, they generated over 42 million views and brought in 525,000 followers.

Gabriella Zutrau: They hit a million followers on election night. So if anybody’s counting, that’s more than half their followers by
Josh Klemons: I wasn’t going to ask about that because I wasn’t sure if that was public, but I think that’s like a very interesting like for all the verality like this one tool was helping create verality. Why don’t you explain what it is for context? Cuz like a trial reel and I was joking about is it complicated because it’s literally just a radio button at the bottom of your post. You just hit it and then it happens. It’s like magic. It’s like I I had a client the other day use one and he didn’t have access to it because it was a new account and then when he got access for it for his second page, it was his second post ever and he reached 84,000 people using a trial reel and it was a good post, but who cares?
Gabriella Zutrau: It’s okay.
Josh Klemons: He had 12 followers on Instagram and he reached 84,000 people and like so my point is like he is not Zoran Mamdani famous, you know, this is like a brand new account that exploded because trial reels really are a secret weapon for now.

Josh Klemons: We should caveat that they’ll just like everything else they’ll probably go away.
Gabriella Zutrau: That’s right.
Josh Klemons: But yes, we are talking about them. Now let’s explain them for folks who are not already using them.
Gabriella Zutrau: Let’s explain them. So, basically, this is a feature that Instagram launched, I think earlier this year. Um, and it was initially launched for people who were sort of hesitant to post. Um, people who were like afraid to be experimental or like didn’t want to like bother their audience by posting something sort of out of their lane or interesting or new. And so, Instagram developed this feature where you can toggle on a switch at the bottom of a post. And not everybody has it. It’s still rolling out. Initially, it only rolled out to like a handful of people. Then they said it was rolling out to everybody with uh a thousand or more followers, but I got access to it on my new account at around like 200 followers.
Josh Klemons: Mhm. Same.
Gabriella Zutrau: So I was Yeah.

Josh Klemons: I had it before a thousand on one of my accounts.
Gabriella Zutrau: So it seems like it might just be like coming like built into new accounts.
Josh Klemons: It’s just roll. It’s like rolling out. Well, this one client, he didn’t have it, but after doing like a post, he he got like a couple followers and then he had it by the time he So, like it’s it’s rolling out.
Gabriella Zutrau: It’s so random.
Josh Klemons: If you don’t have it, just keep checking. Make sure your app is up to date. Like, you’ll get it soon. Keep posting.
Gabriella Zutrau: Yeah, keep just just keep going till it comes because it’ll it’ll come eventually. And so that’s why they developed it was just to like make it easier for you to experiment with stuff. And what it does is it posts that post to only people who don’t follow you. So before it’s posted to your feed to your to be shown to your followers, it is getting shown to an audience of people who don’t follow you yet.

Gabriella Zutrau: Um and and like tested there to see if it performs well. And then the idea uh per Instagram is that you see how it performs in that like non-follower audience and if it does well, you hit share to everyone and it posts so that your followers can see it. But if you never post share to everyone, it’ll never go onto your grid and your followers might see it if it gets shared with them or something, but it’s like not really meant to show up in their like discovery feed.
Josh Klemons: Mhm.
Gabriella Zutrau: Um, so that’s what it was meant to be used for. But the knowowers, like people who work in this industry and are like constantly looking for legit algorithm hacks, not like fake algorithm hacks, but like legitimate like holes in the technology that like let you max out your reach. Um, we identified like pretty early on that like, oh s***, you can just post your most viral videos as trial reels, have them not crowd out your grid, have them not badger your followers and annoy them with uh, repetitive posts, and only be shown to people who don’t follow you yet.

Gabriella Zutrau: So like a perfect audience of people who would like would be interested in something like what you’re posting but don’t follow you. So uh that’s amazing. So basically that’s how people started using it is just like endlessly infinitely reposting their best content as trials um and never hitting Yeah.
Josh Klemons: and then never hitting God’s audience, just leaving it in there. And clarify for me, I think you told me this with Zohran, for example, you weren’t just like reposting it once as a trial reel. You might repost it.
Gabriella Zutrau: Correct.
Josh Klemons: Is are we cool talking about like you would post it in your You would post it in fairness and the more people Andrew Cuomo reached the worse he did.
Gabriella Zutrau: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I got permission from the campaign to talk about this now that it’s over. I didn’t talk about this after the primary because I didn’t like want Andrew Cuomo to get hip to whether or not his account had this feature and then like use it and like go viral for it.

Gabriella Zutrau: But yeah, that’s right.
Josh Klemons: But let’s neither his own worst enemy. But so yeah. So, just to clarify, you would take a video that already went viral, recreate it, and then recreate it a bunch more times and just keep trial reeling it so it’s just flying. But if somebody goes and looks at your feed, they only see one version of it.
Gabriella Zutrau: Exactly. So, the the way to do this at scale, and I wasn’t creating any new content. This is stuff that Melted Solids and the video team on the campaign already made already had posted and we had already seen like perform really well.
Josh Klemons: Right. You were taking top performers, right?
Gabriella Zutrau: So like I was doing right I wasn’t doing any content creation with with like one small exception they had like this very very long like five minute long video with uh the comedian Jeff Seal and I was like
Josh Klemons: Mhm.
Gabriella Zutrau: you can’t post it has to be under three minutes or it’s not considered a real. So I was like you we have to chop this up.

Gabriella Zutrau: So, we chopped that up into like five different smaller videos. I just like edited it in Cap Cut and I posted those again and again.
Josh Klemons: Okay.
Gabriella Zutrau: So, the the like technicals behind this are like literally you go in, make a video, set it to trial, and then I’ll save that as a draft. And then you go back into your drafts and you’ll see like line by line your videos that are saved as drafts. And then you can hit your three dot menu and duplicate, duplicate, duplicate, duplicate, duplicate till you have 10 copies of this thing. And then you kind of slow drip them out over the next few days.
Josh Klemons: All with the same copy.
Gabriella Zutrau: Um, yeah, all with the same exact copy.
Josh Klemons: Cool. So if somebody saw three versions, they wouldn’t realize that they saw three versions because it all looked exactly the same.
Gabriella Zutrau: So possibly not. They might be like, I thought this had more likes, but you know, right?
Josh Klemons: Right. Right. Other other than engagement.

Josh Klemons: Yeah. No way to know that it’s brand new. Wild.
Gabriella Zutrau: Um, but you can also do it with different copy. I also want to say like not to like burst everybody’s bubble, they’ve made this a little bit harder since we did it in the primary. They like started like uh now they’ll sometimes ping you with like a notification that’s like, “Hey, we noticed you posted this more than once or we noticed you this isn’t new content. You already used this, so we might show it to fewer people.” And
Josh Klemons: Interesting.
Gabriella Zutrau: I’ve seen that both be true and like completely untrue.
Josh Klemons: Not right.
Gabriella Zutrau: I’ve se I’ve seen like my reused stuff uh get four views and then I’ve seen it get a million. Um so it’s like I don’t know how they’re deciding it. I don’t know what their AI is telling them like is new is is original or old, but it’s it’s it used to be more reliable that like kind of almost everything would like get a bunch of views and

Josh Klemons: Interesting.
Gabriella Zutrau: now like stuff can totally flop. Um, definitely.
Josh Klemons: I was going to ask about that. So, you do see things flop even Oh, is that only if it’s already been posted or even like sometimes you’ll post a trial reel, it doesn’t do well, but then you just share it to your audience or do
Gabriella Zutrau: Yeah, both.
Josh Klemons: you not?
Gabriella Zutrau: Both.
Josh Klemons: Got it.
Gabriella Zutrau: So, it’s like I I couldn’t say like with any consistency. Uh, and I don’t know if Instagram basically I also like we we can get more into this later, but like I just want to emphasize like this is a legitimate like product failure on their part. like it’s it’s like a it’s it’s probably going to become a real problem for them. It’s probably going to like uh stop working pretty soon. But I want people to understand the moment we are in right now. We only get one of these every couple of years in organic social media, right? where like in 2017 this happened with Facebook Lives where it well at the time Facebook was like we want everybody to be doing these.

Josh Klemons: Facebook live. Every client I talked to I was like, “If you’re not doing lives, you’re not reaching through.” And now if you’re doing lives, I’m like, “What are you doing, man?” It’s not like that’s annoying. Yep.
Gabriella Zutrau: So, it was basically the only thing, the only action you could take in Facebook that would notify everybody in the network that you were doing it all at once.
Josh Klemons: Yep. Yep.
Gabriella Zutrau: And so, every time you went live, you would just reach a crazy number of people because Facebook really wanted to incentivize it. So, they were putting it at the top of everybody’s feeds, right?
Josh Klemons: Yep.
Gabriella Zutrau: So, that was the 2017 hack. Then like fast forward to like 2020 2021 when Instagram decides it wants to become Tik Tok suddenly it’s all about reals like if you’re not and I’m not talking about just video there was like video there was IGTV
Josh Klemons: Yep. Yep.
Gabriella Zutrau: and there was reals so like your vertical video and because they wanted to be the app for that and compete with Tik Tok they were pushing reals way harder and reels are naturally more engaging than like your standard

Josh Klemons: I remember Yeah,
Gabriella Zutrau: photo post because they they take more time to understand. You have to look at them longer. Um but so when this happens basically if you are posting any real you are getting a million views on it every time that’s in 2020 21 it was the wild wild west.
Josh Klemons: this was then just to clarify for Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Gabriella Zutrau: If you had any kind of real strategy it was done.
Josh Klemons: You you were winning for sure.
Gabriella Zutrau: You were winning. You were growing like crazy. you were getting you were getting unbelievable reach. Of course, that fizzles out eventually because like a they the they figure out how to like algorithmically weight it better, more appropriately and more competition comes.
Josh Klemons: Yep.
Gabriella Zutrau: So, the the real feed is more crowded out. You’re competing with more accounts for the same amount of attention.
Josh Klemons: Mhm.
Gabriella Zutrau: Um, and now we’re in this moment where like they haven’t quite figured out how to rein this feature in. They’re not totally sure how it fits in the algorithm and they just like haven’t figured out how to punish you yet enough for like repurposing the exact same content.

Gabriella Zutrau: So, we are back in one of those special rare wild west moments where like anything can happen for real.
Josh Klemons: and and five million views on uh in six weeks.
Gabriella Zutrau: And so I do want to 5 million views on a brand new account in so I haven’t I haven’t like had that many videos to do that that many times but I’ve posted things a couple times and they
Josh Klemons: So, literally anything can happen. Are you using that strategy of like posting the same thing many times? Like once it goes well, you’re just like try reeling it like a ton.
Gabriella Zutrau: mostly perform well like one time. But also this one what my best reel here here’s a sequence of something I tried.
Josh Klemons: It was it about right after the wind.
Gabriella Zutrau: No, it was um after the second debate uh where Cuomo is just like lying through his teeth about how much he spends on groceries every week.
Josh Klemons: Okay. Okay.
Gabriella Zutrau: And yeah, he like guessed wildly.
Josh Klemons: $150 a week. Yeah.

Josh Klemons: Answer. That’s That’s what he spends on appetizers at dinner, right? Exactly.
Gabriella Zutrau: You can like tell he’s lying. He like scratches his nose. He’s like I don’t because he’s like the first person they ask. I just thought it was such a funny clip. So, I did like this really quick like stitch video with that and also Kim Kardashian’s uh line from that week about how she doesn’t know how much a a carton of milk costs. And it’s like 30 seconds long or something. Uh but first, what I did was I posted a version of it. I was using re trial reels the way it’s meant to be used. I was like, I actually don’t know if this is going to work. And it was like a version of that video where I was on screen the whole time kind of green screen with the clips behind me. I was like I just wonder like how this will perform compared to me where I go off screen. Me where I just like am on screen describing then a clip then a clip.

Josh Klemons: Mhm.
Gabriella Zutrau: So I was trying to see like which one did better. Very immediately the um the clip where I was not on screen the the video where I was mostly offscreen was clearly outperforming the other one. And I was like, maybe I should try using trial reels the correct way.
Josh Klemons: Yeah.
Gabriella Zutrau: And so I published that one uh to everyone. And I immediately saw like the the line was going like this. It was just like going crazy. And then when I published to everyone, it completely plateaued and I was like, “Oh f***, that sucks.”
Josh Klemons: Yeah. Come on.
Gabriella Zutrau: Uh so strangely, I then was like, “Well, like I wish I could undo that.” And then I was like, maybe if I just post it again to trials and see. And that’s the one that went the most viral for me. That video alone got two million views. The second one, like I had already, well, it was the second post of the second version.
Josh Klemons: the second version of it.

Josh Klemons: Right. Right. Oh, right. Right. But did you eventually publish it to everybody or it’s just lived in trial rails that version?
Gabriella Zutrau: It’s still living its best life in Trial Real.
Josh Klemons: Uh, is it still getting engagement?
Gabriella Zutrau: Still getting engagement every single day. Yes.
Josh Klemons: That’s been what, like a month and a half? Early early post for you of the six weeks.
Gabriella Zutrau: Yeah. Yeah.
Josh Klemons: Wow, that’s wild.
Gabriella Zutrau: Um, and I’ve had a couple more like that where they’re also there’s versions of them on the grid. There’s versions of them in in trial reels that are just like getting I think I have one other one with a million and then like a few with 500 like 300 500,000 kind of things. And that’s where almost all of those 5 million views came from.
Josh Klemons: Do you think that this works if you’re not talking about a a campaign that everybody’s paying attention to?
Gabriella Zutrau: For sure. Uh, for sure. So, I I won’t name names, but I have a like a coaching client right now.

Gabriella Zutrau: Well, what one of my clients is also like my dog trainer. We like barter. Um, and like she’s using the same tactics where she’s going like direct to camera, posting regularly, a few times a week, and like posting in niche with like good hooks. and she’s she’s like growing like slowly but surely like every day growing and like building an audience and getting more comfortable talking to camera. That’s one of my coaching clients right now. Another one of my coaching clients I just had a call with um literally four days ago if that like four days ago and I described to her how to use trial reels and I was like show me your phone in the screen like scroll down to the bottom of the pre-posting screen.
Josh Klemons: right?
Gabriella Zutrau: show me if you have this feature. And she was like, “Do I?” And I was like, “Yes, you do. Here’s what you’re going to do.” And she has been reposting her best performing uh like videos of the last, you know, 6 months or whatever.

Gabriella Zutrau: And she she’s been stuck in like the 600 follower range for a long time. She’s a like mega genius. She’s very like just so so smart. Incredible uh organizational psychologist and coach. and she uh posted her first trial reels a couple days ago and one of them took off. Um and has gotten like something like around 50 to 60,000 views when like the rest all of her other videos are like under 3,000 views.
Josh Klemons: an account with 600 people. Yeah, that’s good. Right. Right.
Gabriella Zutrau: So this one got like 50 to 60. Yeah.
Josh Klemons: There are plenty of congressional candidates who would be thrilled with 50 to 60,000 views. Let’s be honest, you know.
Gabriella Zutrau: But here’s the crazy part. Here’s the part beyond views that is absolutely nuts is that these reels because they’re getting shown only to nonfollowers have a follow rate seven times that of a normal reel.
Josh Klemons: Interesting.
Gabriella Zutrau: So like even this is true on Zohran’s account. It’s true on my account.

Gabriella Zutrau: Um like so her her uh video that’s doing so well like the 50,000 view one has gotten her like 150 followers.
Josh Klemons: So 25% more.
Gabriella Zutrau: She’s now in the 900, which is nuts because she’s been at 600 whatever for years.
Josh Klemons: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Wild. Right.
Gabriella Zutrau: Um, and like this is actually overnight. And this is, you know, this is how all growth has always kind of worked is like slow and steady with like punctuation marks of virality and then you slow and steady and you go, you know, over and over
Josh Klemons: Mhm.
Gabriella Zutrau: again. But this is like kind of a way to just like just add water and speed it up, just like really catalyze it. So what we saw on Zohran’s account is like obviously his most viral videos got really heavy duty follows like like if you’re calculating follow rate as like reach to number of followers gained from that video like it was
Josh Klemons: Mhm.
Gabriella Zutrau: something like a normal follower rate for him would be like between onetenth of a percent and two ten of a percent.

Josh Klemons: Okay.
Gabriella Zutrau: Um whereas a like your average trial reel is around 7/10 of a percent.
Josh Klemons: Okay.
Gabriella Zutrau: And there was one trial reel that he had that had over a 100,000 follows. So I should also mention that like this is obviously something I’m using on my dog’s account too on Edna’s account.
Josh Klemons: That’s W. Yeah, that’s wild.
Gabriella Zutrau: Um, and like it it we were really in like a lull during the midsummer and she did not have trial re like Zohran’s account was the first big account that I used trial reels on cuz Edna didn’t have
Josh Klemons: H interesting.
Gabriella Zutrau: them yet. She just got them like a month and a half or two months ago and the second she got them I started reposting her most viral content just tens of thousands of followers within the month.
Josh Klemons: Weird.
Gabriella Zutrau: Like it’s crazy.
Josh Klemons: Wow, that’s wild. Uh, yeah, because I do I mean again I’m using them for clients, but um I do wonder yeah if you’re like running a small race or you know you’re a small you know you’re not trying to find a national audience like can it do non-national I guess is the question and it sounds like the answer is yes.

Josh Klemons: So that’s pretty cool.
Gabriella Zutrau: Can it do non national? Well, what I’ll say about like the Zohran stuff is I noticed a lot of people sharing like I do think that it reached kind of like further than the normal stuff was reaching because I would see a lot of um story shares of the trial reels with like different language text over them.
Josh Klemons: Oh, like international or or just New York, you know.
Gabriella Zutrau: So I was like, “Oh, this is going global right now in a way or just New York.” Totally or just New York. But like it I was like, but so the analytics are a little worse in trial reels if you never you can’t see where people are based.
Josh Klemons: That’s interesting. They’re not as good uh for that.
Gabriella Zutrau: But that so that’s why I’m making assumptions here.
Josh Klemons: Yeah. Yeah. But you can see you can see where people live like follower-wise like did you suddenly blow up internationally like with that or it’s not sure the next time you come on the pod that’ll be

Gabriella Zutrau: is like uh I’m not sure. Well, I do remember looking I I wasn’t looking like outside of New York. I was tracking on what percentage of his followers were inside New York, which is like a very high percent.
Josh Klemons: New York versus not right was it I mean I would it has to I mean Just got it
Gabriella Zutrau: And it did go down. It absolutely went down as we approached primary day. So yeah, for sure. Like I think when I first looked at it, it was like 38% New Yorkers is the number that’s coming to me and then by election day it was like 25% New Yorkers. Um so like we we definitely reached beyond like the audience we had been building or that they had been bu building. I was not involved in it before.
Josh Klemons: did the campaign were they worried?
Gabriella Zutrau: I was involved in
Josh Klemons: I mean because that is something that comes up people you know like oh is this all local? It’s like, well, no, it’s not local, but we’re trying to build something grassroots here.

Josh Klemons: But like, did they see the value of growing an international or certainly national audience, or were they like, whoa, whoa, let’s uh let’s stop talking outside the burrows.
Gabriella Zutrau: No, I think uh I don’t want to speak for them, but I think they were like the more the marrier.
Josh Klemons: for sure.
Gabriella Zutrau: Like when when the base is excited, the word spreads.
Josh Klemons: Call for sure.
Gabriella Zutrau: Like whether you live in New York or not, that that that was the vibe. I I may be projecting that onto them, but that was certainly the vibe. But I also think that that’s like that’s the mentality you kind of have to be in to like deeply and meaningfully invest in organic social early on is like this might not like target people as as narrowly as an ad might, but it like means something different.
Josh Klemons: Mhm.
Gabriella Zutrau: Like the return on investment here is more about like like name recognition and branding and resonance and less about like getting impressions from a specific demographic.
Josh Klemons: Yeah. Right.
Gabriella Zutrau: Um so yeah.

Josh Klemons: Buy TV ads. Right. Yeah. Exactly.
Gabriella Zutrau: Down, down.
Josh Klemons: So, um, okay. So, that’s one tool that I know you were using that I am also a big fan of. Uh, collaboration posts. That is another one that I feel like people do not understand exists and the opportunity that lives. And I know you were using that at least some on the ex to clarify earlier you mentioned extremely online friend. It almost sounded like you were talking to me. That is the name of the account extremely online friend. So let’s clarify um what is a collaboration post and how have you found those to help both Zohran but also you like I’m curious like you grew five million impressions in six weeks starting at zero. So how much did collaboration posts matter for that and walk us through what they are and how they work.
Gabriella Zutrau: So, a bit I basically exclusive like the Yeah, basically the ones that brought in followers for me were the ones that I did with Edna, with my dog.

Gabriella Zutrau: Um, and like you know that audience is primed for me. They already know my face.
Josh Klemons: They know you. Sure.
Gabriella Zutrau: And Edna’s in some of my extremely online friend content, too. So, I would like sometimes do collabs with her account, but not a ton. I haven’t done a ton. Um, occasionally people like during the uh, mayoral race, people who I like did not know and some people who I did know like through politics, through through life um, through like going to trending up and like other conferences with like other creators um, those people would be like, “Hey, add me as a collaborator or just sometimes.”
Josh Klemons: So, sorry, real quick, just define what we’re talking about for folks who don’t know collaboration post.
Gabriella Zutrau: Okay. So, a collaboration post is like when I post and I add Josh as a collaborator, we both of our names, if he accepts the collaboration post, both of our names will show up at the top next to both of our icons and it will get uh fed to both of our followers.

Gabriella Zutrau: So, we’re kind of cross-pollinating our audiences.
Josh Klemons: And it’s cool because what happens is let’s say you follow Gabby but not me and we do a collab post. You’ll see the option to follow which is kind of confusing because it’s like wait I know her. Why would I follow her? And you click it and bang you have the option to follow me. And if you’re looking to see these in like in action Courier Newsroom uses them all the I mean a ton of people use them. Uh, but Courier newsroom uses them all the time. So, they’re just like a really easy one to go see examples of if you’re like curious what this looks like.
Gabriella Zutrau: I just did one with them today.
Josh Klemons: Nice. Did you post it or they did it for what it’s worth?
Gabriella Zutrau: They posted it. They initially didn’t ask to collab with me and then I messaged them. I was like, “Could could you this is my writing. Could you collab with me?” And

Gabriella Zutrau: they were like, “Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.”
Josh Klemons: Yeah.
Gabriella Zutrau: And they like made my article into a graphic carousel.
Josh Klemons: Um, hello.
Gabriella Zutrau: And I was like, “Throw some Not really. No.”
Josh Klemons: Here I am. and did uh followers or too soon to say.
Gabriella Zutrau: Um, I would say mostly not. It also like flopped or I I was like, “Oh man, that flopped.” And they were like, “No, like our newsletter posts usually don’t like perform as well as our other posts.” All right.
Josh Klemons: Yeah, fair. It’s a different audience.
Gabriella Zutrau: Maybe that’s just nice of you to say, but yeah, Creators for Zohran was kind of just like the catch all.
Josh Klemons: Different different audience, but yeah, fair enough. Um Okay. No, cool. Okay, so then collab posts. Um I saw you did a lot of stuff with like creators for Zohran or whatever. Is that the right name?
Gabriella Zutrau: It was it was run by a couple of people who were like very very involved in the relational creator organizing piece of Zohran’s campaign, like volunteers.

Josh Klemons: volunteer. It’s not Steph.
Gabriella Zutrau: Um, correct. Yeah, volunteers.
Josh Klemons: Got it.
Gabriella Zutrau: Uh well there there was one staffer Amelia Ran she was uh doing or I’m actually not sure if she was staffer contract it doesn’t matter but she she was leading on like the creator program for the general um and I was supporting on it a little bit and then she like uh deputized a few creators to like really run the volunteer operation. Um, and so they made this account, Creators for Zohran, that they were basically like anybody can like ask to collab with us at any time. Like just just do that. And they they don’t have a huge amount of reach. They don’t have a huge amount of followers.
Josh Klemons: Okay, there.
Gabriella Zutrau: It’s like very new account like within the last month it was created, but it was like a good way to reach a small but specific audience. Um, and yeah, and I like Zohran’s account was also like looking to repost good creator videos and like that was one place they were getting sourced.

Gabriella Zutrau: Um, so definitely I had like insider knowledge others did not have like just totally blatantly.
Josh Klemons: But you’re also you are sharing it every day. Like I see your feed is like you telling me how to do it. So it’s not really insider knowledge when you’re like steal my steal my ideas.
Gabriella Zutrau: Yeah. I mean, it’s also just like I feel like this stuff changes so quickly. This could be irrelevant in a month. So, I don’t care. Like, take this. Take this. Run a great campaign with it. Like, grow your account with it. Hopefully, I know about the next new interesting thing that comes along.
Josh Klemons: I anytime I learn anything I go and tell everybody I know about it. I’m like, “Yeah, we all win together, you know.” So, on that note, do you use edits or cap cut or are you doing all of this natively right in like Instagram?
Gabriella Zutrau: I almost exclusively use Cap Cut. Um I’ve used I cannot be bothered because their captioning is just so inferior.

Josh Klemons: Even though they claim that you get some juice from edits, you just can’t be bothered.
Gabriella Zutrau: There’s just like no choices. It’s not like word by word. It’s I I just I think captioning is so important and like s so engaging for people to like read and get hooked in like by the word for word captioning and just doesn’t unless there’s like an edits update
Josh Klemons: Got it.
Gabriella Zutrau: that I don’t know about like it’s it’s not as good. But I have used edits because actually this is something that you taught me at Netroos because they had just launched their teleprompter feature.
Josh Klemons: Mhm.
Gabriella Zutrau: I have used that for some of my sponsored content just because like I’ve had a script approved and now I don’t have to like read every line and cut in between like I can really just read the teleprompter. So that’s the good piece of edits I’ll say.
Josh Klemons: So, one other thing about edits, which may or may not even be like relevant anymore, but Adam Oseri essentially like alluded to this at one point.

Josh Klemons: Um, and I don’t do this, but I’m not trying to squeeze every, you know, like the way you are, but I know people who will make their final video elsewhere, but then put it through edits to post because there’s supposed to be like a tiny bit of extra algorithm juice if it goes through edits. That might not even still be true today.
Gabriella Zutrau: Wait, but Adam said that doesn’t work.
Josh Klemons: He said it did work at one point, but maybe he updated to say it doesn’t work anymore.
Gabriella Zutrau: He said it works if you do if you edit in edits, you get a little extra juice for now was like the wording. But then maybe maybe he wasn’t. No, he definitely I think said it.
Josh Klemons: What if you don’t actually edit it?
Gabriella Zutrau: He was like, “But it, yeah, but it doesn’t work if you edited it somewhere else and just put it in edits as a path past.”
Josh Klemons: Uh, so maybe you got to do a tiny tiny tweak or something of it.
Gabriella Zutrau: That was what I initially did.

Josh Klemons: I don’t know.
Gabriella Zutrau: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that I I I did that a couple times and I was like, I don’t have the time for this.
Josh Klemons: That’s funny. Yeah, exactly. It’s like extra work for maybe, you know, you don’t know what you’re getting. So, are there any other So, Cap Cut is where you did all of your editing and it was clearly like those videos were being edited like you had content on screen and things like that. Um, are there any other thirdparty tools that you were using um as part of Extremely Online Fred that account or was that the main one?
Gabriella Zutrau: I don’t think so. I think it’s No, let’s basically I think I do pay for cap cut.
Josh Klemons: So, Cap Cut free or like I mean there is a paid version. Do you pay for Cap just to get extra?
Gabriella Zutrau: Yeah. Yeah.
Josh Klemons: Like I think just for folks who don’t know, it’s kind of like Canva. There’s a bunch of stuff for free and then if you need more stuff or you want additional like like I think you can only caption a certain amount of videos for free and then you have to pay and

Gabriella Zutrau: I think like there’s certain sounds and like like editing features you don’t get access to.
Josh Klemons: things like that, right?
Gabriella Zutrau: And I was like, I spend so much goddamn time doing this. Like, why would I not pay the extra money for?
Josh Klemons: Yeah. It’s not super expensive or anything. Okay. So, literally just Cap Cut and Instagram are like the only two tools that went into this.
Gabriella Zutrau: Yeah. Um, but I will say there’s one more thing that I think helped me like grow slowly and consistently. And this is like a a tactic that anybody can use, but it’s not it’s not it’s it’s not as easy as trial reels, which is coming up with a signature series. So, as I’m sure Josh knows, like my sign Yes.
Josh Klemons: Rachel Carton writes about this and it’s so we should talk about her at some point because we’re both big fans of hers. But she’s written a lot about signature series and I am like obsessed with brands doing it. I’m trying to get a lot of my clients to do it.

Josh Klemons: So, okay, tell us about signature series.
Gabriella Zutrau: Yeah, you’ve definitely seen lots of people doing it. Um, mine is uh, what is mine? Mine is God.
Josh Klemons: Uh oh.
Gabriella Zutrau: Mine’s basically a series about my procrastination and like being a freelancer who is a dog fluencer and works in political communications and digital.
Josh Klemons: You’re doing daily to-do list things.
Gabriella Zutrau: Um, and it’s yes, so it’s uh day one of doing one thing on my to-do list that’s been sitting there for over a month for every 1,000 followers I have. And then we count how many followers I have with a green screen.
Josh Klemons: Sure.
Gabriella Zutrau: And up till 28 days, I had under a thousand. So, I never did anything. So, I just let the to-do list pile up and pile up and pile up. And you can feel my anxiety and you can feel the tension building. But those like those are sometimes getting you followers because you’re like incentivizing the followers.
Josh Klemons: I want to see what happens.
Gabriella Zutrau: You’re like, I want to see her do the thing.
Gabriella Zutrau: So they’re like, okay, like let me follow so I can see her do the thing. But they’re also just building followers because people are like interested in what you have to say about freelancing or whatever it is that you’re doing series on.
Josh Klemons: Sir
Gabriella Zutrau: Like I’ve seen this particular follower threat type of series like be very successful on small account. I wouldn’t even I wouldn’t count mine as particularly successful. Like mine has like definitely garnered a bunch of followers very slowly over time, but like I think one of the first ones I ever saw of this was like uh petting my dog one time for every 100 followers I have. And then like you know he gets to a million followers and he just like has to pet his dog like a bazillion times or like picking up one piece of litter for every thousand followers I have. And sometimes these accounts grow like a hundred thousand followers overnight. Literally mine’s a little more niche and like hard to say and like was you know I I knew what I definitely seen it on Tik Tok.

Josh Klemons: Wow. Watch me do my to-do list is Yeah. But it’s still like it’s cool concept. Do does that work? Do you think that works on other platforms beyond Insta? Like is that a Tik Tok thing too?
Gabriella Zutrau: I don’t know how well it works. I I I couldn’t say. Uh yeah.
Josh Klemons: Cool. I mean, you grew your Edna account on a bunch of platforms and this one you you are only on Instagram, correct? this account.
Gabriella Zutrau: Yeah, I just kind of decide I thought about maybe setting up some like chatbot automations, not many chat stuff that or like like bot automations that would like automatically suck my my content over to the other platforms. But I was like, I I have 1,500 other jobs right now. Like I just need to focus and do this the easy way.
Josh Klemons: Yeah, I’ve been manually pulling every Tik Tok video and putting it into YouTube shorts just because like there is some juice there and it’s like an interesting platform.
Josh Klemons: I’m trying to learn about it more, but yeah, it’s exhausting. It’s like it it goes from taking something that like used to take me like four minutes now takes me seven minutes, but it’s like I got a lot of things up my plate. So, seven minutes is a lot, you know? So, I’m still doing it. And it took YouTube shorts. I don’t know if you’ve played around with them. They are so random. Like some videos like reach thousands of views and some reach 20. And like some get tons of likes but almost no views. And it’s like like 80% of people will like a video. It’s like why did you only show it to 30 people if 25 of them liked it?
Gabriella Zutrau: literally Agree.
Josh Klemons: It’s like it it feels the most random. They they all feel random in different ways, but like YouTube Shorts feels the most random to me anyway. Like I I’ve been doing it now for like maybe six weeks just trying to figure it out and I am no closer to understanding what works.
Josh Klemons: So I’m just like I’ll just keep posting stuff and see what so many hours.
Gabriella Zutrau: Yeah, I did YouTube shorts for Edna being like, I really want to monetize on YouTube and I I did it for like a couple months till I hit a thousand and then I was like, oh, so the other criteria here for getting monetized is like so many f****** views that I’m not even close to.
Josh Klemons: Well, it’s hours of watch time, right?
Gabriella Zutrau: It’s either hours of watch time or short of views.
Josh Klemons: Or total views. Got it. Got it.
Gabriella Zutrau: Um, and one other thing, if anybody from YouTube is ever listening to me, like the shorts, YouTube shorts interface, like the user interface and user experience on the phone is so bad. And like that is the main reason I’ve like failed to bring most of my content over there for Edna because like it takes you there’s like four different screens where it’s loading for like 30 seconds and I’m just
Josh Klemons: Sure. Just avoid it.
Gabriella Zutrau: like, who’s got the time for this?
Josh Klemons: Yeah, it’s so random.
Gabriella Zutrau: when when it’s like totally unclear what the payoff’s going to be because there’s no correlation between quality and the not figuring it out.
Josh Klemons: Yeah, there’s no like Right. Like Tik Tok’s so good at knowing what you want to watch and showing it to you. With YouTube, it’s like what’s next? Like you just never know. It feels like chat roulette sometimes. Uh okay, let me ask you a question. Eating on camera, that is something you do a lot on Insta. Is that a thing? Like I don’t see it as much, but like you’ve got that one really big video where you’re like just trashing Andrew Cuomo as you’re eating an apple. There’s one where you’re eating a sandwich. Is that just because it’s snack time when you’re recording or like is that like a thing to eat on camera that like I don’t know about and I should play around with?
Gabriella Zutrau: You know, I’ve never I’ve never been asked this question before.
Josh Klemons: I’m not I’m not going to do it, but I want to know if I should.

Gabriella Zutrau: And frankly, I like until this moment, I wasn’t even totally aware that that was the thing I was doing.
Josh Klemons: Hey, you heard it here first, folks.
Gabriella Zutrau: But here’s what I’ll say. I like leading up to me having this account extremely online friend I have had just like catacombs of social media accounts that like have led me to this point where like it’s easy for me to talk directly to
Josh Klemons: your destiny. Okay.
Gabriella Zutrau: the camera and eat on camera and like talk about my dog on camera cuz I have been like practicing doing that for so many years. The the thing that got me great at doing direct to camera stuff was actually doing commercial modeling and doing lots of self tapes where I was just like f****** up my lines again and again and again and again and also like waiting for my boyfriend to leave the house so I could record and like getting into that mindset where I was just like weekly doing like several self tapes and like like learning how to not be embarrassed looking at myself and like performing.
Gabriella Zutrau: Um I wasn’t good at modeling though, so that’s that’s neither neither here nor there.
Josh Klemons: Yeah, I didn’t know that was on your resume, but good to know.
Gabriella Zutrau: That’s what I’ll say. What else?
Josh Klemons: That’ll that’ll have to be another conversation for sure.
Gabriella Zutrau: It was only like only a few years of my life. And let me tell you, they do treat dog models a lot better than they treat human models.
Josh Klemons: Doesn’t surprise me.
Gabriella Zutrau: Let me let me start and end that conversation there. But with the eating on camera, I actually for a few years, really just one year mainly and during a difficult breakup, I I ran an ASMR account.
Josh Klemons: Ah,
Gabriella Zutrau: Um it’s still there, the ASMR baby. And I did a lot of eating. I wasn’t like into the whispering stuff, but I was like just eating marshmallows and pasta and like like pop rocks and like really getting into like the sounds of the food and just like I just I got like a really nice microphone.

Gabriella Zutrau: I still have it. Like I’m I guess I’ve just done a lot of eating on camera and I’m not shy about it.
Josh Klemons: Sure.
Gabriella Zutrau: I think a lot of people are like I’m afraid I’m ashamed but I’m like I’m I’m eating all the time and I do think it’s engaging. I think it’s like an interesting prop. I think people are like, “What’s going on here?”
Josh Klemons: What’s she gonna do with that apple?
Gabriella Zutrau: Like, “Yeah, literally, what is gonna do with that apple?”
Josh Klemons: Oh, she’s gonna eat it. Got it. Got it.
Gabriella Zutrau: And then like I bite it really aggressively and they’re like, like it’s like one more thing pulling them in. Or like I recently, yeah, was eating some cheese sticks in a video, some mozzarella sticks, and I was like, “People will want to like see that.” I I don’t know. there’s just like some some amount of intuition that’s telling me like people want to watch me eat or it’s just like one more visual element that helps people focus on the content.

Josh Klemons: People love that Tony Soprano used to eat on camera, you know, like on the show. And I never thought about it. Brad Pitt like so much talk about Oceans 11 was that he was eating at every scene. Like people love that. So like, yeah, why not? It works in movies. It works on TikTok. I was just curious. Yeah, if that was like a thing and it sounds like it’s not, but you’re creating it, so I love it.
Gabriella Zutrau: It kind of is. It’s a prop. I’ll say it’s a prop that engages people like anything.
Josh Klemons: Yeah, I love it.
Gabriella Zutrau: Like when I give Edna tiny little human hands, I’m like that will be a visual hook to somebody.
Josh Klemons: Right. Figure out why is this happening, right? Exactly. Okay, so this is that was what I wanted to talk about, but you’re here, so we should of course talk about Zohran. So, I do not want to rehash anything we talked about during our last pod uh chat.

Josh Klemons: Uh, if folks have not already listened, there’s tons of stuff from Gabby out there in the world about all the amazing things she did. Um, like with ManyHat, including an episode 38 of this podcast. You can go check it out, but also like you were in Rachel Carton’s um newsletter. You did a campaigns um campaign and elections uh thing. You wrote about it for what it’s worth. So, lots of great folks out there. I’ve had a chance to talk to her. Uh, but what I want to know is you you weren’t necessar it sounds like you were more involved maybe than I even realized, but you had a front row seat to say the least to that entire campaign. So other than many chat, like what else do you think the campaign did right when it came to digital?
Gabriella Zutrau: I mean, first and foremost, I think they took it seriously. Um, and I think what that means is they invested very meaningfully, lots of resources in organic social media from very early on.

Gabriella Zutrau: like if you go back uh like eight months before the primary, they are putting out high quality videos um constantly.
Josh Klemons: was that with melted solids or they came along later?
Gabriella Zutrau: Not like those they they do a lot with Melted Solids from very early on. I think probably I don’t quote me on this, but maybe like definitely in the winter like in February.
Josh Klemons: Sure. Early. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
Gabriella Zutrau: They also like uh were just like doing stuff in Cap Cut, like doing interesting direct to camera stuff and like filming pretty elaborate videos in Cap Cut or like editing them in Cap Cut and they were going really just like really taking off. I forget which one. Like one of the very early viral videos at least was a Cap Cut video. It might have been the Freeze the Rent Polar Plunge one. I can’t remember.
Josh Klemons: Thank you.
Gabriella Zutrau: So again, don’t quote me on this. I was not on the campaign at that time.

Gabriella Zutrau: I had no say in any of that strategy. Those are the geniuses who are on staff and at Melted Solids. Um, but yeah, I would say like more than any campaign at this level that I have seen, they understood the importance of investing early because of how the algorithm uh really really weighs heavily relevance over time and engagement over time. That’s how it’s calculating relevance like for for a long time. that’s how the calculations working. Um, and so they were just like building developing their audience around these very central repeatable themes for many many months.
Josh Klemons: Mhm.
Gabriella Zutrau: Uh, so I’ll say that and like they obviously got like a bazillion other things, right? They like invested very very heavily in field like really just like a historic volunteer program. like they knocked over three and a half million doors I think like with over 104,000 volunteers um just like some of the best talent like in the political world uh advising and and of course like Zohran is a
Josh Klemons: Wild. Yeah.

Josh Klemons: Wild.
Gabriella Zutrau: generational talent of a communicator like well to pull off exactly what was pulled off like yeah I think you do have to be special talent like but but I don’t think that like to grow a huge grassroots resonant
Josh Klemons: So I literally that’s my next question. Does a candidate need to be as naturally talented as Iran to pull off what they what y’all pulled off?
Gabriella Zutrau: online and offline online to offline movement I don’t think you need to be a generational talent of a communicator um I think like you got you do have to have a certain level of authenticity um to you which like means people believe what you say because you believe what you say which is like disqualifying for a lot of the Democratic party um tragically.
Josh Klemons: tragically. Yes.
Gabriella Zutrau: Uh, and I also think that like you’ve got to have you you have to be willing to invest. If you’re not naturally good at organic social, you better hire someone who is. Um, you better hire a staff like who know how to edit and uh know how to coach you and like because I no one’s naturally good at speaking direct to camera.

Gabriella Zutrau: Like people practice that for years. Sometimes some people are more naturally good at it, but like that’s a thing that is developed over time and you just have to practice. So I think like if there’s a candidate willing to put in the time to practice and hire the right talent, know their weaknesses so that they can fill those gaps, like for sure you can explode on social um without, you know, being generational talent. Um yeah.
Josh Klemons: The Mom Donnie campaign is both like a blessing and a curse for people like me who do digital because everybody’s like, “Oh, we should be like that.” But then they’re like, “Oh, we should be like that.” And it’s like, “Well, okay, are you going to do the work to be like that?” You know, it’s like they’re like now they get it.
Gabriella Zutrau: Okay.
Josh Klemons: Like, which is so funny. Like clients that I’ve been telling for 10 years, like five years, like, “Let’s do short form video are suddenly like, oh yeah, short form video seems important.”

Josh Klemons: It’s like, “Does it does it?” But then like you know we do it and it’s not you know like I had one I’ve had a lot of clients who get the concept but don’t have any idea next steps and like it’s very hard like it’s easy to be like oh I want to do that. It’s another thing to actually take out the camera and be willing to do it and so many not just my clients I think we see this in across the democratic world like so many folks are just not willing to actually like put the like he was a generational talent but I do agree that like you do not have to be a generational talent to do well on digital. Um, but you do have to be willing to invest in it, which I think a lot of folks don’t understand that it’s not just like a fun thing you do on the side. It’s something you actually like put time and energy and money and effort into. And I think that’s a hard thing for a lot of folks to get.

Gabriella Zutrau: Yes.
Josh Klemons: They’re like, “Oh, it’s Facebook. It’s easy. It’s fun.” You know, it’s like, it is fun. It’s not easy. You know, You have $8 million.
Gabriella Zutrau: Oh, and it is it’s I have had just countless people come to me in the last few months being like, “You worked on Zohran social media. I would like the Zohran mom Donnie treatment as a candidate and I’m like you have so much money like um also I don’t do that kind of execution for other people like for not myself at this point I used
Josh Klemons: Let’s talk. Right. Sure.
Gabriella Zutrau: to but I don’t anymore and but but they don’t want to spend Zohran Mandani money like I don’t know what the the money what the number of dollars is that went into the organic social media operation couldn’t say
Josh Klemons: Right.
Gabriella Zutrau: but you could because it is public.
Josh Klemons: Yeah, you can go look it up.
Gabriella Zutrau: Like the disclosures are public. You guys can all look this up.

Gabriella Zutrau: Um it’s really not cheap. Like uh like an operation that is is doing like organic social at this high a level like if if you look at any campaign that’s doing like ve great organic social, they’re spending tens of thousands of dollars a
Josh Klemons: Sure, they don’t understand it.
Gabriella Zutrau: month per month. And I’m I’m I’ve like had a lot of people come to me and it’s it’s it’s not because they’re like being stingy. They just don’t know that this stuff isn’t cheap. Like, this is really expensive to do because you have to hire talented people who know what they’re doing to do it. Or you’re going to spend 3,000 bucks a month on social media and you’re not really going to necessarily go very far.
Josh Klemons: Like, like I said, the blessing and the curse.
Gabriella Zutrau: Um, yeah.
Josh Klemons: they all suddenly like everyone suddenly gets it but then they don’t have any idea like what to do with getting it you know so I think those are the same thing but okay go ahead either
Gabriella Zutrau: And this is my big fear now.

Gabriella Zutrau: I’m kind of like, “Oh man, this is this is a hill I’ll either die on or will kill me.” Um like that’s neither here nor there.
Josh Klemons: way the kill wins okay no you will defeat this hill or it will kill you trying let’s hear it what is
Gabriella Zutrau: Either way, I’m dead, right? Um I I basically feel like what we are looking at right now is like a Democratic party who like finally now can see that it’s undeniable that organic social is super important and can make just the biggest difference. Like it’s undeniable now finally. What I don’t feel optimistic about is that that will translate into dollars spent on it.
Josh Klemons: Mhm.
Gabriella Zutrau: Um, and a big piece of why I’m skeptical that we’re going to see that transformation happen is because, and don’t get me wrong, ads are important, but I really think we are about to see a whole gigantic like bunch of money getting transferred from our campaigns, from smaller dollar donors into the campaign coffers and out into the pockets of like paid ads consultants.

Gabriella Zutrau: who stand to make commission on those like traditional media ads. And uh it it makes me depressed because they are like not necessar like we we outspent the GOP in 2024 on ads and we lost. Whereas like Trump and the MAGA guys were racking up organic impressions on organic social and new media and we beat them way out. We spent over a billion dollars in paid money and we lost. And like no one bats an eye when like people tell you to keep investing in ads because they’re like this is what has always worked. And it’s like guess what m*********** doesn’t really necessarily work anymore. But you know what’s worth investing in and experimenting with and trying also so that you’re left with a large asset you can continue to leverage after this campaign is over is like organic social media. Why don’t you take 20% of what you might have spent on paid ads and try to invest in your in your organic social operation and see what happens for you? But I’m afraid we might not see that shift because there’s no incentive for those consultants to encourage that shift because they don’t they can’t make commission off of it in the same way.

Josh Klemons: Yeah, we’ve definitely built a system built on what used to work and the people at the table have, you know, and you know, like I I so actually this leads nicely into my next question because you and I have talked about this before. A huge part of my job and I think of your job is keeping up with the space, right? Like literally this whole project is not like you’re not like doing this professionally. You’re doing this professionally because you have to understand what works so you can teach your clients. And there are so many people in politics, in the world who like either in digital, in politics, whatever, who like claim to be experts but haven’t like kept up. And I think that is something that I work very hard to stay up like up to date on and I know obviously you do too. So I’m curious like where what what resources are you using beyond beyond testing on your own accounts? Are there like people you look to or platforms you go to to like always be up to date or it’s like more just kind of random and you’re just like constantly experimenting?

Gabriella Zutrau: I certainly look to you, Josh. Um, I do.
Josh Klemons: That was not the point of that question. But sure I for those for those not watching I almost spit my water out when she said that.
Gabriella Zutrau: Um, yeah, I mean, I think I Um, I yeah, I mean I’m like really fortunate to work with a lot of big accounts all the time.
Josh Klemons: That was the level that was not my intention. Okay. Go ahead. Sure.
Gabriella Zutrau: So I like really have my finger on the pulse of like what is working and what’s not working on a lot of different levels and accounts. Um, but like I absolutely keep up with what Rachel Carton is saying. Like oh my god, the devil works hard but Rachel Carton works harder.
Josh Klemons: It’s I I have like I don’t delete emails.
Gabriella Zutrau: Um,
Josh Klemons: Like I have a lot of like marketing emails that go into like a secondary box, but I don’t delete them until I’ve like had a chance to review them. And there’s a bunch of journalists and creators that I love, but I have like a giant stack of hers that like my plan is this winter when things slow down.

Josh Klemons: I’m going to go backwards. Like I just can’t keep up with it all. Like she posts so often, but they’re all so good. If folks don’t know, Rachel Carton is just like a she’s not in politics, but she gets political. Gabby was in there once. Um she will have on like Chio’s comm’s director and things like that. Uh but she’s just really good about being at the cutting edge of what’s happening. And yeah, she’s definitely one of my top follows for um keeping up with the the space. So link in bio is her um platform if anybody want to check her out.
Gabriella Zutrau: Yeah. And I mean speaking of like exemplary accounts uh and and Chios like him like he he doesn’t like give digital tips but like Yeah.
Josh Klemons: You mean speaker of the house say easily one of the best in the business for sure.
Gabriella Zutrau: Speaker Chioz um wow he like really sets the standard for like political social in a lot of ways. Yeah.
Josh Klemons: Like New York City councilman who’s just been doing it before he was a household name he was crushing it.

Gabriella Zutrau: and like for so long.
Josh Klemons: Now that he’s kind of a household man, he’s crushing it. Yeah, for sure. So Mhm.
Gabriella Zutrau: Yeah, he rocks. Um, I also I like I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again. I get a lot of inspiration for my political stuff from non-political accounts because I don’t think that uh for the most part political social media is as strong as creator social, small business social and brand social because a like they have to get their money from that. So they have like a financial incentive to constantly be experimenting and trying stuff and B they don’t work in cycles where like they start up and then six months later they close down and they start up and close.
Josh Klemons: Yep.
Gabriella Zutrau: They are like working all year round many years in a row in a way that just like lends itself much better to knowing what is going on on social and using the like best practices of this specific moment.
Josh Klemons: Sure.
Gabriella Zutrau: Whereas organic social can sometimes like because it’s funded in cycles, it’s it’s invested in in cycles and like when it’s something that clearly needs year- round maintenance, it’s not getting it.

Josh Klemons: Yep.
Gabriella Zutrau: Um Yeah.
Josh Klemons: Is Zoran going to keep investing in organic social now that he doesn’t have a campaign to run? Like I Yeah, I hadn’t thought about it. Like we’ll see what happens. It’s like I can’t imagine he’s going to have the kind of output he had or the kind of budget behind it. Like you know, is he going to fund raise to like keep keeping his team doing this? Like hard to imagine. But it’ll be fun to watch him control the city accounts.
Gabriella Zutrau: Yeah. I mean and and like for just one like really outstanding example is like Kamla HQ exploded right dead since then just hasn’t posted just because they’re like
Josh Klemons: Literally hasn’t posted since. Yeah. I literally I wrote the Tik Tok FYP like from Courier like I wrote that newsletter. I studied that account and my friends Kyle and Lucy over there at neither of them are full-time anymore over there but um we were like raising alarms and talking about things that we were seeing and watching Trump steal all the Kla HQ ideas and like repurpose them with the love of like an algorithm that loves hate for some reason.

Josh Klemons: Um but like it’s the biggest I mean I think Kyle Tharp pointed this out in Chaotic Era. literally the biggest account political account on the Democratic side on Tik Tok and it’s been dormant for a year because she doesn’t know what to do with it. Is she saving it for her next run or should like what a wasted opportunity to like keep even if it was just her fundraising just to keep doing it? Like I I I don’t know what the answer is, but that can’t have been the answer. Like to just shut that account.
Gabriella Zutrau: If it was a meme a week, a direct to camera a week, like a month, anything like keep you built like something of a movement at le you know like you built something and Now you’re just letting it die and you’re it’s lost all its algorithmic relevance. Could you wake it up? Of course you can wake it up.
Josh Klemons: Sure.
Gabriella Zutrau: But like what? You could have been doing something with this the whole time.

Josh Klemons: It’s very It’s quite a decision that was made. Um, yeah. So, on that note, okay, wait. If candidates and their teams, specifically political campaigns, specifically down ballot races, if they change one thing about their digital program based on this chat, what should it be?
Gabriella Zutrau: Oh yeah.
Josh Klemons: And you could give two or three, but like I I want to talk to like the non-governor races, the non-senate races, the nonzoran mammi like international like you know like is it just use trial reels and see it? Is it do direct to camera videos? Is it collabs? Is it like the investment has to come before you’re going to see success? Like I don’t know. Uh do you have a uh one takeaway?
Gabriella Zutrau: Um, okay. I have a few. I’m trying to order them in my head, but like one is um in if you don’t know organic social very well, do try to invest in someone who does. And on a down ballot race, on scrappy campaigns, I know you’re not working with like probably a full-time person who does this, but maybe you’re hiring a body person or maybe you’re hiring a comm’s person, but maybe those responsibilities are what’s tacked on to the end of their social media title.

Josh Klemons: Mhm.
Gabriella Zutrau: Maybe you’re hiring for organic social first and then also like someone who helps staff you at events or maybe they’re also someone who like handles traditional press. like we we don’t see um we we don’t really see campaigns who like just don’t hire traditional press people. Like I have yet to meet a campaign that like didn’t have someone dedicated to comms, but all kinds of campaigns have no one dedicated to social media.
Josh Klemons: Mhm.
Gabriella Zutrau: And it’s like that is a really tough skill to learn. So, if you find someone who knows it and can do something else on the side, like that should maybe be the arrangement now because historically it’s always been like you have a job and you can do social media
Josh Klemons: on the side.
Gabriella Zutrau: on the side.
Josh Klemons: Right.
Gabriella Zutrau: I think that’s over. Um, and what I’ll also say is like rather than it being like about one thing, trial reels or direct to camera, I think it’s obviously a combination, but I think more than that, it’s about consistency.

Gabriella Zutrau: It’s about investing early in consistency. And that should be a consistency like a a a pace of posting a cadence that is doable for you in the long term. Like posting as much as you can without burning out so that you are constantly in people’s feeds and like posting a a variety of content so that like you can make that sustainable for yourself. And what I mean by that is like some of them could be like 20 second direct to cameras so that people are like seeing your face and remembering you’re alive. Some of them could be tweet shots, literal screenshots of tweets you’ve already made.
Josh Klemons: still still do well on social. It’s bizarre.
Gabriella Zutrau: You’ll do so well and literally people there’s nothing people love more on social media than screenshots of other websites.
Josh Klemons: I always say people hate Twitter, but they love screenshots of tweets. It’s so weird. It’s so weird. It’s so so funny. Reddit screenshots can do well, but Twitter screenshots take the cake. It’s bizarre.

Gabriella Zutrau: screenshots of news headlines, whatever.
Josh Klemons: Yeah, true that. Yeah.
Gabriella Zutrau: Like these are so quick and easy and like you you can just you can produce them so quickly, easily, dirtily, like with no skill and like caption them, okay?
Josh Klemons: Mhm.
Gabriella Zutrau: And just like as long as you’ve got a presence on people’s feeds, um like the longer you can have a consistent presence on people’s feeds before your election day, the better. So if that’s investing in people, awesome if you have that kind of money. If it’s not like find a way to post a few times a
Josh Klemons: I love it. That that reminded me of something I heard at Networks that I hadn’t thought about, but that I loved and I wish I could remember who said it, but they said that quality matters, but consistency matters more. And if you think about so many people are like terrible podcasts or terrible content, but they’re there every day or twice a week or even once a week. And like I’m guilty of this, like this podcast is not weekly.

Josh Klemons: I don’t have bandwidth for that. I this podcast is a work of passion. Like I love this podcast. I love getting to connect with like amazing people like you. I learned from you and I know other people are learning from you through it. But like yeah, if I could do this weekly, I would. But like I just can’t. But for a campaign, you want to win an election, you better be investing. And I could not agree more. Like if you’re not showing up on people’s feeds regularly, you are not changing any you’re not bringing anybody in. So yeah, I I think that’s a great answer. Like be showing up whatever it means to do that. Obviously, if that’s something that the candidate can do themselves, fine. But it shouldn’t be. Uh it should be something they bring somebody on to do. But uh no. Okay. That was uh I think it’s a great and super actionable answer. Don’t hire a comms person or a body person who can do social.

Josh Klemons: Hire a social person who can do that other stuff. Uh how should folks you’ve got a lot of stuff out there now. How should they go to the ASMR baby or how do you want stick with you moving forward?
Gabriella Zutrau: Um, you can go ahead and follow me on extremely online friend to see my very low lift.
Josh Klemons: We’re going to get you up. We’re going to get you up to three to-do items today.
Gabriella Zutrau: Very low lift. I’ll limit it to three or I’ll limit it to two. You can see my very very low lift but very consistent content on Extremely online friend to get like tips and tricks on digital tactics and my hot takes on politics and rants about being a content creator and internet culture and dogs and all that stuff that’s extremely online friend on Instagram. And then you can follow me on LinkedIn if you just want to keep up like with my work and see what I’m up to next. I’ll be posting anything and everything that happens to me.
Josh Klemons: Good. You have a website NYC but okay I will link to um LinkedIn and that uh Instagram account in the show notes and uh got
Gabriella Zutrau: I have a website. It’s zuttra.nyc, but I’d say LinkedIn is like the place that gets updated. And my full name on LinkedIn is Gabriela Zutra.
Josh Klemons: to complicate it.
Gabriella Zutrau: Just Yeah.
Josh Klemons: Um cool like I said I’ll have links to that. Um, thank you so much for coming back and checking back in with me. This was super fun and I I hope it was fun to talk about something other than many chat for an hour. So, thank you. Cool.