For a number of years, traditional media has been a dominant player across the globe and has been responsible for everything we viewed on our television sets, read in newspapers or magazines or listened to over the radio. Everything changed with the arrival of the internet, from heavy scripted content to content created by anyone in the world that resonated more with the local and global audiences. While the behavior and attitude of the consumer quickly changed, the rapid advancements in technology made digital content more easy to access, affordable and enabled people to create more. Giving rise to Digital Media.
A couple of decades ago the idea of earning a living via streaming yourself playing games, or enjoying family time was unthinkable, today we have 50 million creators scattered across multiple platforms like TikTok, Instagram, YouTube amongst others. It is also noted by Forbes in one of their articles linked to the creator’s economy that 2 million of these influencers over digital media are earning six-figure salaries.
One of the key tactics creators are following today is building a diverse portfolio that engages audiences from multiple digital media platforms. Many are deeply engaged in producing written content over their website and blogs, pushing this content as their audiences spread across TikTok, Instagram and other channels with engaging and interactive reels, livestreams and Ask me anything stories.
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What is a creator economy?
When a creator has multiple platforms to cater to, they tend to involve and employ people to help them with their content, talent management, finance management, content editing and production amongst other things. The collective nature of all the people involved in building content for digital media platforms is what we refer to as the creator economy.
Creator economy is a class of business that have been built by over 50 million of independent creator, curators, community builders and influencers – this includes social media influencers, bloggers, video bloggers (Vlog) as well as the software and finance tools designed and utilized to help these creators grow and monetize their content.
Digital transformation has played a key role in pushing the creator economy. The constant dynamic tech development and the pandemic pushed the digital platform to retail, education, work, robotic manufacturing and much more. Further, over the past few years a large number of start-ups and consulting firms (digital media firms) have been born that offer multiple services to the creator and empower them towards opportunities of revenue, growth and new audience interactions along with talent management and more.
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Present numbers
An article by Forbes mentioned that the creator economy start-ups have received close to $2billion in investment funding, more than three times the amount it raised during 2020.
It is projected and estimated that the creator market will be worth $104.2 billion. A strong indicator that creativity has never been more profitable and digital content never more valuable – making it one of the most sought after and viable ways of life.
Digital media platforms that gave creator a platform:
YouTube
Starting in 2005, YouTube – an online video sharing platform has been a key catalyst in building the creator economy we live in today. It has 1.9 billion users today and is the second most used platform after Facebook. With this large number of audience at the fingertips of the artists, teachers, fashion and lifestyle bloggers, vloggers and much more – aspiring or successful, the process of becoming a creator and influencer via videos while reaching audiences, growing as a creator became much easier and functional. The impact of Youtube as a channel can be seen when ‘Despacito’ , a song by Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee, has one of the highest number of views on the platform (close to 6.32 billion views), a song that by a small artist in Spain has a massive global following.
Bhuvan Bam, The viral fever, CarryMinati are some of the famous creators on YouTube in India, while people such as Lilly Singh popularly known as Superwoman and Vidya Vox are some global names today that rose to fame from their YouTube channels.
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A social networking site built by Mark Zuckerberg today has the most number of users across the globe and one of the most popular applications accessed. With their family of apps the CEO Zuckerberg’s deep dive into the world of Metaverse is only going to grow the creator economy by leaps and bounds. An Economic Times article has been noted to mention that the social media firm, Facebook, has seen close to 35% growth year-over-year towards monetising creators and video publishers in India with around 160% growth in in-stream revenue earned by the brand.
With their latest change of name to Meta, the brand aims to make the brand into a fully immersed metaverse company.
Turning clicks into cash has never been easier. Social media platforms were quick to engage in this click to cash trend and build successful business monetization tools that will be accessed by brands as well as act as popular tools for creators to build their content on and be able to offer such content for brands with financial terms agreed upon.
Instagram is known to introduce a subscription based model in some of the top creators within the USA as their testing of SVOD model to boost the creator economy. This basically allows creators to build premium content only accessible if you have a subscription to their page on Instagram. This allows a fixed, steady income for creators while focusing on their creative skills.
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Spotify, Netflix, Amazon music and others..
Multiple streaming platforms have been quick to adopt interactive, immersive and engaging tactics to keep their listener and viewers glued. This includes them reaching out to creators for building personalized content to stand out and outperform the competition. Spotify and Netflix are progressively making content more personalized for its users.
With a wide range of collaboration with creators to build podcasts, short audio stories, exclusive interviews, movies reviews on their social media platforms, these brands are building new engagement tools to make sure the audience feels as part of the process. Not to forget, this is only possible via the wide network of creators they work with that help these brands gain audience attention.
Read more: Indian brands leading edtech industry
Rising trends in creator economy:
Here are a few trends in the creator economy that have been on the rise:
– Media mix: Key trends today are the creator mindset shift from platform centric to business centric model. They are working to expand by building and activating a media mix that enables them to connect to a wide range of audiences.
– Monetization tools: With digital transformation, digital media today has a choice of many tools to help creators monetize their content. Creators here focus on moving their top following and loyal fan base to their own websites, blog pages, applications and more.
– Business Founders: Creators are some of the top business founders today. With their ability to reach out millions of people, collaborative opportunities and building teams for content curation and promotions, they are building business from scratch while focusing on their art.
– Media power-personalities: Creators today are more influential than the yesteryear’s TV personalities, this gives them a seat in the media ecosystem and to build a narrative to influence millions with their content.
If the opportunities here excite you to explore the dynamic world of digital media, marketing and data analytics, here is a glimpse into how you can be part of the disruption. BMS Digital Business course at Hetic will aid you in learning about the emerging tech, use of data and its role in digital marketing as well as honing your management skills, soft skills and design aesthetics. Collectively, these skills empower you to become an all-rounder for a managerial profile and kick-start your career with a deep rooted knowledge of technology, management and design.
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