TRAACKR

It’s that time again! The Traackr team is excited to highlight the Influencer of the Month for the “ho-ho” holiday month of December. Read on!

Who is Anthony Padilla?

Most 22-year-olds are finishing up college and getting ready to enter the grueling work world of 9-5 jobs, but not Anthony. Instead, he has led the path of the new celebrity in entertainment – YouTube Celebrities. Ask most tweens, teens and even 20-something’s and they will probably know of Anthony’s humorous antics and good looks from his comedy duo YouTube channel, Smosh, which he co-creates with childhood friend Ian Hecox.

We first spotted Anthony in his number one influencer spot on our teen male influencers list. Since then, we have been amazed by his dedication to the online space and his communities, his clever comedy skits – one of which was awarded YouTube’s Best Comedy Award in 2006 – and his keen sense of knowing exactly what it takes to become an online super star.

Since Smosh’s beginning in 2005, it has become the third most subscribed to YouTube channel and continues to rise in popularity among the younger generations. It was this popularity that landed the duo among YouTube’s initial participants in their partnership revenue-sharing program in 2007. Interestingly enough, one of the revenue generating agreements that came out of the program was a sponsorship deal with Live Video – one of YouTube’s competitors. It’s not everyday you can say you got paid by one of your host’s competitors with everyone in agreement!

In addition to the more than 1 million subscribers on YouTube and almost 300 million views of their videos (that’s right 300,000,000 views!), Smosh has large amounts of followers among their multiple social media platforms, some of which include more than 45,000 followers on Twitter and more than 150,000 friends on MySpace. Anthony and Ian have even been business saavy enough to build what some might call an empire with the Smosh name, including t-shirts, posters, gift cards, games and contests.

Most importantly, however, is that aside from the Smosh name, Anthony has done very well with his own name by creating a fan base that is happy to follow his funny attitude and charming smile anywhere he pops up. Proof is in the numbers – he has been able to accumulate over 30,000 followers on Twitter, over 2,700 fans on Facebook and over 1,300 subscribers on his personal YouTube channel.

It is the amazing reach Anthony has throughout multiple major social media platforms-whether it is through his own name or Smosh’s-that got him a spot as our December influencer. At only 22 years old, Anthony demonstrates the true epitome of the power of online influencers and possibly even the future of the entertainment industry.

Fast Company (soap box)

We read through this month’s Fast Company cover story, “Mr. Social: Ashton Kutcher Plans to Be the Next New-Media Mogul” and felt the need to discuss it. And after having read through a summary of the impact Anthony Padilla has had on the online space for a number of years, we think you might feel the same way. So please, join us on our soap box.

We just couldn’t help but notice that many of the things Fast Company said Ashton is “leading the way for” are many things influencers like Anthony have already accomplished. For instance, Ashton has been filming a mini-series that he hopes will evolve into a go-to source for brands to spread their message through influencer marketing. Well, the Smosh channel is filled with sponsored episodes that reach more than one million viewers. These are numbers that would have late night show hosts crying in joy over.  The fact of the matter is that Anthony has been doing many of these “new media mogul” things for years, and he shows no signs of slowing down. We believe the integration of new media and entertainment is already here and it began with influencers like Anthony – it didn’t begin and will not end with Ashton. So, can we get Anthony and maybe even his comedy duo, Ian, on the cover of Fast Company stat?

Ok, we’ll step off our soap box now.

Last month we decided to start an Influencer of the Month feature on our blog.  Then, of course things got crazy around here and we didn’t have time to release our Influencer of the Month for October as planned.  So, we’re going to do it now — in the middle of November.

A bit late on our end, for which we apologize.  We will definitely get them out on time in the future (last Friday of every month).  However, please do not allow our tardiness to devalue the talent of our Influencer for October: Brett McKay.

Who is Brett McKay?

We had no idea until he showed up on one of our recent Authority Lists for online DIY influencers. Brett appeared on the list because of his work on his primary blog —  The Art of Manliness (apx 150k monthly unique visitors).  Brett’s blog is a smart, fun portal for all things Man-ly.  He’s done a tremendous job building a brand around the Art of Manliness — as well as a loyal audience.  He furthers his work on his blog through two twitter accounts, @brettmckay (1,500+ followers, 700+ re-tweets) and @artofmanliness (5,800 followers, 1,100+ re-tweets); a YouTube channel; two Facebook pages, his (631 friends) & Art of Manliness (7,800+ friends); LinkedIn; and a StumbledUpon account.

One of the reasons why we’ve selected Brett this month is for his skills and use of multiple social media tools/platforms.  That is important for any influencer we consider.

Another reason we like Brett is because he is in the midst of translating his online success to additional offline success with the release of his first book – The Art of Manliness (what else?).  From all accounts the book is doing well.  For us at Traackr, this is a very exciting trend that we continue to see…and celebrate.  More and more, people are building their brands online, through social media, and creating value, enterprises…empires offline.  Brett is one of the early ones and we’re very happy to see it happen!

With all that said, the real reason we chose Brett for our Influencer of the Month for October is that the Art of Manliness wasn’t his first successful online endeavor.  Not at all.  While a law student at the University of Tulsa, Brett started and built a very successful blog, The Frugal Law Student, which was named the top student blog by the ABA Journal in ‘07.  This is what we call a true online talent.

Our decision to select Brett as our Influencer for this month is not really about his current online endeavor and success.  We’ve selected him because he personifies one of Traackr’s fundamental beliefs in this whole new world — the idea that the individuals who generate influence online are talented people.  The content they create is very much secondary to that.  It doesn’t matter if they are talking about Ramen noodles or straight razors, knitting patterns or new marketing strategies.  It’s the person doing the talking which is where the influence is derived.  It’s why we started Traackr.  Brett (and many others) is proving our point with every post…

Thanks and congratulations to Brett McKay for being named Traackr’s Influencer of the Month for October!

DS

*by the way, here’s a good post from Chris Brogan (Content is Not King) which helps illustrate this last point.  The comments for this post are great as well…

Our team has been so busy lately that we needed a good motivation to spend the time articulating our thinking on the theoretical framework behind Traackr.

We found this reason to step back from the day-to-day craziness and think about our work after being invited to speak at Pecha Kucha 11 in Boston.

I personnally love Pecha Kucha in all its aspects: 1- the format of the presentations is extremely constraining (20 slides 20s per slide) and forces presenters to be very articulate and clear on the ideas they want to communicate. 2- the brief is “no business pitch” which brings a tremendous variety in the interventions and forces businesses to think about the value of what they do to the community.

Tonight’s talk will be the first brick of many to come for Traackr to articulate its theoretical framework and how we see ourselves: Traackr is an agent of a marketing revolution leading to the emergence of collaborative marketing.

What the hell am I talking about? Come to Mantra tonight to attend Pecha Kucha  and you’ll know!