Episode 5: Leveraging Social Media for Politics with Gabriella Zutrau
Lessons learned from the Zohran Mamdani campaign and a viral puppy page converge in this conversation on the future of political strategy in the age of social media.
SUMMARY
On this episode of Create for Change, we’re joined by Gabriella Zutrau, a digital strategy advisor, organic social media expert, and content creator focused on leveraging social media engagement’s potential for real-world impact.
Gabriella shares her takeaways from building out the digital operations for Zohran Mamdani’s campaign — which included a social media chatbot infrastructure that helped turn followers’ online energy into offline action, and a trial reels program that brought in over half a million followers during New York’s Democratic mayoral primary.
Gabriella walks us through her digital strategy career journey, gives us her thoughts on what makes a good political campaign, and shares the unexpected testing ground that helps her hone her craft: her dog’s Instagram account.
HIGHLIGHTS
LESSONS LEARNED FROM THE ZOHRAN MAMDANI CAMPAIGN: Gabriella emphasizes that the success of the Zohran Mamdani campaign was a combination of investment in digital communications and on-the-ground outreach, an unapologetic Democratic Socialist platform, and a “generational talent” of a communicator who tied it all together, and trusted creative professionals to experiment. She urges strategists to remember that social media amplifies everything about a candidate, and when it comes to elections, presentation means nothing without policy.
THE FUTURE OF POLITICAL CAMPAIGNS IS DIGITAL-FIRST: Gabriella speaks on the importance of campaigns investing money, time, and energy into digital communications strategies. She underscores the need for the consulting class to turn away from broadcast advertising and lean into social media — where most Americans in the present-day get their news. She also calls on campaigns, organizations, and the Democratic Party as a whole to shift their paid media spending into organic social operations and creator engagement.
A PERSONAL PUPPY PAGE AS A TACTICS LAB: Out of all the work she’s done over the years, nothing has taught Gabriella more about digital strategy than running her dog’s social media page, @ednatherunt. Through Edna’s page, Gabriella has the freedom to experiment, be creative, and test potential social media strategies for her clients. She suggests that anyone who wants to master social media maintains a personal social media practice to stay in touch with the latest trends, platform updates, and what is and isn’t working online.
TRANSCRIPT
Gabriella Zutrau 00:00
Can you imagine just hundreds of millions of dollars flowing into tactics and people that we know actually resonate with the audiences we’re trying to reach instead of like placing another goddamn TV ad?
Dillon St. Bernard 00:12
Hey y’all, it’s Dillon St. Bernard, and welcome back to Create for Change, where we’re gathering creatives, activists, and leaders to really talk about the intersection of storytelling and social impact. Gabi Zutrau is a digital strategy advisor, organic social media expert, and a content creator in her own right, who has pioneered groundbreaking ways to turn fleeting internet attention into tangible real-world action, including as the digital strategy advisor for Mayor Mamdani in 2025. Gabi and Edna, how are y’all?
Gabriella Zutrau 00:43
We’re good.
Dillon St. Bernard 00:44
All right, Gabi, tell us who are you? Like, how did we get here to this conversation?
Gabriella Zutrau 00:53
Whoa, what a big question! In general, I’m a digital strategy advisor to campaigns and organizations. I’m based in Brooklyn, my expertise is in organic social media strategy and creator engagement, and I also have a background in community organizing. But in a very different lane, I am also a content creator in the pet niche. My dog Edna is a famous influencer, Edna the Runt, across all platforms, and I use her pages as a lab where I experiment with different tools and tactics before I try them with my clients, who are campaigns and organizations like the Mamdani campaign last year was one of my clients.
Dillon St. Bernard 01:31
Tell us about what you did exactly there, and also any other examples that like really exemplify your work.
Gabriella Zutrau 01:37
On the Mamdani campaign, I mostly built out their social media chatbot infrastructure using a tool called ManyChat, where we were able to send over 144,000 automated messages on Instagram and Facebook during the election, generating over 45,000 clicks from DMs. And this really helped us turn their online energy into offline action volunteers, phone bankers, voters, and yeah, that was just one of the things I did for them. I also touched a few other parts of their digital operation, including standing up operations for their trial reels program, where we posted over 90 trial reels, bringing in over half a million followers during the primary, and in addition to that, bringing in over 42 million extra views for free without creating any new content, just reposting their most viral content that has already been tested and tried and true. I also helped with their like final sprint email program and supported on their creator engagement work, which was helmed by Amelia Rowland. But I was sort of helping to recruit people, particularly using the chatbot.
Dillon St. Bernard 02:56
The idea of you doing that work, I think, really requires a digital team that is experimental. How do you think campaigns get there? Because I think, frankly, most campaigns are not even at the point of like good communications, much less good digital communications, much less like we’re gonna go on automation and chatbots. Like they’re not there. Did you have to do convincing? Was there a trust in you?
Gabriella Zutrau 03:17
I’ve worked with lots of nonprofits, lots of PACs, lots of campaigns, and I’ve kind of like helped push them in a direction where they’re posting at a muzzle velocity in order to consistently show up on their audiences’ feeds and build trust with them over time. But it is tough, and it takes an investment of energy, oftentimes an investment of money, and certainly an investment in time. Zohran’s team was already doing such amazing things on social media when I came in. I came in about halfway through the campaign, and they were they had already gone viral many times. They were building up to 100,000 followers at the time. It was actually when he posted the video of him confronting Tom Homan in Albany after the illegal abduction of Mahmoud Khalil, that I realized the account was about to experience this huge explosion in growth and engagement, and so I reached out to my old boss Julia Salazar, who is also a Democratic socialist who is still serving in the state legislature, but at the time was serving with Zohran in the state legislature, and I was like, “Hey, I gotta reach out to the comms team. Like, can you hook me up with the comms whoever’s running coms on this campaign? And she was like, “Sure. And so I texted the comms director, Andrew Epstein, and I was like, “Hey, like, I I have been using this technology that I know is what you’re looking for right now because I know what you’re asking yourself is the same thing all my clients ask themselves eventually, which is, yeah, it’s great that we’re building online. How do we get these people off of the internet? And sure enough, that was the question he was asking himself. I initially offered to like build it pro bono for them because I know it’s hard for people to experiment online to like know that their investment is going to mean something. So. I’m also like a terrible canvasser. I have a bad back and generally a horrible body, but like I can’t really walk around for a long time without being in a lot of pain. So I’ve never been a canvasser, but digital is always where I’ve felt like I could volunteer my time. So I was like, let me build this for you. I’ll set up a really basic infrastructure, and we’ll be able to set it and forget it, and you’ll never have to talk to me again if you don’t want to, and I’ll just hand it off to you. And they were like, “Sounds great”.
Dillon St. Bernard 05:29
There’s no losing.
Gabriella Zutrau 05:30
Yeah, I basically set up a situation where I was like, “There’s no losing. Like, we need to win this, so let’s get a better chance at doing that. So I set up a very basic infrastructure for them using ManyChat, where it was just like a few basic flows, and for anyone listening who has never heard of ManyChat or a social media chat bot, the way I usually describe it is like if you’ve ever seen a lifestyle influencer being like comment “Pilates” and I’ll send you my Pilates ebook so that you can have shredded abs by summer like me, and then everyone comments “Pilates” and then they automatically send you the link to the ebook. That automation is a chat bot at work, and how we were using it on the campaign, and how I had been pioneering using it with another client of mine for about a year and a half before I ever reached out to the campaign was, you know, asking people to sign sign petitions to come out to canvas to take a pledge to vote, rather than asking people to buy a keto ebook or protein powder. We were asking people to like participate in democracy in these low lift ways that were appropriate calls to action for people on social media. I would say if if this is a case study for how to push teams to experiment, it’s like make it really easy for them, and make it easy for them to imagine succeeding, and try to make it as cheap for them as possible. I hate to give the advice like you gotta do free work to prove things, but it’s certainly been true for me, and like it’s not advice I like to give, but it is advice that that has worked for me. Every every team is going to be different. Like Zohran is a guy who is like a generational talent of a communicator, right? Like he’s very special, and he’s also someone who’s been in front of a camera his entire life. He was great. He was a digital native and really understood how to show up on social media. So any like push that could have come his way, he was like very receptive to and ready to ready for, and his team was too. His team also was like made of experienced people who understood that experimenting was what needed to happen online to succeed, and they were just down, and they were down to hand the reins to the people best positioned to make the right choices online, and then let those people cook, and I think that is kind of what is unique to all of the best digital experiments and accounts that we have seen come out of the last few years. Whether that is like Kamala HQ or like Duolingo or whatever, like digital project you can imagine that has like had an impact. Even like you know, nothing great to say about Gavin Newsom, but like he hired some very talented digital people. The DNC, nothing great to say about the DNC either. But they also have hired some very talented social media people. You know, it really shows when that happens, and you trust them and you let the professionals cook and you don’t hamper them with like long, long, long sign-off processes that kill their creativity and don’t allow them to post and respond quickly enough to things. So that’s my long-winded answer. How do you push the teams? There’s, it depends on the team.
Dillon St. Bernard 08:40
Yeah, we’ve had conversation around the the consulting class. I mean, those are folks who really want, and I know you’ve talked about this too, around like they’re wanting to like do broadcasts so they can get the commission, and we’re wanting to do you know digital content that is organic and where people are. So I also think there’s a there’s a shift happening. I don’t know if it’s quick enough, but like if folks don’t shift, that means lost elections. That means those blue wave that folks dream of. Like I, I think that the stakes are pretty high, and I don’t think folks understand. Like this is what we’re talking about. Is like these, you know, a good digital has to match a good organizing program. Like you need you need both to win in this current state for most places.
Gabriella Zutrau 09:22
Yeah, and I think one of the big reasons that Zohran worked so well is that like he wasn’t just making TikToks. Like the press really wanted to call him the TikTok candidate, and they often did. They called him that, even though like everything that they did was optimized for Instagram. But that’s another tangent I could go on. The press really wanted him to be the TikTok candidate, but what made everyone call bullshit on that was the fact that they were getting their doors knocked by him. They were seeing his video every day, and then getting his door knocked by him the next day. So they were seeing him everywhere, and they could tell like this campaign was dead serious. They were showing up in the places where people scroll and consume content, but they were also on the ground, and that is like because Tasha Van Alken like ran an unbelievable historic field operation that just like knocked so many doors. Personally, I was canvassed like 10 different times, maybe at least. You have to be doing both, but there is also, of course, like this obsession among the consulting class and like the operative class to try to identify the one tactic that was the silver bullet that like made Zohran win or that’s like making James Talarico stand out or like what’s so appealing about AOC and like David Plouff wrote that that article being like every campaign needs to be a content studio now you know what is really appealing about these candidates that you’re naming that have great content? Like they also are running on unapologetic democratic socialist platforms, and
Dillon St. Bernard 10:47
people just leave that part out. Of course, yeah. They they they will
Gabriella Zutrau 10:50
blame anything but the policy that Zohran won on.
Dillon St. Bernard 10:54
Yeah,
Gabriella Zutrau 10:54
for his success.
Dillon St. Bernard 10:55
Yeah,
Gabriella Zutrau 10:56
and it’s embarrassing.
Dillon St. Bernard 10:56
Yeah, it’s not just one thing. And I think part of this too, to your point, is I think the the candidates because now I’m seeing the Zohran model try the kind of I’m walking or like the color grading and I’m like that alone isn’t gonna isn’t doing what you.
Gabriella Zutrau 11:12
I do want to shout out the fact that everyone gives Zohran credit for the walk and talk, and Chi Ossé was doing it for years before Zohran was, so let’s just shout out shout out Chi, like so talented, definitely invented that format or at least mastered it.
Dillon St. Bernard 11:30
So many of the candidates are now trying to take the best parts that they see and be like, I’m gonna apply it, and like surely that’s gonna like do it.
Gabriella Zutrau 11:38
And there are like far right candidates across the globe, particularly in France, that are also trying the Zohran model-we can call it-and like, yeah, I think what is is becoming apparent is that like the internet kind of catalyzes people’s understanding of you and reveals all. And what the corporate Dems are finding out is that when people like see them at scale, they’re seeing everything at scale. They’re seeing that they are beholden to their corporate donors at scale. So I feel like pairing this like highly public content studio campaign approach with someone who is like not authentic, and by not authentic I mean like is not running their own platform, is is beholden to their corporate donors. It’s not going to work as well. Like you you see someone like Gavin Newsom who has like developed a rabid fan base in part because of his social media presence. Like it’s worked in a way, but we also see everyone’s talking about how like his words don’t align with his actions. Everything that is Gavin Newsom is expanding for all of us to see because of his content machine and his actions. You know, but yeah, I think that we might be approaching a reality where we realize candidates whose words don’t align with their actions, or you know, aren’t aligned with what people really want, and kind of are only aligned with what their corporate donors want. We’re going to start to notice that, and those candidates might not be viable candidates anymore. If if we have to run campaigns as content studios, maybe a different kind of candidate is like gonna rise to the front as as the viable type of candidate now. Not just people who can raise, raise, raise, raise, but people who can inspire and move people, because they have built a durable trust with their audiences over time, with an always-on media ecosystem that allows them to talk to the people when they need to.
Dillon St. Bernard 13:54
Who or what are you looking at for like inspiration as you think about it? Because I think you’re even naming the ManyChat of it all, and I think to me part of this is like, I think generally, and I think if this is changing, I think folks like Zohran’s race, the work you did, I think is examples of like applying “non-political” tactics to politics. I think that’s important, but oftentimes like the political comms has often been uninspiring. I’m not like, oh my gosh, I mean, look at this for inspiration, but I’m curious, like, who are you, or what are you looking at for? Like, oh, that’s cool.
Gabriella Zutrau 14:23
Yeah, I mean, I’m looking at the same people I have always looked at. In 10 years of working in political social media, I have always taken inspiration from small businesses, from brands, and from content creators because all of those are entities that have their socials always on, and how well they’re doing on social media and on the internet is going to determine how much money they make, and they have to make money. So they have like a real incentive to figure out what works right now, and like that is what I work on for my clients, no matter who the client is, I am trying to help them do what works right now online. And what works right now, not going to be the same thing that worked last election cycle. But we’re all working out of like an election playbook from five or 10 years ago. The consulting class, as you mentioned, like thinks that we are still on Obama’s internet. We’re not on Obama’s internet anymore. We are on Trump’s internet. If you look to like the commercial sector, brands, corporations, and how they are using social media, how they’re using digital advertising, like they are dumping so much more money into digital ad spends than they are broadcast. Do you think there’s something we know that they don’t know about how to get people’s attention and how to move people? Because I don’t, and so like I’m always looking to particularly creators who have so much like agency over how their platforms are run. Creators are constantly in a mode of experimentation, and that’s what allows them to move so quickly with what works right now online.
Dillon St. Bernard 16:08
What would your message be to folks who are really thinking about a 2026 digital first playbook?
Gabriella Zutrau 16:13
The first thing that’s coming to mind is just that this is not cheap. This is expensive, and I don’t just mean expensive with money. If you don’t have the money, which a lot of small campaigns, like I’ve worked with so many small campaigns where you’re making zero to three hires, and it’s not realistic to like hire a digital team or even an agency. Like if you don’t have the money, it’s expensive in time and it’s expensive in energy. Like expect to invest in this and invest in it as soon as you can possibly imagine, as soon as you think you’re running for office, or as soon as you have an inkling of a campaign you want to run, if you’re an advocacy organization, you have to start. You have to start the account. You have to start posting. You have to start showing up in people’s feeds because the longer runway you give yourself, the more time you have to experiment and find out what works for you in particular, and then double down on what works and weed the garden on what doesn’t work for you. Everyone should just be using best practices for social media, but not every content format is going to make sense for you. Not every trend is something you should participate in. Promise, like
Dillon St. Bernard 17:22
We have to do it! I just get a- like, we have to!
Gabriella Zutrau 17:25
I don’t need you to hit a griddy. I’m sorry. I just don’t need that on my feed right now from my senator. I would say like start as early as you can and understand that like this is expensive for a good reason. A social media operation like the one that the Mamdani campaign had was not cheap. Like there were experienced people working on that, and experienced contractors and consultants working on that for a long time. And we have this issue, right, where the decision makers on campaigns and at organizations, think that like social media and digital is something that a young person should do. Someone who someone who’s close to the internet, which is only young people, by the way. Apparently, it’s only young people. I think I recently aged out of being a young person. I now have gray hair. Like this is yeah the the understanding is that like only young people could be close to the internet and therefore only a college aged girl intern should do this job and so we don’t have to pay them
Dillon St. Bernard 18:30
yeah
Gabriella Zutrau 18:30
um and working with experienced professionals like in any field it’s gonna cost you money. Like one of the reasons that we are not making this adjustment the corporate world and like brands are making this adjustment. Duolingo made headlines last year when they posted a social director for I think the salary was $352,000 a year, and like all of the big brands and not even huge brands are are catching up, and like that is a very highly paid job that they want to hire someone experienced for. But we’re not catching up in part because it’s a pink collar job and it’s like always been underpaid. But also, like we’re not investing in building out our new media infrastructure and our owned social operations because, like you said, we’ve got a consulting class of people who have just been like friends with the candidates for 20, 30, years, and they are pushing broadcast advertising as the be-all, end-all of contacting your constituents, and it’s not anymore. Social media is a place where a majority of Americans get their news. We have to admit that, but these consultants who stand to gain at least a 15% commission on every single dollar that’s spent on advertising keep pushing ads as as this incredible perfect way to contact everybody, and they have no financial incentive to push for an investment in your own social media, that may change. Like people might figure out how to charge more for that and figure out how to make that financially interesting to them. But I do think that that is a big reason why we have seen our organic operations just like criminally underinvested in for years, even though it’s been so obvious for so long that like the right is owning the narrative online. They’re dominating the culture online, and we have fallen so far behind because of a lack of investment. So, I’ve been calling on campaigns and organizations and committees to shift 15% of their paid media spending into their organic social operations and creator engagement, like we spend billions every election cycle on ads, billions with a B. If we had even 15% of that money going towards our new media ecosystem, can you imagine? Can you imagine just hundreds of millions of dollars flowing into tactics and people that we know actually resonate with the audiences we’re trying to reach, instead of like placing another goddamn TV ad?
Dillon St. Bernard 21:09
So, can you tell people more about the letter who assigned the letter? Is that the same? Yeah,
Gabriella Zutrau 21:12
yeah. I worked with a bunch of content creators, social media professionals, and new media figures to produce this letter called “The Letter from the Internet People”, addressed to the Democratic Party establishment and specific people in specific committees and also donors. Push them to invest more seriously in organic social media and creator engagement, and to shift that 15% from ads into over 170 people have signed it, hoping more people will jump on the bandwagon. And I do think we are seeing a shift. Like we published that letter in, I think January, and there has been so much chatter about investing in “campaigns as content studios”. And of course, like I do believe that we can be doing so, so, so much better on the internet, and I do think that the consequences of not making these investments are, like you said, are irrelevance and more fascism. I also think that it’s just one piece of the puzzle. Making sure your message goes out is so important, but if your message sucks and no one cares about it, like you’re just gonna reveal to people that they shouldn’t like you.
Dillon St. Bernard 22:28
Yeah, and the Democratic brand is also just in shambles. So it’s also like what we’re doing is not working, and I think it’s been interesting because I think post the most recent presidential election, I think folks were like, you know, maybe we should invest in creators. Maybe we should think about podcasts. So it’s been an interesting shift, but I think to your point, it’s about the the investment. Like I think this goes for like organizations who I think are, you know, at least investing in creator programs. I think the problem here is that we’re investing in that in, for election cycles. You know, most of the you know inquiries I get are like two or three months before the election. We’re like we you know we have we have some money available and we really want to stand up this program. I’m like okay, and then after election, it’s it’s done.
Gabriella Zutrau 23:12
We’re making the same mistakes all over again. We’re creating we’re we’re treating creators like they are ad campaigns, and you can’t- you can do a creator campaign, and you should, but you need to be investing over the course of a year. I have so many creator, like political creator friends, who in 2024 they made like 75 of the money they made in that year in October, and that’s ridiculous. And like, it also is bad when you’re working with algorithm-based feeds. Like the the content is not going to algorithmically register as relevant when this creator has never posted about abortion access ever before. But it’ll register if they’ve posted about it once a month for the last year, and they’ve developed an audience around it, and they have developed trust with that audience around that topic, and you know there’s only so much we can do about the fact that our our campaigns and election cycles are always going to be funded in cycles. Like we’re always going to see that hockey stick right at the end when people are freaked out that they might lose and they dump a bunch of money in, and I think that is that is a reason to like that’s a great thing to use ads for because ads are like one tactic that you can scale really really really quickly, but we can’t be spending on ads at the expense of everything else. Like, why are we planning to spend like so much money on ads in the final months, and while while the rest of our stuff starves year round, and I think we need to be thinking about creators in a very different way. Like they’re not just megaphones; they are political infrastructure in and of themselves. There are so many different ways to engage with them, like. A paid campaign is just one way that you could engage with a creator. You can also engage with them through giving them access to exclusive events and like giving them one-on-one time with a candidate, giving them backstage access at an event, bringing them to a dinner where they can schmooze and network with other creators and like people in the community. I don’t think that giving creators exclusive access is a tool that is like used enough by people in our industry, especially because like campaigns like often don’t have the money to to do creator campaigns. So try something else. I think it’s also okay to get volunteer time from creators, but I would never ever recommend that you approach a creator, and the first thing that comes out of your mouth is, “Hey, would you like to do some free work for us?” I think that really like has a risk of leaving a bad taste in people’s mouths. But like putting out a broad call to content creators to see if any of them like want to volunteer with your organization and seeing who raises their hand, people hitting you up in the DMs and asking what they can do, and you telling them like we really need this kind of content. Here’s a brief if if you are able to volunteer, great. But we’re really not thinking about them in this like sustainable year round always on way. And I think while they’re not press, many- some of them are press, but many creators are not press and shouldn’t be treated as press. But they should be treated as press as far as like people that you develop long term relationships with and give them access to certain things, ask them to cover certain things, and like yeah, just develop a trusting long-term relationship with specific creators because this is an ecosystem now. It’s not something that you can wait until the last minute when you need a favor to ask for something. You’ve got to be working on these like they’re relationships that you want to maintain after the election.
Dillon St. Bernard 26:56
Yeah, and I think the interesting thing about you as is what you kind of started with too is that you are both like a strategist and comms expert, digital comms expert, and then you’re also a creator. Creators,
Gabriella Zutrau 27:07
I’m the creator. She’s the influencer.
Dillon St. Bernard 27:09
Okay, I love the distinction. I think let’s talk a little bit around like your own creation journey, and also just like what you’ve learned in that piece too, because I think this this audience here is both a little bit of strategy, folks, and also some like creators who are like wanting to do kind of what you’re doing, which I think is like building a platform and leveraging it to talk about the issues you care about.
Gabriella Zutrau 27:30
Yeah, well, I mean, let’s run it back to 2016 when I like first got to New York City, and I had been doing a lot of like organizing in college, and I got to New York and I thought I was going to be a community organizer. Like that’s what I thought my job was going to be for the rest of my life. And I was in this community organizing fellowship that fall, and then Trump got elected, and suddenly everyone kind of expected anyone doing any movement work to be out in the streets all the time. I have a physical disability that made it really painful for me to like be out in the streets all the time. So that’s when I really gravitated towards comms and digital because I wanted to still be able to use this skill set I had developed, but like could just not physically be out there. And so I started like doing lots of freelancing along doing alongside doing childcare work for a couple years, and then randomly, my friend Julia Salazar ran for state senate of my district. She told me in 2018 she was like, “I’m running for state senate, and I was like, “Julia, what the fuck are you talking about? And she was like, “Yeah, I’m running for state senate, and she won, and she became my state senator, and I was like, “Will you please hire me? And she was like, Yeah. If we have a new media operation, I want you to run it. And that happened. I worked for her for a couple of years, and I was still pretty green at the time, but learning quickly through various gigs how to do the internet for politics. And then I was really burning out at the end of 2020 2021. Can’t imagine why I would have been burning out at that time.
Dillon St. Bernard 29:08
You and I both, yeah, I remember those.
Gabriella Zutrau 29:10
Just working for the government during the pandemic, exactly as bad as it sounds. And I was like also still freelancing and and like running or contributing to like 20 different social media accounts for elected officials and organizations, campaigns, and I was like, I got to finally get a dog. I was like, I need to get a dog, and I need to not put it on social media. It’s just for me, like none of anybody else’s business. This is not an internet project. And then I get like this dog. Like, do you see this dog? I I get this dog, and the people are like, wait, like, where is the Instagram? I’m like, fair enough. The people were correct. They called for it, and
Dillon St. Bernard 29:56
You’re listening to the people. That’s what you’re doing.
Gabriella Zutrau 29:58
That’s what I’m always doing. I was listening to the people, so then I started a social media presence for her, really just an Instagram account, and you know it was really just like for friends and family for fun for about a year, and then at about like a year point five, I think we had our first like viral video, and it started to take off, and then we hit 10k, and then we immediately hit 15k, and then eventually we had 20, 60, 100. Now we’re at like two something, and across Facebook and TikTok and Threads, all in all, we have like half a million followers. But eventually, it it just spiraled out of control, kind of. But as I was building it, I started to realize like, oh, like this is so much easier than running my own Instagram account because I was also doing a little bit of commercial modeling at the time, and I was like trying to upkeep my own Instagram in like this aesthetic way that was like very difficult and very humiliating. Like social media can be so humiliating, but with with the dog, I was like, oh, like this isn’t me. It’s not an elected official who I’m pretending to be on the internet, and it’s not an organization who I need to write on behalf of. Like I actually get to do anything I want with this account, and so it just became this like place of extreme experimentation when I realized that, and when it got big enough that like the metrics, like were statistically significant, like actually meant something to me. I was working on big accounts, like I was working on pages that had hundreds of 1000s, millions of followers. Finally, like finally, I had my own where I could do whatever I wanted.
Dillon St. Bernard 31:33
Yeah,
Gabriella Zutrau 31:33
and I will really, really say that you know I’ve worked on so many incredible social media properties over the years. Nothing has taught me more than running her page, and you know I read all the blogs, I go to the conferences. Nothing has taught me more and continues to teach me more than running her page every day because I have so much freedom to do whatever I want, no sign off. She also gets to like, unlike human accounts, she gets to truly say whatever she wants. Like she can just say just stuff that’s total. No one, no one expects any journalistic integrity of her. So you know we have like this bit where she goes like breaking news, and then she says something that is like quintessentially not breaking news. Like it just doesn’t matter, and so like the sky’s the limit. And I truly recommend anybody who wants to get great at social media to like have a personal social media practice, so that you never lose touch with the apps and the interfaces. Typically, people start with like doing execution, lots of button pressing, copywriting, and then they like become strategists and kind of lose touch with the day to day. If you do that, you are going to lose touch with what works. And if you have your own personal practice, you’ll never lose touch, and you’ll always have your literal finger on the pulse of what is working on socials. And I think like even when you are comms and digital director on something, I’m sure you’ve had this experience. You want to experiment, and you do, and you can push for what you want to try to do with your bosses. And sometimes great bosses will be like, “Go off, like do it”. But it’s still how you make a living. There’s still this intense power dynamic and a fear of messing it all up or putting your job at risk if you do something wrong or you make a misstep, there’s a reason people don’t experiment online because it is risky. I feel like a lot of the principals are afraid, and with good reason. I don’t want to be like, ah, the candidates are just so scared for no good reason. It’s like it’s for great reason. It’s very scary. The internet is forever, but what’s interesting about the internet now is that the attention, all of our attention spans have shifted so hard that like the internet is forever, but no one’s gonna care tomorrow. Like you can mess up really big today, and like the attention, the content is just gonna churn. So you just gotta keep trying stuff. You know, don’t mess up hugely. You can afford to make missteps. You can afford to try things. You can certainly afford to have posts flop again and again and again and again. You’re just trying stuff, like, and you. It’s not that you need to not be scared. It’s that you need to be courageous.
Dillon St. Bernard 34:12
Yeah,
Gabriella Zutrau 34:13
not to not to like use such a strong word, but it’s like you need to post and have faith that like this is going to work and build trust with your audience, even if you are scared. You have to do it anyways.
Dillon St. Bernard 34:26
And I also think that’s part of the hardest thing for principals who like run for office. And often I work with very like grassroots, you know, former organizers who are like, “I’m just like deep in the work”. But I’m like, if nobody knows you’re deep in the work, that- they’re they’re not going to vote for you. They don’t. Folks don’t care. Folks need to see you doing, and it’s a really hard pitch. But it’s like again, it’s it’s a must-have. It’s not an optional thing.
Gabriella Zutrau 34:49
Totally, and that’s something that Zohran is getting so right. Mayor Mamdani, excuse me, is getting so right in his first term in office. He’s showing everybody what is going on at City Hall, but to your point on the yap videos, I agree. I just gave a training at Netroots called “How to Have Great Social Media Even If Your Candidate Is Boring”, and
Dillon St. Bernard 35:12
I love that.
Gabriella Zutrau 35:13
It was well attended. I’m sure one of the biggest things that I said, and I was like, “If you take nothing else away from this, take this away. Is that you have to be doing direct to camera work, and if your candidate doesn’t know how to do it, they need to be coached because not knowing how to do direct to camera right now is not an option. And you know, I still hear a lot of candidates and principals being like, “Yeah, I know social media is important, but I just I don’t really I don’t really do social media. I don’t really do that.” It’s like
Dillon St. Bernard 35:47
“I don’t do politics.”
Gabriella Zutrau 35:49
Fellas, like that’s so embarrassing, and it would be like the equivalent of somebody being like, “I am gonna run for office, but just I don’t really do public speaking. I just I don’t really do it,” and it’s like, well, guess what? You better fucking learn if you want to run for office. You better learn. I’m sounding kind of harsh. I’m a person of great hyperbole, but it is hard, and it is scary, and it is humiliating, and it’s so cringe feeling and it’s tough, but like start small. If I had one tip for people trying to do direct to camera and like learn how to do it, it starts small. Don’t do like a three minute long yap video. Like come up with something that is quick, a soundbite that you can say direct to camera. Try it. Keep trying it. And then, if you want to get really good at feeling authentic in a direct-to-camera video, this is my big tip: is literally you need to block out 15 minutes a day, lock yourself in your car or whatever private space you have, hit record, and let your freak flag fly, and just talk about anything you’re passionate about, even if it has nothing to do with the campaign. Even if it’s like not usable content, get used to talking to your phone, like you’re Facetiming with your best friend, and then get used to posting that stuff on social media in little tiny bits or like in longer edits, and just like cut out the dead space, cut out the stuff you don’t want in there, but develop that skill. Yeah, you need it. And one last thing is, I would really advise my friend Josh Clemens, who’s like a longtime digital strategist.
Dillon St. Bernard 37:34
Look at his tools, his free tools.
Gabriella Zutrau 37:35
Yes, he has a free tools newsletter, but he also just coined this term, “bedrock digital advertising”, the bedrock method of digital advertising, and it basically is when you put a slow drip of money behind your best organic content. So you take whatever is performing well for you, and you do this over the course of the year. You’re not just dumping this in like a last minute ad spend. You are at all times putting a little bit of money behind your content, like taking those videos and then running them as targeted ads to voters in your district. Because even if you’re not breaking through, because you’re not so compelling on camera yet, or you’re not, you you haven’t quite figured out what the issues are that are going to get people’s attention and hook them in. Money can break through and make sure that you land on people’s feeds every day that you are running for office. So that’s his big tip, and I fully endorse it, especially because you know Zohran had this generational talent of a communicator as as the principal. He had 13 months of runway to figure out what worked, throw stuff at the wall, see what stuck, and get it right. And like he had New York City’s matching funds program, which means a bunch of money to spend on the right things. And if you are lacking in money, generational talent of a communicator, or time, you might not have as much luck breaking through and really getting to your audience and showing up on people’s feeds every single day organically, but a little bit of spend can help you do that.
Dillon St. Bernard 39:12
I’m also seeing like we just invest a little bit of the money that was going into I don’t know the random expenses that campaigns have. I’m like, oh man, let’s just try 1000. Let’s give give me 1000.
Gabriella Zutrau 39:25
Yes. He tells this story that he was like doing digital for a like maybe an alderman rate, like something very small, where like the the the population that needed to see him and know him was pretty small, but they spent I believe 200 bucks in two weeks. It might have been 50. It was between 50 and $200 in two weeks. And within two weeks of starting to spend that money, slow dripping it out with paid on their best performing content, they were knocking doors, and like everyone was like, “Oh yeah, I recognize you from Facebook.
Dillon St. Bernard 39:58
Mhm
Gabriella Zutrau 39:58
It it takes almost no money. Just break through a little bit. Keep showing up on people’s feeds so they recognize you. They know your name. They know your face, and like they’re ready for when you come and hit their door.
Dillon St. Bernard 40:09
We’re now, recording this, and this will be out in July. Okay. You know we’re full steam ahead to elections, and folks are hoping for this massive blue wave. What? Any other final thoughts for folks as they kind of plan out their next few months?
Gabriella Zutrau 40:24
This is all replicable. People are always asking me, “Yeah, Zohran Mamdani’s great, but is this actually replicable if you don’t have Zohran Mamdani?” And of course it is. Of course it is, and it’s just a matter of working with what you do have. Most people are probably not going to replicate the absolute explosion of a campaign that he had because you might be missing one of those three ingredients I just mentioned: time, the communicator, or the money. The truth is that the Mamdani campaign didn’t invent very much stuff. They were doing best practices that we already knew worked, and they were doing them all. They were doing an amazing job, but they didn’t invent very much stuff. And this is all like available as as things we already know. The other panel that I did at Netroots was with Josh Clemens, who I just mentioned, and Anat Shenker Osorio, who is like this giant in political communications, and she talks about this theory of messaging that she calls magnetism. That’s her theory, where she talks about how like we need to be putting a stake in the ground about what we believe using simple, repeatable messaging, so that our messages get to our base and our base spreads them for us. We’re going to really attract and excite our base and the people who they know, and we’re going to really repel, like a magnet would, our opposition. We don’t want to please the neo Nazis. We don’t want them. We don’t need to convince them. We need to stop trying to court this non-existent center Republican voter who could come to our side and understand that, like, we are not winning because we are not exciting our base because most of our politicians are beholden to their corporate donors, and they are not saying the things that people want to hear, and they’re not doing the things that people want them to do. And if we can get our base excited again, they will convince the middle. They will bring people over. But as long as we’re not exciting people, we won’t have anything.
Dillon St. Bernard 42:40
Gabi and Edna, thank you for joining us on Create for Change.
Gabriella Zutrau 42:43
Thanks for having us.