Are Social Media Platforms On the Creator's Side?
How rookie creators can take advantage of social media platforms.
Medium pulled its funding from one of its biggest publications.
The editorial team in PS I Love You, a publication with 260K+ followers, announced shutting down the publication. They typically publish stories personal stories as it relates to relationships.
A few weeks ago, we were informed by Medium that they would be pulling their funding for PS I Love You. This was not all too much of a surprise, given the larger changes that have been happening around editorial at Medium. - PS I Love You Editorial Team
It’s an odd move from Medium, considering they gave $500,000 to their most engaged writers last month.
Is Medium supporting their writers or not?
Last week, Nicolas Cole, a viral online writer, posted an article about how big media publications are dead, and they don’t know it yet. He insinuated that as more direct-to-creator platforms (i.e. Substack, Gumroad, Patreon) emerge, social media platforms will become a thing of the past.
What does it mean for current content creators?
Are social media platforms becoming generous, or are they panicking?
Many social platforms have been showing their appreciation for their creators.
Twitter has announced at least three different monetization tools for creators. In February, they launched Super Follows, a gated paywall where creators can put their “exclusive” tweets for paying subscribers. This month, they launched a new feature called Tip Jar.
The Tip Jar was launched on the Twitter blog to “support the incredible voices that make up the conversation on Twitter.” Ticket Spaces is another feature expected to come in the next couple of weeks where creators can get paid to host live audios.
Medium, as previously mentioned, gave $500 to 1000 top writers in April. I was one of those writers, by the way.
As a creator, these are all exciting news for us.
But what if there’s an ulterior motive? What if it’s because they’re acting this way because they’re starting to get insecure because of their competitors.
Like Substack.
Substack is a platform that allows creators to get paid directly from their fans while taking a 10% commission. Unlike social media platforms, which take at least a 20% cut of sales if you choose to monetize your content.
Direct-to-creator platforms like Substack, as coined by Nicolas Cole, will continue to emerge in the creator economy.
Creator-focused startups are saving the creators.
Just last year, 50 million people joined the creator economy.
Creators ought to have problems trying to make a living off their passions, whether it’s platform usability, user interface, features and the ability to support the creator’s business model.
With the rise of the creators, more creator-focused startups are coming up with ways to help people live off their passions in exchange for a small fee compared to social media platforms.
It’s a win-win situation for everyone.
With the rise of creator-to-consumer platforms, social media platforms are coming up with ways to compete with them. And monetary incentives are one of them. Maybe they hope that with the monetization features (like TipJar or Creator Fund on TikTok), creators will stay and create more content for them.
Because without creators, how will they live?
Are social media platforms helping creators, or are they becoming employees?
Every social media platform has its own algorithm to help the creators and users meet each other.
Social media algorithms are a way of sorting posts in a users’ feed based on relevancy instead of publish time. - Sprout Social
The algorithm is supposed to help creators reach their targetted consumers based on the consumer’s behaviours. The problem with these algorithm-based platforms is that you become an irrelevant creator if you don’t publish.
Being consistent on social media platforms is one of the key pieces of advice to become a successful content creator. But sometimes, consistently publishing on the platform can be detrimental to people’s mental health.
Studies show that prolonged use of social media directly correlates with signs and symptoms of depression, anxiety and low self-esteem. Not only it affects creators’ mental health, but they simultaneously rely on social media platforms for their living. When they don’t publish, they don’t get noticed.
A thought worth exploring: how is this different than not going to work every single day if creators are meant to publish on social media every single day?
Social media platforms are the big employers, and creators put in all the work and don’t get paid fairly. Ali Abdaal, the founder of the popular creator course “Part-Time Youtuber Academy,” explained in this video that you need 50,000 views to make $100 of income. He didn’t make a single dollar from Adsense for 6 months and 52 videos later from creating online content.
Anne-Laure Le Cunff, the founder of Ness Labs, mentioned in an interview with Nathan Barry that her email list traffic mostly comes from Twitter. If she doesn’t post on Twitter, her email list subscribers don’t go up.
This tells us that you have to constantly produce content on social media platforms to become relevant in the game.
Make social media platforms work for you, not the other way around
If you’re new to the creator economy, social media platforms are still great to get recognized.
Social media platforms are like giant malls on the Internet. If you’re a store that wants to attract new customers, you don’t set up a local store in front of your house. It’s smarter to rent a place in a mall where people go shopping. I mean, you can choose the former option, but it’ll be much harder to grow.
Social media platforms are where the audience hangs out. So build your online presence on social media.
However, once you start gaining traction, once people get to know you from your content, it’s time to re-think your strategy.
Social media can shut down at any moment. Facebook and Instagram went on a temporary outage in March and April of this year, 2021. What happens then if your content and businesses live on these platforms?
Use social media platforms to drive your real fans into your own platforms - whether it’s an email list newsletter or a platform like Circle or Ghost. This is where you can have a direct relationship with your true fans.
Don’t put all your bets on social media platforms. And instead, use it as a part of your current or future business model.
Let me know what you think whether social media platforms are on the creator’s side.