What is the Creator Economy, and what are its benefits?

Creator economy refers to the economy in which the audience funds directly content creators/freelancers. Content creators can be musicians, writers, graphic designers, online course providers, and video creators… By following this strategy, they are removing the old middlemen like record labels, TVs, Newspapers, and publishers from in between.

This type of economy has surged thanks to the advent of the Internet. It has provided creators with the ability to promote themselves directly online and reduce promotional costs by foregoing intermediaries. Independent creators stand a better chance of success by being visible to all generations and avoiding agents’ filters.

Creators are now able to promote digitally their craft through different e-commerce and online community-building sites. They can also sell their products such as merchandising directly through their own website and social channels like YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram…as well as fund their projects through crowdfunding sites by following these tips.

If creators are clever enough, they will craft their marketing and sales strategies according to their audience’s tastes and leverage their work by targeting different age groups through generic and/or specialised channels and platforms.

 

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Business Tips on how to use Video and Networking

I listened to two business tips’ presentations at the Local Enterprise Dublin City Women in Business Network on:

• ‘How to use Video in Digital Marketing’ with Niamh Guckian from Go Motion Academy
• ‘How to network’ with Melissa Curley from Social Bee

FirSt OF ALL, Let me start with Niamh Guckian’s presentation about developing a video strategy that works.

1. Videos create engagement

When doing an email campaign, research shows that an email with a video has a 96% increase in Click-Through Rate. Furthermore, videos up to 2 minutes get the most engagement. Additionally, 92% of mobile video viewers share videos with others.

2. Other considerations to think about with video marketing

However, when you plan your video marketing campaign, you must remember to start in the funnel by following the customer journey. Next, you need to drill down with video content and think about which type of video content would suit your business most. Do not ever do videos for the sake of it!

3. The customer journey

Indeed, when doing video marketing, take into consideration the different stages of the customer journey:

• Awareness – your product/service is unknown to your targeted audience
• Consideration – your audience has found your product/service
• Conversion – your audience is ready to buy your product/service. It’s the sale stage
• Retention – your audience is ready/open to come back and buy your product/service again.

4. Who is your audience?

This is the key question you need to ask yourself.

• Where are your potential customers?

Insider Business Tips: Statistics show that 88% of Business-to-Business (B2B) videos are viewed on a desktop. Consider as well if Social Media would a good platform for your video. Note that YouTube is very competitive.

• What do they want?
• And you, what do you want from them?
• What are the others doing in the business?
• Do you need a disposable content (punctual events) or an evergreen content (tutorials/explainers)?
• Is your content relatable (not over-emotional)?
• What is the story (curve)?
• Is your content useful/educational?

5. Choose a video genre

Once you have identified your audience and what content to go for, choose a genre:

• Ask Me Anything – responding to questions, providing an engaging expertise
• Vlog
• Video tour
• Event highlights
• Review
• Tutorial
• Explainer
• Demo
• Interview
• Live Streaming

At the end of your video, remember to add a strong Call-to-Action by asking your audience to do something. Your call-to-action must be specific (not just ‘subscribe’) and get people talking/guessing.

6. Video genre and the customer journey

Incontestably, each video genre corresponds to a specific stage in the customer journey.

• Awareness stage: A video tour or a vlog
• Consideration stage: Ask Me Anything, demo or explainer video
• Conversion stage: Event highlights or tutorial video
• Retention stage: Review, interview or live streaming video.

7. Video marketing campaign CALENDAR

In that regard, you need to know if your video will be episodic (occasional events) or if you want to stay in your audience’s mind (evergreen content).

Consequently, if you want your audience to follow you through, you will need to create between 6 and 12 videos. In other terms, you must remain consistent in your posting and sharing of videos. If you are short with time, you can start your campaign by sharing one video a week.

8. Other BUSINESS tips

Finally, if you are going for an explainer video, you must ensure it is animated and engaging enough. Other genres can be used for a more personal and authentic delivery.

Budgetwise, if you want to hire an agency to do it for you on an episodic basis, forecast a budget between 800 and 2000 Euros for several videos.

Otherwise, you can make your own videos with the following sites:

• shortcut.com
• human5.com that turns text into videos.

Then, let’s move on to the second and last presentation of the evening by Melissa Curley about small talk for big gains.

1. Why is networking a key marketing tool for business growth and success?

Foremost, we need to be interested in and curious about one another.

Why? What matters about networking?

• The creation of Like/Trust/Respect
• The importance of conversation.

In other words, networking allows you to grow your social capital before you ever need them. It’s like a social currency. To be good at it, try to have fun at it!

2. What is a conversation about?

Most importantly, a conversation is a two-way listening and talking. Therefore, you need to focus on listening to understand, not just on saying something. So, to be a good networker, you need to understand emotions and feelings about words.

3. Tips to improve your listening

Undeniably, listening means:

• Receiving
• Appreciating
• Summarising
• Asking.

4. Preparation for a networking event

Still, if you are introvert and uncomfortable with networking, don’t worry.  Remember this!  Extroverts don’t always make the best networkers, as they aren’t always good at listening and connecting with the others.

Business Tips: before you go to a networking event, ask for the attendees’ list. This way, you can organise, who you want to connect with. This will make you more focused and efficient.

5. 10 pointers to a better conversation

Now, let me share with you a few tips on how to be a better conversationalist.

• Be present
• Enter every conversation assuming you have something to learn
• Ask open-ended questions
• Go with the flow
• Have courage
• Avoid engaging in conversational narcissism
• Refrain from repeating yourself
• Don’t get tangled up in small details
• Listen
• Be succinct.

6. Networking budget

On the other hand, 50 -60% of your budget should go into your networking. Likewise, concentrate on building mutually beneficial relationships.

7. What networking is and isn’t

Thus, it’s good to be aware of behaviours to avoid or adopt when networking.

AS A MATTER OF FACT, Networking isn’t:

• Salesy/Pushy
• Fake/Insincere
• About shameless self-promotion
• Only extroverts are good at it.

CONTRARILY, Networking is ABOUT:

• Making connections
• Gaining knowledge
• Adding value before you extract it.

8. How to create an effective network

IN summary, follow these last business tips:

• Do research about people’s businesses and follow-up
• Keep in touch, nurture contacts through social media and face-to-face meetings.

All in all, did you find this blog post helpful? Do you have further business tips or tricks to share?

 

 

How to use videos and hashtags to market your business on Instagram

As you may know, Instagram has become a strong social media network player with up to today the highest reach and engagement rate. Video marketing is also getting bigger and bigger and also shows a  high level of engagement.

So, let’s start with the different video formats and features within the application.

Instagram story

An Instagram story is an ephemeral video you share with your followers live or for a 24 hours period. Although it’s temporary, you can save your video in the app or in your mobile phone photo library to share it as a post later.

Why do Instagram stories work?

Your followers crave for new content and most importantly want to get them right away, live! So, want to give it a try and publish your live recording into your story?

To do so, let’s start setting up your story settings so that you can keep or delete them once published.

How can you set up your Instagram story, in order to save your video(s)?

1. You need to log into Instagram and go to your profile page.
2. Then click on the 3 little dots (…) at the top right-hand corner of your profile.

3. In the ‘Options’ menu, click on ‘Story settings‘ under ‘Account’.

4. You will get these options as per below screenshot. To activate an option, swipe the button next to it to right. It will create a blue button indicating you activated that option.

You will have to decide whether you want people to comment on your video(s) or disable comments. For that, you will need to tap into your chosen option to activate it. This will create a rounded-framed tick as the example below.

You may share your story on your personal Facebook account timeline as well. If you select that option, it will redirect you to log into your Facebook account app to authorise this.

Wondering where the Instagram posts are archived?

It will be archived on the app. To access these, you will need to click on the anti-clockwise quadrant at the top right-hand corner of your Instagram profile next to your profile account name.

Are there any of your archived pictures or videos you would like to save as (semi-) permanent posts in your ‘Highlights’ section of your Instagram profile?

If so, all you need to do is:

• click on the 3 little dots (…) at the top right-hand corner
• tap the image or video you want to highlight. It will create a tick at the bottom of it.
• Then click on ‘Next‘ at the top right-hand corner of the page.

• After that, click on ‘Create Highlight‘.

• Create a name for your highlight (not mandatory. Then, click on ‘Add‘ at the top right-hand corner to have it added to your profile.

Don’t like anymore your highlight?

Don’t worry, you can remove it. Just go to your profile, tap on the highlight you want to remove, click on ‘More‘ at the bottom of the screen.

Then you will have these options pop up. Click on ‘Remove Highlight‘. Et voilà!

Now that we reviewed the Story settings, let me explain to you how to create stories.

1. Click on your profile picture to open the story option to film or take pictures.

2. You will be then presented with these options.

• Live: if you click on this option, it will create a live video that will disappear once you end the ‘live’, unless otherwise set. Live videos can be as long as you want them to be!
• Normal: it will create a story post which will be available to view for 24 hours. These posts will not last more than 30 seconds
• Type: you will create a textual post viewable for 24 hours
• Boomerang is a fast-forwarded video but will require you to download an additional application

Now, what are symbols related to?

• The picture on the far left is representing whatever picture or video you have saved in your mobile phone photo library. If you select a video, it will only show 15 seconds of it.
• The left-hand side flash symbol next to the rounded button is to switch on the flash
• The arrows in a circle shape right next to the rounded button are here to decide where your camera will be pointed towards, ie either yourself or something/someone else.
• The far-right picture of a face is to set up any embellishments, add masks, emojis or the likes
• The big rounded button is the one you will click on to take a picture and hold onto to record a video when you select a ‘Normal’ story.

once you have recorded your picture or video in ‘NORMAL Story’, you will get these options.

At the top:

• Sticker: you can add funny stickers to your video
• Loudspeaker: you can adjust the volume of your video
• Highlighting pen: you can highlight a text you added in the picture or video
• ‘Aa’ letters: you can add text to your video or picture.

At the bottom:

• Save: if you want to save the picture or video in your mobile phone photo library (also called camera roll) to re-post it later on Instagram or another social media site
• Your Story: you can send your picture or video to your story to be viewed for 24 hours
• Send to>: you can send your recording individually to any of your followers you will select

If you select ‘Live‘ story, you will get this next screen. To start your ‘live’ story, click on ‘Start Live Video’. For embellishments, you may click on the face symbol before you start your video. You also have again this setting for where to point your camera.

Once your ‘live’ story has started, you may invite someone to be part of the video by clicking on the ‘two faces’ symbol.

You can also invite one or several specific followers to watch your ‘live’ by clicking on the ‘paper plane’ symbol. Once you have finished, click on ‘End‘ at the top right-hand corner.

When your video has ended, you will be prompted to select one of these options:

• Save: to save in your mobile phone photo library
• Share: you can share your live video for the next 24 hours. For this, please activate the sharing option by swiping the button towards the right until it gets blue. Then click on the ‘Share‘ button.

Not happy with your live video? don’t want to share or keep it?

No problem, you can discard it! You only need to disable the sharing option by swiping the button onto the left until it is greyed out. Then click on the ‘Discard‘ button.

That’s it for the ‘live’ stories!

Instagram posts

Now, let’s move on to sharing videos and pictures as ordinary posts.

1. To create a post, go again to your profile page and click on the rectangular framed ‘+’ button at the very bottom of your screen (centre button).

2. Then, select the photo(s) or video(s) from your camera roll (mobile phone library). Click on the relevant option. You will see other options below the preview image.

What are these optional symbols for?

• The far left symbol representing ‘two opposite arrows’ is to select how you want the video(s) or photo(s) to appear, ie in square/portrait mode or in a landscape mode. To activate the landscape option, click on that symbol.

Normal square/portrait mode:

Landscape mode:

• The far right symbol ‘Select Multiples’  can be used if you want to share several videos or photos in one post.
• The other two symbols require you to download other applications. You will then tap on the videos or photos you want to share.

When you share normal posts, you need to:

1. add a description 
2. add hashtags in ‘caption‘ for your videos or pictures to be found by other users.

Note: you can add stickers and a hashtag to a ‘normal story’ as well.

To add a description, you just have to type your text in the ‘caption‘ area of the post. It should describe what is in the picture(s) or video(s). Keep the most important part of your description in the two first rows. The rest of the text will only appear if your reader clicks on ‘more‘.

To mention someone in the video(s) or picture(s) and this person is on Instagram, you simply type their account name in your ‘caption‘ and add a ‘@‘ sign before it.

Instagram hashtags

1. Then in that ‘caption‘ area, type hash ‘#‘ and whatever hashtags you want your post to be found and ranked for.
2. Unlike on Twitter, with Instagram, you can have up to 30 hashtags. The more hashtags you select, the more your posts will be viewed. However, you must ensure that you select relevant hashtags for your post. Otherwise, you will get the wrong kind of followers
3. Keep in mind that some hashtags are banned by Instagram community guidelines, so don’t select these ones. It is often because they violate Instagram policies. Selecting them will result in your posts getting removed or worse your account suspended.
4. When you start typing your hashtag, you will get a list of tags and the number of time the hashtags have been used. I recommend you to choose both relevant highly popular and moderately popular tags for your posts to get found. You may also create branded hashtags.

Both your description and hashtags will appear under the video(s) or image(s) you have shared. You will also see the number of views on your videos right below your video/picture.

I hope all these tips will be useful for you. Would you like to share further tips on this topic?

 

 

 

Learn how to crowdfund to fundraise and validate your ideas

I recently attended in Dublin a DubWeb Festival founded by Mikael Thiery and co-directed by Erol Mustafov geared mostly towards filmmakers, theatre producers and music makers. There were several talks and the one about ‘how to crowdfund for web series‘ caught my attention.

It was a discussion with industry experts and award-winning series makers (see picture below) .Their pieces of advice were valuable for any start-ups looking to fund their businesses or their products and services’ launch.

Crowdfunding is mainly used to fundraise for specific activities, campaigns or launches, and the talks were talking about this aspect. Consequently, this post will discuss the different platforms and ways to get your audience engaged and willing to support you financially. Nonetheless, please note that you can crowdfund to validate your ideas.

But first thing first, if you want to crowdfund and make a success out of the campaign, you will need to make sure your audience is online and your product or service is suitable for that target market (language, culture).

Then you will have to work hard to create a buzz around it.

To do this, please follow these steps:

1. Create convincing and creative video and content pitches.
2. Select the most appropriate crowdfunding platform for your audience. If you want to target niche audiences for film production, consider one of these: VRV for Fantasy films, Shutter, Patreon. Otherwise, the main platforms are Indigogo and Kickstarter.
3. Understand how the chosen crowdfunding platform works. For eg, Indigogo is available worldwide. With it, you can either get the money only if you reach your fundraising goal or get whatever money you crowdfunded even if you haven’t hit your goal. If you use Kickstarter, remember it’s available in only 34 countries and you can only cash in the fundraised monies if you have reached your goal.
4. Keep in mind the charged fees by the crowdfunding platform as well as the taxes you will have to claim as income (tax). Generally speaking, there is a 3-5 % processing fee + a 5 % fee once the fundraising campaign ends.
5. Set a fundraising goal that will cover all your costs.
6. Entice your audience to donate and become your fans by offering rewards. Some rewards may be posted (merchandising such as DVDs, T-shirts…), so keep in mind that these incur extra costs. If you want to keep these costs down, you may offer your donors free release of some of your web series’ episodes, for instance.
7. Leverage your superfans by offering them VIP rewards to post out.
8. Create a sense of emergency by offering special rewards released as the crowdfunding campaign goes.
9. Get in touch with your existing network.
10. Feed information on social media by sharing snippets of your story.
11. Build awareness of your campaign by organising your own offline or online events. You could start by creating a big live event: live show, music video, tours/trip, podcast, free food/drinks night, special invites to parties. Any possible hooks to gather more fans will be valuable.
12. Get in touch with PR companies for press releases.
13. Think about sponsorship for further brand exposure. However, remember that these will not provide you with financial support (instead, you will receive gifts-in-kind and discounts) and may not care too deeply about your brand, while your fans from crowdfunding will.
14. Network to find potential angel investors at conferences and conventions related to your type of business. For eg, for filmmakers, they could attend Comecon.
15. Get your friends and fans to share your campaign.