Your Digital Marketing Coach with Neal Schaffer

What is The Creator Economy, and What Is Its Relationship to Influencer Marketing?

December 27, 2021 Neal Schaffer Episode 241
Your Digital Marketing Coach with Neal Schaffer
What is The Creator Economy, and What Is Its Relationship to Influencer Marketing?
Show Notes Transcript

While many still cringe at the term "influencer marketing," something that has surpassed that buzzword of late is the "creator economy."

So what exactly is the creator economy, its relationship to influencer marketing, and how it can be leveraged by both business and, of course, creators?

Listen in to understand the historical perspective of the creator economy, and how the pendulum is swinging more in the favor of creators in this Age of Influence.

Key Highlights

[05:16] The Creator Economy And Its Relationship To Influencer Marketing

[07:19] The Golden Era Of Influencer Marketing

[10:19] How Content Creators Leverage Advertisements As Main Revenue Sources

[10:34] Other Revenue Sources That Content Creators Have

[11:34] Social Media Networks As Potential Revenue Source

[13:55] What Does Creator Economy Mean For Influencer Marketers?

[15:20] How Creator Economy Brings Transparency and Authenticity In Influencer Marketing

[16:37] Start Creating Content Now!

[17:46] Summary

Notable Quotes

  • You cannot become an online influencer without publishing online content, they go hand in hand. So being a content creator has always been a necessity to yielding influence online. But not all content creators necessarily become influencers.
  • For the first time social networks are actually paying creators to create content, knowing that it is the content and the influence is creating that content that users trust that keeps people coming back to the site.
  • I would argue that we're seeing an even greater democratization of online influence. And simply put, there are more content creators influencing more people than ever before.
  • For the first time social networks are actually paying creators to create content, knowing that it is the content and the influence is creating that content that users trust that keeps people coming back to the site. 
  • Content creators prove that they are the only ones who can truly set the trend for what social media users, ie all of us, end up consuming.
  • The most successful relationships are going to be long term, collaborative, and mutual Win-Win.
  • With the democratization of online influence and digital content creation, we can say with certainty that the Creator economy is here to stay. And as a byproduct, it actually will only strengthen the role of influencer marketing, with additional options for marketers, and access to content that continues to build trust and generate results.

Learn More:

Neal Schaffer:

Hey everyone. Hopefully you enjoyed this week's interview with Lauren Schwartz, founder of the loft three to five. If you haven't listened to it yet, make sure you listen and not only learn why video ads in social convert better than anything else, but really tips and tricks and everything you need to know about paid social media today in 2022 Lauren has been incredibly kind enough to offer listeners of the your digital marketing coach podcast, a free one hour creative strategy consultation on branding and ad creative, incredible offer totally free Lauren's cool member she word the Nirvana shirt, just email Lauren at Lauren at the loft three to five.com l au arienne at the loft th e ello. F T the numbers 325 dot com to set up your call. You need to make sure you add in quotes Neil podcast to the subject line remember I am the real Neil that's any al add Neil podcast to the subject line once again. That's Liu arienne at the loft three to five one word.com And make sure you include Neil podcast in the subject line. The Creator economy. This is one of these buzzwords that I don't think existed a year ago. It's come out of nowhere but actually it's based on a lot of things that are deeply related to influencer marketing. I want to go through what those things are and give you advice whether you are a content creator slash influencer or you are a marketer slash business owner as to how to take advantage of the Creator economy on this next episode of The your digital marketing coach, podcast. Digital social media content influencer marketing blogging, podcasting, blogging, tick tocking, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, SEO, SEM PPC, email marketing, whew. There's a lot to cover. Whether you're a marketing professional entrepreneur, or business owner, you need someone you can rely on for expert advice. Good thing you've got Neil on your side, because Neal Schaffer is your digital digital marketing marketing coach. helping you grow your business with digital first marketing one episode at a time. This is your digital marketing coach, and this is Neal Schaffer. Hey, everybody. Neal Schaffer here. Welcome to episode number 241 of the your digital marketing coach podcast. We are nearing the end of the year ends of yours are always a little special for me because I am a Sagittarius boy. So I did celebrate my birthday recently. And well, if you follow me on Instagram you would have already seen but I treated myself to a special birthday present. I got the latest 2021 MacBook Pro with the M one pro chipset for all of you tech nerds out there. And I'm really excited. But for those of you that don't know, I record these solo episodes, I have a Rode Podcaster microphone, which I highly recommend. It's one of those niche microphones that are hard to find on Amazon. Sometimes they're out of stock, but I really love it. I can't thank my podcast editor Becky enough for the recommendation. But now on this new MacBook Pro it says that GarageBand where I record the episode is optimized for MacBook Pro and it says quote unquote, experience workstation class performance with optimizations for M one Pro and M one maximum new MacBook Pro. Let me know if this sounds fundamentally better. Or if it still sounds the same because it still sounds the same Well, you probably don't need to buy an M one MacBook Pro yourself but I'm really excited to have the reasons why I wanted this new MacBook Pro. Number one is that it does have a high def internal video camera. So I don't need to use an external video camera going forward. On my digital first mastermind it was Ted Schachter going to give him a shout out he was the one who showed me the performance of his new M one MacBook Pro and it was amazing the video it was even better than those Logitech cameras a lot of people externally are adding or attaching to their computers. The other one is the internal microphone is actually really good. Now I invested in this Rode Podcaster so it ain't going anywhere. But when I am away or you know traveling, what have you the internal microphone, I literally sent an audio recording of Ted in our mastermind over zoom to my editor who who was pleasantly surprised by how high quality the performance or how high quality that internal microphone of the new MacBook Pros are. So just something to think about for me, you know life. Simple is best. And I just want to simplify things. So one less to less external things to plug in. I am a happy camper and now When I'm away, like when I was in Japan, I was carrying an external video camera, I was carrying an external mic. I won't need to carry those things and still feel confident that I could record or livestream or zoom out high quality. Okay, this is not a technology podcast. I know. That's not why you're here. So let's get into today's topic of the crater economy and its relationship to influencer marketing. There are a few podcasts that I listened to where this, this keyword seems to come up a lot, including in my RSS feeds when I look at new blog posts, so there's a lot of buzz right now. And it's almost like this crater economy is something new. I'm going to argue with you that there's really nothing new about it. But I think by looking at some trends and some history, you're going to get a better feel as to what it is and most importantly, how to leverage it because this podcast is all about giving you actionable advice. So for those of you read the age of influence, and have read my blog posts over at Neal schaffer.com content, you know that I say that you cannot become an online influencer without publishing online content, they go hand in hand. Therefore, from my perspective, being a content creator has always been a necessity to yielding influence online. But not all content creators necessarily become influencers hope that makes sense. So why all of the buzz all the sudden about this quote unquote, critter economy? Now, we're gonna do a little history class today, because the original content creators and I'm talking about the original digital content creators, crater economy content creator, right, you see the link there, the original digital content creators, were bloggers, mommy bloggers, talked about them a decade ago, YouTubers, although early YouTubers really weren't as successful until they got into gaming. And we saw a bunch of really famous YouTube influencers come from gaming over the last several years. And podcasters we've been around for a long time. I mean, look at Pat Flynn. Case in point, then came Instagramers. So you didn't have to create this long form content in order to yield influence. And we saw Instagram. I mean, you could argue Snapchat before Instagram, but we really saw Instagram, its people through photos primarily, although there were some videos and live stream. And that's really where we entered this golden era of influencer marketing because that is where brands realize that they could tap into social media users on Instagram who had a lot of influence. And really, that's where we saw influencer marketing budgets really skyrocket for lack of a better word over the last two to three years. And now we have Tik Tok, which is bringing this and content creators in what we call the crater economy to a whole new level, just as Snapchat for those that remember introduced the account takeover, right, it's unheard of, for brands to give away access of their account to a third party. But really Snapchat was the first instance where I believe this happened primarily because brands couldn't figure it out. And I think we have something similar with tick tock but tick tock has created as you know, a brand new way of content creation, that is literally the envy of other social networks who are trying to compete with them. And most importantly, we saw it with the account takeovers in Snapchat, it makes it even harder for brands to compete with organic content in terms of its creativity and rawness. We also saw Tik Tok become the first platform to have their own sponsored marketplace for content creators influencers to generate business through brand collaborations. Basically, tick tock has their own influencer marketplace, I'll be sure to put the link to that. In the show notes. I do have clients that are working with influencers directly on that marketplace, bypassing any influencer marketing tool, any influencer marketing agency, for better or worse that that is a topic of an entirely different podcast episode that I will have in the future. And then today, literally today is when it was announced, according to one data point, but it's a pretty significant data point coming from the really smart folks over at CloudFlare, who manage a great amount of the web traffic. That tick tock surpassed Google in 2021. In terms of website traffic, it is clear who yields power today. It is the content creator. And Case in point for the first time social networks are actually paying creators to create content, knowing that it is the content and the influence is creating that content that users trust that keeps people coming back to the site. You know, Facebook did well for a while because your friends would keep coming back to the site. We're all over the place. Now. That's not necessarily the case. And the content in Facebook is all over the place as well. tic tock has really brought all of this to a whole new level, and the value of content creators to a whole new level as well. And therefore it almost does become its own mini economy. Now, let's look at it now. I looked at it from like the social network and the marketing side, let's look at it from the content creator side. So on the other hand content creators, and just once again, roll back the clock 10 years, usually started out leveraging advertising as a main revenue source. This could be Google AdSense, obviously, there's other advertising platforms like adthrive, etc. We also have YouTube once you qualify of being able to advertise through YouTube ads as well. And then there was usually a shift to affiliate marketing and I mentioned Pat Flynn again, who became very, very famous for that. And now over the last few years, brand collaborations, better known as influencer marketing have become a staple of revenue for content creators. It's funny because the emergence of Instagram influencer marketing is when we started talking more about the term influencer marketing, but it's actually been happening on YouTube for quite some time. They just call it brand collaborations, brand partnerships. They never really use the term influencer marketing, but it has been going on there for as long if not longer than it's been going on as Instagram. So these are the revenue sources that content creators have. And you can imagine how influencer marketing has only as influencer marketing budgets have increased that's become a bigger amount of money for content creators, but now we can add social networks as another potential revenue source. I liked an Instagram yesterday, hey, do you want rewards for sharing reels it's like every month they're asking me to share reels and they're rewarding me if I get a lot of views on those reels, right. And other networks are doing something similar. They have these crater funds, YouTube shorts, Tik Tok, what have you for sharing content? But now, and I think this is one of the effects that Coronavirus has had, I would argue that we're seeing an even greater democratization of online influence. And simply put, there are more content creators influencing more people than ever before. Combine this with the fact that it's easier than ever for content creators to create their own product, whether it's a hardware product, like clothing, like Teespring, or you know, I referenced Pat Flynn, sorry for referencing so much in this episode, but you know, he has his own little tripod, why does the name switch pod I did the name escapes me there. You know, it could be a hardware product that you outsource and you sell. But it could be a software service, right like think digital education, think of courses. It could even be an online membership community, something that I've started with my digital first mastermind. And now we have an additional revenue source, where there are platforms out there, like the teachables the think effects for courses, you know, Podio we have platforms like circle for membership community, we have, you know, great platforms, I've become a really big fan of milotree easy payments going to give them a shout out because I'm planning to launch my first workshop using their platform. I'll try to have links to all these in the show notes. But it is easier than ever, for content creators to add their own product to productize their own IP. And this additional revenue source is the most scalable, and potentially, therefore the most profitable. So you can now see the increased influence the content creators have to the point where it is so big and directly impacting the growth of social networks. As we see the Tick Tock that we now have the term the crater economy. So influencer marketing therefore is a subset of the Creator economy, but still an important one. For both brands and content creators. In fact, it's become increasingly important for brands, whereas for content creators, it may not be as important as it used to be because of all these other avenues that they can gain revenue from their content creation. So what does this mean for influencer marketers more for digital social media marketers? I believe that content creators now have the upper hand in the brand influencer relationship with every new social network, content format, and trending Tik Tok video that launches a new type of content that everybody wants to emulate. Content creators prove that they are the only ones who can truly set the trend for what social media users, ie all of us, end up consuming. This is a truly remarkable transformation of events. It brings the influence of social media to a higher and higher level, especially with younger and younger demographics. So I believe the crater economy has become so big that influencers can now be a little bit more selective as to the brands they work with. And therefore I believe brands need to be a little bit more cooperative, and truly collaborative with the influencers they work with in order to maintain In a successful relationship, I've always said, the most successful relationships are going to be long term, collaborative, mutual Win Win, this only becomes more and more important, because craters, simply put, have more influence and have more options than they used to just two years ago, when I wrote the age of influence. So an interesting thing that's also happened, though, is in many ways, the crater economy also begins to level the playing field and bring more transparency and authenticity. Without the fake followers to influencer marketing. After all, influencers are now more and more being judged by their content, not necessarily their current follower count, or even engagement, which are still being looked out without doubt. But it's not the singular focus like it used to be. Now, if you're a content creator, this is all great news, right? Follow your passion and create. And if your company is now on the sidelines about influencer marketing, or the growth of what we call the crater economy, should only give you more opportunities to find that specific content creator, that is the perfect fit for your business. The crater economy is the latest trend in the age of influence. With the democratization of online influence and digital content creation, we can say with certainty that the Creator economy is here to stay. And as a byproduct, it actually will only strengthen the role of influencer marketing, with additional options for marketers, and access to content that continues to build trust and generate results. If you're on the sidelines, start now, whether you are an entrepreneur that wants to leverage social for your business, start creating content become part of this greater economy, where you cash in, not on your personal brand. But what it leads the business that that personal brand leads to. And if you are a business, you need to get started doing this, you're just going to be absolutely blind, no one is going to hear you in social media, your content is going to get less and less traffic from social media to your website, you're gonna get less and less impressions. I really do think that the writing's on the wall, there are ways to leverage influencers from within this goes beyond the scope of this podcast. But be prepared for episode number 243. This is going to launch it's going to be our first episode of 2022. on where to invest in 2022. And that's going to give you some advice that hey, you don't have to go it alone. There are influencers within your sphere of influence that you can more easily leverage, right that can help you as well if your business well, I hope you enjoy that episode, I'm really passionate about the crater economy, about content creation, and about influencer marketing. So for me, it's a really, really fun topic to talk about. And I think it truly does show the impact that all of the changes over the last two years is having on how we consume media. And I just hope that, you know, if you're a content creator, one of the episodes I'm going to launch the second episode I'm going to launch in 2022 is going to be episode number 244. It's going to be all about what to launch this year, I hope to publish both that episode, and the episode of where to invest in 2022, all in the same week, because I do believe there's plenty of opportunities not just for content creators, but for businesses to launch new marketing channels as well. And I want to cover that in a special episode. So needless to say, keep subscribing. If you haven't. Watch out for the new episodes. My solo episodes are mixed in with episodes of people that are interviewed that also bring different perspectives and they also bring what I believe a lot of really invaluable education to you as well. So keep subscribing. share this on social media. Tell friend, please any review that you can offer for this podcast really helps it be found in the search engines of podcast apps. And if I can be of any help, please reach out to me always interested to hear your feedback, as well as if there are certain topics that you'd like me to cover. On this podcast. I will say that having recorded 240 Something episodes, if you go to podcast dot Neal schaffer.com You will find and I am continuing to add show notes and transcripts to all of the episodes but you can search through. If you just want to hear me talk about LinkedIn or about Twitter about influencer marketing, you can easily search and find them there. I also have more than 450 blog posts on Neal schaffer.com. All there to help you really as your digital marketing coach help you apply everything I'm talking about to your business. And obviously if you need help above and beyond that, I do have my fractional CMO, marketing consultant services, as well as my digital first mastermind If you're not ready for consultant, but you need some accountability, you need some help. You want to network with other entrepreneurs, other digital marketers, you want to be part of this community that I'm creating where we're all launching, we're all growing, feel free to join digital, first go to Neal schaffer.com/membership. All these links are in the show notes in the very bottom. And hey, this is going to be my last personal episode for 2021. The last episode of 2021 will be an interview with one of my digital first members. But it's been a great year, I do not always publish as consistently, as I would like to. And I am on a mission to get better at that. And I feel like it is attainable. And I am hoping there might be some periods in January where you're going to see two episodes a week, I really want to get back to that weekly cadence sweet spot. And I hope to do so in February next year. And really what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to get to 50 episodes a year, I ideally wanted my last my first episode of 2022 to be episode number 250. Well, it's only going to be episode number 243. But I am in a mission to make sure that my first episode of 2023 is episode number 300. Let's see how it goes. It's these little goals that we make and we push ourselves is how we achieve greatness. I hope that you will do that with your own digital marketing. I wish you the happiest of holidays. I know we're at the tail end of the holiday season, but the happiest of whatever holiday break you have left and of course New Year's Eve and the happiest of New Year's as well. We'll talk to you again directly on another solo episode in 2020. To one more interview episode coming up the end the year out. And then that's it. Let's roll for New Year. Let's achieve bigger, greater goals. And I hope that this podcast helps contribute to your success. Treating 2021 in 2022 in 2023 and well into the future, I'm going to stop there. I've said enough. I've said what needs to be said. This is your digital marketing coach signing out. You've been listening to your digital marketing coach, questions, comments, requests links, go to podcast dot Neal schaffer.com get the show notes to this and 200 plus podcast episodes and Neal schaffer.com to tap into the 400 Plus blog posts that Neil has published to support your business. While you're there, check out Neil's Digital First group coaching membership community if you or your business needs a little helping hand. See you next time on your digital marketing coach.