How do you find and work with local creators for a local media brand?

I wasn't even looking for her. I stumbled across someone already making local videos and said: you're already doing this. Want to do it where there's a built-in audience and a brand around you? She said of course.

She now makes about a video a day for us. Green-screen videos, for now. On-the-ground content had been my biggest bottleneck. I kept going to the same four restaurants, and there's only so much you can film that way.

Where do you find local creators?

Look for people already doing it. Someone already posting about your town has proven they'll show up. Other good profiles:

• A stay-at-home mom whose kids are old enough that she doesn't have to babysit, who likes being out and doing fun things. Tell her to go make a bunch of cool content around town.
• A college student who wants to go into media. Go to the local journalism or marketing programs and make it an internship. Check the rules on unpaid internships first; I still don't know all the laws around it.
• Partners who already have footage. I have a realtor who makes my social videos for free because I feature her house listings. She runs it herself. Business owners have employees, too: ask them to film two minutes of raw footage when they visit a restaurant and send it over to edit.

The filming has to happen locally. The editing doesn't. The creator can edit it, or you hand it to an overseas VA.

A guest on my podcast who runs local sub-brands said hiring locals who already make videos is the key. One of his suburb newsletters is written by a local mom of three whom people already know. John Apolinar, another guest, found a marketing intern on a college job board near a big school.

Why would a creator join your brand instead of growing their own?

"If you're just starting out and you have 3,000 followers... it's just me and I make content about Kansas City. That's gonna be way harder for them to grow, to monetize and everything. But if they can be underneath your brand, you already have 40,000 followers. You already have business relationships."

It's why you'd rather be a reporter at the New York Times than write the same stuff on your own blog. A trusted local brand is the quality brand in town. A mom influencer who attaches to it gets an audience and credibility on day one. The brand gets someone making content for free or dirt cheap. Both sides win.

That only works if the brand is real first. Build the newsletter, make it great, get in front of a lot of people, then branch out.

How should the brand be set up?

As an umbrella. Pick a name general enough that the Instagram, a local podcast, a full website and several newsletters can all live under it.

My long-term picture is the creator model with multiple personalities: about four different people making four different types of content on one brand's Instagram. The brand doesn't depend on me. Bigger picture, I'd love a mini creator network: young people in nearby towns who want to make content on their own schedule and get paid for it, with the media brand bundling it for local businesses.

How much do you pay creators?

Less than you'd guess. The pattern I've seen from operators who are doing this:

Type of video	Typical creator pay
Green-screen, filmed anywhere	About $20 per video
In-person shoot at a business	About $250 (one partner's rate)
A video a day at $20	About $600 a month

A green-screen video takes about 15 minutes. For $600 a month, that's a big upgrade for most local brands.

The ideal world is hiring someone at $3,500 a month to go make killer content full time. That won't pay off in the short term, so almost none of us can do it. An intern is the middle ground. Growing a local account to tens of thousands of followers isn't rocket science. It's constant, unique videos about what's going on in town, and college kids have the time and energy that operators don't.

I've also asked guests whether to pay salary or a percent of ad revenue. I haven't fully settled that one.

How do creators make the brand money?

They turn Instagram into ad inventory. I know an operator in a Canadian town of about 60,000 who makes about $45,000 a month. Three young women make videos for him. Advertisers pay him about $200 a video, and he pays the creator $20. Those are his numbers, secondhand. The point is that your Instagram suddenly has unlimited ad space.

The same math works at higher prices. If a business will pay $500 to $800 for a sponsored reel, find a local creator who'll make it for $200 and keep the difference. I've heard of someone doing exactly that, but I haven't talked to them myself yet.

Some Instagram operators have told me they make more from pitching videos to local businesses than from their newsletter. And every operator I talk to who's doing well on Instagram says it matters for ad sales. Another guest told me sponsor conversations got easier once friends and family were sharing the brand's posts.

Can you partner with influencers instead of hiring them?

Yes. Find the people who already have your ideal audience. For a family newsletter, a mom influencer is perfect, because almost everyone following her would want your stuff. Figure out what you can offer so you share each other. Your audience may be smaller. So what? It doesn't hurt her to share yours while you share hers.

Mike Richardson told me on my podcast he was building newsletter editions curated by mom and dad influencers with about 100,000 followers. His project, not mine, but it's the same idea.

Keep favors two-way. When you do something for a local business or creator, ask for something back: a share, a mention, or your cards at their front counter.