A Smaller Community, Really Dialed In

Matt opens the week with a Deloitte finding that reinforces the thread he keeps pulling: among people who follow creators, trust translates directly into buying. Per Deloitte’s 2026 Digital Media Trends research, a large share engage with creators daily, most return to the same ones over time, and a majority have bought something on a creator’s recommendation in the last six months, with the number climbing among Gen Z and millennials. Nearly half of those younger consumers say they feel a stronger personal connection to social creators than to TV personalities or actors. Deloitte’s own takeaway for brands is to move away from one-off celebrity campaigns toward long-term creator relationships built on audience fit and trust rather than raw follower counts. Matt’s honest about what he still wants to know (what share of all consumers this actually represents, and that it’s consumer data, not directly B2B), and that caution is the point. The heart of it is a mindset shift. It’s easy, especially on a platform like LinkedIn, to think success is a big follower number, but Matt’s met people with massive counts doing nothing with them, numbers collected over years of pivots. The real question is whether you have a group who will actually respond to what you put out, what you recommend, offer, and invite. He also warns against measuring yourself against professional platform creators whose entire existence is producing content that performs on that platform. If your core business is in another field, you won’t out-post them, and you shouldn’t try. Set your own metrics, do what you can do authentically and well, and stay in your sweet spot. Underneath it all is a principle that ties back to the old email-list playbook: build a following, ideally a real community, that trusts you over time. He’d take a smaller community that’s genuinely dialed in over a big one that’s just a number, any day. The catch is that everyone now has the same chance, so there’s noise everywhere. Be in it for the long haul, figure out what works for you, and stick with it. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit mattstone.substack.com