Today, influencers are making a huge amount of money by selling their distribution. They are cheaper than running ads on various social media channels, and also have a much higher advert click through rate. This high rate is a result of public trust that the influencers enjoy. Thus, people trust them more than any random ad in their feed.
MediaKix has reported that 71% of marketers believe that influencer marketing is better because of the quality of leads. Moreover, customers and traffic is better when derived from influencers. The main essence of this marketing strategy is creating word of mouth marketing at a scalable level.
Creators call the shots
Come for the content. Stay for the community.
Creators provide an opportunity to tap into a watering hole. One where your prospective community members gather.
The following a creator has amassed is a curated cohort of members. They all tend to have similar interests and user behaviors.
Brands and businesses are now recognizing the power of influencers.
We've seen micro-influencers go toe to toe with established creators. This provides a great opportunity for brands to collaborate with more affordable influencers.
We have helped dozens of businesses by tying them up with homegrown creators. Traditional celebrity endorsements have actors who come across as acting the role. But creators come across as a lot more authentic.
Creator-led communities
Now, creators are going one step beyond social media and creating their communities where they can engage with a filtered subset of followers. They tend to make it more personal & engaging, and in turn, more monetizable.
Traditional social media platforms do not focus on community-building. Built from a demand & supply aggregation perspective, they lack interactive community functions such as P2P discussions, courses, two-way messaging, and gated events.
Generally, social media followers pay their creators in the form of attention. For example, creators get appreciation in the form of ad revenue or promotional posts. Another problem is the fact that the platform owns the demand side, making it difficult for the creators to negotiate. Hence, they are motivated to move their true fans elsewhere where they can monetize their followership in a better way.
Right & left-brained
The lesser known fact is that content creation & community management are two separate sets of skills. Right-brained creators keep communities engaged with recurring entertaining content. Left-brained community managers segment their audience by usage or interest levels. Moreover, they moderate P2P interactions and retarget converted memberd.
Advantages creators bring in the process of community building:
1) Member acquisition
Popular creators can leverage their social media followers to grow their community. They have great potential when it comes to top-of-the-funnel distribution.
2) Member curation
Creator-led communities attract people based on specific interests, especially when all members of a community follow the same creator.
3) Engagement
Interest-based communities can be kept alive by creation of engaging content regularly. At the same time, they take pressure off members who prefer to be passive consumers.
We're seeing an unprecedented rise in creator collaborations with brand communities. At the same time, brand collaborations with creator communities are rising too. It's one of the most exciting global trends in the creator economy.
