What Makes AI Influencers Credible

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Ready for another day of staying ahead of the competition in the Growth race?

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In Partnership with SurveyMonkey

Make the Next Decision With Real Feedback 

You need to know why customers aren’t buying. But commissioning research takes budget, and running it yourself adds work to a team already chasing targets.

SurveyMonkey does the research work for you. You choose what to test and who to reach. It recruits respondents through its paid panel and analyzes their answers, giving you findings to guide your next decision.

Here’s what that looks like:

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Put your next product idea or pricing decision through customer research. You’ll have evidence to decide what needs changing before committing to the rollout.

💡 AI Influencers Perform Better When They Look Social

AI influencers can attract attention, but they still face a trust problem.

New research suggests one simple change can make them more effective: show them interacting with real people.

Here’s what the data shows.

1️⃣ Social Interaction Drives More Engagement: An analysis of more than 9,500 AI influencer posts found that only 15% showed the influencer interacting with someone else.

Those that did received 20.7% more engagement and roughly 290 additional likes or comments on average.

2️⃣ Real Humans Increase Product Interest: People were up to 17.5% more likely to choose a product promoted by an AI influencer when the post showed a genuine interaction with a real person.

Simply placing a human next to the AI character was not enough.

3️⃣ The Effect Is Stronger For Less Human-Looking Characters: The boost was even greater for AI influencers that looked more obviously artificial, such as anime-style characters.

The more artificial the influencer appears, the more valuable human interaction may become.

4️⃣ AI-On-AI Interaction Doesn’t Work: The effect disappeared when the AI influencer interacted with another artificial character.

That suggests the trust boost comes specifically from visible human connection.

5️⃣ Use Human Context To Build Credibility: Show AI influencers doing recognizably human things: shopping with someone, exercising together, making coffee, or sharing an activity.

The goal is to make the interaction feel social, not staged.

Why It Works

People know AI influencers can’t genuinely experience products.

Human interaction makes them feel more relatable and helps close some of that authenticity gap.

The Takeaway

Don’t make AI influencers look more perfect.

Make them look more social.

Real human interaction can increase engagement, trust, and purchase interest.

💡 Use Claude To Find The Few Actions That Matter Most

Most goals don’t require more tasks.

They require identifying the small number of actions that create most of the progress.

Here’s how to do it.

1️⃣ Create A Project Around One Goal: Open Claude Projects and choose one area you want to improve.

Keep the focus narrow so Claude can evaluate what actually moves the goal forward.

2️⃣ Connect Your Calendar: Add your calendar through Connectors so Claude can see how your time is currently being spent.

This gives it a more realistic view of your routines, commitments, and available capacity.

3️⃣ Add The Right Context: Include your goal, current routine, recent progress, time available, budget, and any important constraints.

The better the context, the more useful the prioritization becomes.

4️⃣ Ask Claude To Apply The 80/20 Rule: Have Claude identify the three to five actions most likely to create outsized progress.

Ask it to rank them based on impact, effort, and speed to results, while also showing what should be deprioritized.

5️⃣ Turn Priorities Into A Weekly Plan: Convert the highest-leverage actions into measurable weekly targets.

At the end of each week, add what worked, what didn’t, and where you got stuck. Then ask Claude to re-rank the priorities for the next week.

Why It Works

The 80/20 principle helps reduce busywork and shift attention toward actions with disproportionate impact.

Claude makes the process more practical by combining your goals, schedule, constraints, and recent results.

The Takeaway

Don’t optimize everything.

Identify the few actions creating the most progress, remove lower-value work, and keep refining the priorities based on real results.

As we prepare more "Growthful" content, we'd love to hear your thoughts on today's edition! Feel free to share this with someone who would appreciate it. 🥰