E28: Former Model: From the Sins of Social Media to the Promise of Web 3.0

0:28You're not always like the top girl. move into entertainment and media. In Instagram, for example, it's essentially two things, envy and lust. You're just never good enough. No matter how hard you try, somebody else out there is posting something that you're envious about. What are the downsides of having a substantial online following? Wow, that's a really good question. I think the conversion rate for nano and micro influencers are really high, even much bigger than, say, celebrities. An investor friend tells me He invests in consumers, apps and social media projects. If they tick one of the boxes of the seven sins, it affects the way I think and my beliefs and my value system just because of all these influences from online.

1:15Our guest today is Vanessa. You're the head of business development and communication at Sokol, a Web3 social platform that enables creators, brands and communities to collaborate and grow together with the power of Web3 and NFTs. You're also a content creator and host with a substantial online following. In this episode, we'll talk about building a personal brand in the web toward how Web3 changes the game for content creators and mental health for content creators. Vanessa, welcome. Hi, Kevin. Thanks for having me. I'm Vanessa and I'm based in Singapore and I'm so excited to talk today. Awesome.

1:53We're very excited too. So why don't we start with some context about your background? What are the key turning points in your life that define who you are today? Well, I think one of the most important and crucial turning points goes all the way back when I was 15. That was a secondary fall here in school. And I joined a modeling competition that I saw an advertisement on in the newspaper. And back then, I knew nothing about fashion. I wore glasses, even made a fashion four-par during the audition itself, which was embarrassing. but I think that first move into entertainment and media gave me the courage to take both moves afterwards and just give everything a shot and not overthink the process and I think this ballsy nature really was harnessed from the experience onwards and moving forward when I moved on to join web3 by dropping an offer letter from management starting firm I think it was the same ethos of just, you know, going and doing and just taking the courage to take, you know, the alternative paths.

2:56I think the second turning point that was really important was when I started a fashion startup in the first year of university. It failed, but the intention was to do circular economy for sustainable fashion, like renting winter wear or your daily clothes to reduce fashion wastage. That startup eventually failed during COVID and I never continued to revive it afterwards. But that helped me enter the startup and the entrepreneurship space, which makes joining a small startup like Soko right now less daunting. And eventually I moved on to help other founders raise funds through my angel network that I run.

3:36Awesome. So how did you start this influencer journey? Well, it was entirely unintentional. Honestly, I can even say I hated social media back in school and I was the last few among my peers to create Instagram. Back when everybody was posting selfies already, I didn't like that at all. But I had to doing the modern competition that I told you about before to garner some votes before the finals. So starting Instagram was not by choice at all. And I just continued to post my student life as well as my media career. I documented all the commercials and hosting gigs and DJ gigs that I did. And people kind of liked it.

4:18And I just treated my Instagram page as a vlog for my experiences. So you're DJ too? Can you tell us a bit more about that? Oh, yeah. So funny enough, I think in 2017, if I'm not wrong, I joined a radio DJ competition to think about going into media full time and joining as a radio DJ. That didn't work out too well. I made it to top 10, failed. Then eventually I got an offer from a DJ agency, like a club DJ, music DJ, spinning records and music. I signed on with the agency. They coached me. My music background with instruments helped a lot. And now I DJ for fun, I guess. I think at one point in time, I was doing it like three times or two times a week, which was pretty serious.

5:05But now I don't have the energy to wake up at 8 a.m. and do club gigs anymore. So I still spin for corporates and festivals once in a while. And I really love it like a hobby. Awesome. Awesome. A very similar journey, actually. So you're posting, you say you don't really like this social media stuff, but you have to do it for some reason that you talked about. And you start to post regularly stuff about yourself. Is there a moment where there is a tipping point, for example, for people, especially on YouTube, COVID was a big tipping point. How did it work out for you? Is it just like consistency that helped you build like a substantial following or there's a moment where things accelerate.

5:49I like how you mentioned Tipping Point, like the book that I really like as well. I think for me, it was perhaps in 2018 when I continue on my modeling fashion career by participating in more pageants and competitions and doing more and more commercials. I think it was more like social media following came as a consequence of me just documenting my career in media which I don't do as actively anymore. But back then, I was pretty active in hosting and modeling for quite a lot of gigs. And I think people wanted to see more of my work as well. I think there wasn't really a significant moment where I was like scouted or I was cast in a big show.

6:32But I think the moment I realized that I should start taking this a bit seriously and use this as an opportunity to further my influence and voice was when I realized people wanted to pay for me to share about something. And I was thinking like, why would you do that? Like, I am like a kid who is just posting random photos, probably low resolution at this point in time about my life. But I think when the advertisers started coming in, that's when I really started taking my platform more seriously. When you say platform, what do you mean? It started predominantly on Instagram. And then right now I'm pretty active on LinkedIn as well for more like business articles and posts that I like to share.

7:14And Twitter, of course, to keep up with Web3 News. And right now I'm trying to grow Xiaohongshu, which is the Chinese social media app. It's quite new. It's so challenging. I have to translate all my captions into Chinese, which is like the hardest thing to do. And TikTok as well for the younger audience. Yeah, so I want to ask basically, how do you manage all these social media platforms? Because just one or two is already a lot of work. It's true. How do you make your choices and how do you manage? Or you just say, listen, I'm just going to go with these two or three which work the best now and then I'll see or do you have like a specific strategy on what you should create your content on based on as you said for example web 3 or or what you target in the future I think I started with spending a lot of time on Instagram first it was just very intuitive because that's where I started my social media journey as well I didn't really understand TikTok I don't think I still understand it now so I do it for fun And sometimes I even outsource my video editing because you have to scale your time, right?

8:17I spent a lot of time on LinkedIn ever since about two years ago because I realized that personal branding in the business space really takes a long time to build. And I know that for me, I'm not going to be a full-time content creator. I don't think it will satisfy this really full, high energy part of me that is always finding something to do. So I knew that I was going to go into business and I started spending a lot of time on LinkedIn ever since I started the Injure Investment Network called NUS Alumni Ventures. Twitter only came about ever since I started full-time at Sokol so that I can really stay in touch with my Web3 friends, meet new people and also show myself as a woman in Web3.

9:00So you're growing, let's say, Instagram, pretty focused there, pretty focused on LinkedIn. What do you do when you are big on a platform that consumes already all your time, but then you have a new platform such as TikTok or this Chinese application that I don't know the name of? Because I'm probably too old or too stupid to know. No, you're not too old. How do you approach that basically, you know? And how do you stay relevant? I prioritize based on the ROI I'll get out of the platform. I think I am someone who's pretty results oriented. I don't just do things for fun. Like time is really like the most scarce resource that you have.

9:47So I think, okay, what's the output that I get out of this? For Instagram, the obvious thing is it's my main platform. It's my bread and butter at some point in time before I graduated. So I really have to keep up my Instagram and spend majority of my time on it because that was the reason why I could be financially independent when I was still in school. It paid off my school fees and everything else along with it as well. And then LinkedIn was really with the objective of meeting and networking with more business audience that I believe would give me some output in the future, whatever job I do, right?

10:23Whether it was consulting, web 3, banking, finance, it doesn't matter. I believe that there's value with the crowd over there. So that was like the second platform that I prioritized out of time. And the last bit of time I spent is on Twitter. I don't really enjoy keeping out all the shit posts and stuff. It's fun. It's like, you know, more lighthearted, more casual than Instagram, which is very polished. But I enjoy like, you know, seeing what my friends are up to and all these new news and, you know, sometimes getting some alpha from Twitter as well. So I feel like, okay, at least I'm ahead of the curve if I'm still staying relevant on Twitter.

10:58so that's how I prioritize do you not feel like you're wasting a lot of time especially on twitter I mean on all these platforms basically uh because for example twitter is I mean it's the same like you spend a lot of time on there you're like oh maybe the alpha or you will get the information about I don't know celsius bank run or ftx bank run or banks bank run before anyone but there is so much shit and then so you have to create content which takes a lot of time publish everything then you have a normal job and then you have to go through this sea of shit posts and online shit like how do you approach that to make sure that you don't waste too much time which we all do yeah I actually um contrary to what most people think I don't spend that many hours reading a content I read enough to know what is trending or to know what people are talking about just so that it's conversation starters as well when I meet people at events.

11:52But I really don't spend too much time. I rather spend the time creating content, writing articles, taking photos, editing my videos, or just meeting new people or recording podcasts with you like today. So I don't spend too much time on that because I know that more than a certain amount, it's just like binging. It's like binge watching Netflix, which I don't ever do. I think it also came out from a habit where when I grew up, I watched absolutely zero TV shows. And I think that's how I have so much time to do all my modeling gigs after work, events, DJing, learn all these like random skill sets because I spend no time watching shows.

12:28If you ask me about Game of Thrones or any popular TV show, I have no idea what you're talking about. Yeah, it's very funny because I'm the exact same and I spent my life first, like I DJed for five years and I was just nerding on my DJ that's amazing all time like all the time people were like oh did you watch this thing I was like no I'm just DJing like all the time and and then the next thing was crypto I've been nerding on this crypto thing like for five years and I'm like I don't have time to watch these shows and and I'm the stupid one at the table who don't never understand anything about the the shows um so do you see other influencers as um competition wow that's a really good question i think if you ask me like maybe about two years ago i would think maybe yes um because it's advertisers dollars that we're trying to get right there's x amount of budget you want to be the most relevant person uh and you fit the brand image and people who are very similar to you say i post a lot of fitness content other fitness kols are kind of like competing for the same share of money but now i don't care um i believe everybody has their own style.

13:41People are looking for different image. Every advertiser is looking for a different person, a different spokesperson for their product. And even now, so it's not just that I don't care, but a huge part of my time at Sokol is helping creators get educated about Web3 and helping them grow their Twitter, get into Web3, launch their NFTs. I spend a lot of time helping a lot of other influencers think about their own social media, their own business, and even maybe writing social media blueprints and social media copies for them. So I think it's funny how tables have turned and I treat it like competition now as partners that I can work with so that everybody can grow together.

14:20I think it's Naval who says you don't have competition if you're authentic and if you're yourself. So basically everybody can build their own niche online and build their own following and do great things from there. What are the downsides of having substantial online following? Well, I can't say there are many downsides because I am pretty extroverted. I like to meet new people, talk to new people online as well. But sometimes I do get a bit shy in public when I'm spending an intimate time with my friends or my partner and I want to have my own space and privacy. So I don't really enjoy a bit of intrusion at moments like that.

15:05But I can't really complain about it. It comes as a package, right? And I think it'll be very entitled of me to say I want the good parts of it without losing a bit of privacy. You talked about kind of financial freedom when you were at university, thanks to these online gigs and gigs with brands. How hard is this monetization part? What's the real game there? Because I have a bunch of friends who have a lot of followers, like millions of followers, and they tell me it's really tough because you have these deals where they would take you for a couple of months through promo codes or things like that.

15:45Also, they will pay you. But then at some point, they look at pure sales, and then they will change and change and change. And it's very difficult. There's a lot of ups and downs, and it's kind of like a freelance gig or game or like if you're a consultant, you know, you have gigs sometimes, sometimes not. And at the end of the day, it's never really safe so you can make good money, but you have, so what's your experience with that? Well, monetization as an influencer is more positive than negative. The good thing is in Singapore, I think KOLs are played pretty decently. I think a lot of attention is spent on social media compared to say traditional free-to-air television.

16:25And that's why all the money goes downstream and trickles to influencers. But I would say I agree with you on the downside, right? Some of the things include like COVID, right? A lot of companies cut costs and the first to get cut is always marketing budget. And it trickles downstream where we get less campaigns as well. And if advertisers were to spend, they were spent on elsewhere. That's cheaper. For example, Facebook ads, Google ads, that has bigger numbers as well. potentially. The other downside is that I think the unstable income is also attributed that I'm not always the eight girl of the season, right?

17:02It's very variable. I think at peak, that was my peak was probably maybe a few years ago. Sometimes I come back and become a bit more popular. I think in every few months, there'll be like this set of like popular girls that people always pick. And when the engagement is there, that's where advertisers put money in as well. So you're not always like the top girl. Even if you have 100 ,000 followers or a million followers, you're not always everyone's favorite at the same time.

17:30What's the level of influence you think you need to have to have some real leverage over brands? Because I feel like there is micro-influencers and you have influencers and then you have the really big, big ones and that brands most of the time do have the leverage because they have the money. So what's the kind of size that you think you need to reach to really build the leverage? Or is it even possible to have leverage with brands or you need to build your own brand and not care anymore about all these external brands to actually have full leverage and control over how much you can make and how enjoyable the process is?

18:08That's a really good question. I would like to debate some points that you mentioned about size. I don't think size is the biggest factor, even though it's one of the first few things that people look out for. So on the side of the SoCo, I also advise and help come out with strategies for this media tech company called Party Post, which is like a micro nano influencer app for campaigns. And what we see is that the conversion rate for nano and micro influencers are really high, even much bigger than say celebrities or macro KOLs. But I think what is very defensible, that brands will want you for as a KOL is your credibility.

18:49So recently, I think most of the advertisers have been finding KOLs who have a professional career or own businesses. I think these profiles are really hard to find. Or say a mom with certain issues or an influencer with very specific skin conditions or health issues, where if you promote something, I think this credibility is something that money can buy. if you are just posting a very vanilla fitness fashion content that anybody else can do without sharing a personal story that makes people trust you, I think you're just going to be like everybody else. But if you can build this credibility and trust among your audience in something that you're actually doing in the real life, I think that is when brands find that you're indispensable.

19:32If you look at the evolution of social media landscape and how easy it was to build the following and maybe it became a bit more difficult because algorithm change, you know, when there's a new platform, obviously they're going to favor the influencers because that's what's going to make the platform grow. But then at some point they want to make money. So you can see, for example, on Instagram now, very difficult to build the following without paying for boosts and all that stuff. so how hard is the social media game the web 2 social media game today for creators and then we'll move on to web 3 to understand what's the difference you know i think it is really challenging because every platform has its own algorithm and things that work and this algorithm changes so fast as well i think um previously if you post it um a lot of skin maybe long captions your content might work right now maybe it's blocked to filter out or the algorithm changes or you need to use trendy audio um it's really quite complex to understand and that's why people always look for marketeers and agencies to help them in their social media journey I think what I'm excited about is to try new platforms sometimes when it gets a bit too overwhelming in one platform I want to see how other platforms does I think the next thing I want to try is this exciting new platform called Soundit which is a really big new social media platform in France right now as well as Be Real where the algorithm is I think more predictable at the start and maybe if you establish an audience there early, you don't have to risk losing followers or plateauing at the current social media platform.

21:23I don't exactly have a strategy of how to navigate this. If not, I would have probably a million or two million followers by now. But I must say, I think as long as we are actively using the platform that we're in, we talk to people, fellow creators, share ideas, I think we'll always be at the top of the game. Let's talk about Web3. Let's go. So why should content creators and influencers care about web3 especially in in relationship to what you're doing today on youtube instagram tiktok like how why because you were working for so call and we'll talk about that very shortly why is it so important and what's possible with web3 for influencers and content creators i think back to the previous question that you asked me um one of the problems with web2 social media as much as they're great and that's how I built my career is really that you're at the mercy of the social media algorithm.

22:24That's how you determine how engaged your fans are, how much your content reach people and how well you do. And sometimes you might even get your content or your account accidentally taken down because it has been reported by the wrong person or the algorithm detected something different. In Web3, you own the community and by owning it, It's a fully decentralized community or profile account in content that you post. So you have full ownership and control of what happens to it. And I think that is a good complementary to the Web2 social media. I think with Web2 also, the culture is very two-way with the creators and the fans.

23:01In Web2 world, you are just feeding content as an influencer and people can just like and DM you and that's it, right? It's very superficial. But in Web3, I think there's already a culture where people are more, where people are just more democratic in the sense where everybody gets a certain voice in a DAO, right, for example. And there's more two-way interaction. For example, NFT holders get to vote for certain decisions and get to kickstart community activities on behalf of the creators themselves. I think that's really exciting because with this two-way interaction, it's more fun, more meaningful, and I think it's a better experience altogether.

23:38So what I see is that Web2E social media isn't a replacement of your existing Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, but it's more of a good complementary tool. How do we transition from one to the other? What do you think will happen? Is it new platforms that will take over? Is it Instagram that's going to do some NFT stuff, which I think they just recently just ditched the idea, you know? So how do you think this transition is going to happen? Well, I think people need to see value in it in the first place, right? I think a lot of, for example, NFTs right now are merely PFPs with barely any value besides speculative investment.

24:20I think if more projects provide real value, like in real life utility NFTs or say doing education for the masses, I think if there's a lot of value to be seen in Web3 and people can see how it relates back to their business, their existing Web2 business, I think that is where people will start moving to Web3. I think that's the first criteria for this to happen. I think the second is, I think a lot of Web3 offerings right now are way too inaccessible. The reason why I could learn really fast was because of my boss, Irene, who guided me through the way and also gave me an environment where I could learn about Web3 and NFTs really fast.

25:01But I can imagine this is so much more challenging for many other creators who don't have the environment or their support system to teach them about, you know, as simple as creating a wallet or minting an NFT. It's weird because it's weird and complicated, definitely. Exactly. It's just, you know, online somewhere on what chain, like, you know, people don't understand that, right? So I think they need to have toolkits that can embed this whole blockchain technology underneath something that is very easy and intuitive for people to use. And I think that is where people will truly adopt Web3 technology and make the full use of it.

25:39It's like how we don't have to learn HTML or JavaScript to enjoy the perks of web browsers. So what is Sokol? Sokol is a community management platform and we help creators and brands. And by creators, we mean like influencers, musicians, artists, even fitness instructors themselves to engage with their audience more meaningfully through gated communities. And we get this through NFT ownership. Can you give an example of, I'm an influencer or I'm a fitness influencer or whatever. I'm interested by this web three word. I come to so-called, what happens? What's the process and what do you guys do and what do you not do?

26:27Let me give. And why is it beneficial for me? I think the best way is for you, Kevin, you have quite a lot of followers from your podcast and online as well. So say you have hypothetically 100 ,000 Spotify subscribers and maybe 100 ,000 Instagram followers as well, or YouTube or whichever channel that you use. These are like your average followers who keep up with your content maybe time to time, But you can't really identify who are your super fans who perhaps even set a notification to listen to your new episodes or even listen to every episode end to end, want to meet you in person, get to know your story and learn from you.

27:08And you can identify this, you know, super fans or super followers, maybe just the top 10 % of them, right? on SoCo, where you can create a community which is decentralized and fully owned by you. And you can release NFTs, which are like a signifier for who are your super fans who are willing to pay to get more benefits from you. And we call them premium collectibles on our platform. So it's more friendly, like, you know, holding a membership pass in the Web2 world. So with the NFTs that they own, they can access benefits that you decide. And you can decide on utilities that make sense for you.

27:42For example, the NFT holders get extra 10-15 minutes of BTS footage from your videos or your podcast episodes. And they're curious to learn more about it. Or they get a monthly call or AMA with you to ask you any questions about you instead of your guests. You get to decide on all these kind of utility that makes sense and gives value to the community members, but also benefit you in your current work. Okay, so I can come here and I subscribe to the platform and I can, you help me release my NFT collection. Exactly. And you help me frame and understand how this is beneficial for me and for the people who follow me.

28:27Exactly. At this point, we work with everybody on really like a one-to-one basis. It's not the most scalable thing, but we believe it's important to sit down with somebody and think about utility ideas that make sense for them so that they feel the benefit and the value of spending time to engage with their audience. The last thing we want is a lot of rug pull DAOs on our platform as well. So we provide the tech for people to create their DAOs, but at the same time, what we also offer is the expertise and the know-how from the Irene DAO project to tell people what are some of the utilities you can incorporate.

29:00Maybe how to even like budget the operation cost if you want to like price your NFTs. And how do you promote this on Instagram and Twitter with your very web tool audience? I think all these kind of little things are what creators can benefit from by working with us on Soko. What's the benefit of brands coming to this platform? Is it different from an influencer brand or how do you approach the brands? We do both B2B white label projects like we did with Nothing, the new phone brand by Calpe, as well as Ember Lounge, which is the official Formula One as well as the World Cup after party. so those are white label minting sites that we do for them depending on what they need and the entire branding of those sites and the tools and the features like NFT rental or combining NFTs to make like a super NFT it depends on the client's needs and you don't see like so-called branding pretty much anywhere and then we have smaller brands less high-end brands who come onto our platform as well who may not have the budget to do like an entire white label project or they're doing it as a proof of concept and they come to our so-called XYZ platform I think the way of working is quite similar in a sense where we really listen to our customers and the brands about what they want to get out of this.

30:13It could be upfront revenue. It could be loyalty. It could be just, you know, learning for their own team to get into Web3 early as well. And we customize every solution with them. On the tech side, usually for the white label platforms that we do, we customize everything end-to-end for them. On the platform, they work with the toolkits that we offer, like the feed function, the chat feature, the sole private DM where people can bid for a 24-hour chat window. They work with their parameters, but we also think about the utility on a very one-to-one basis with them. You're the head of business development at Sokol.