My New Newsletter: TikTok Rewards Creator [Edition #1]

TikTok Rewards Creators

Thanks for subscribing to my blog! It’s exciting to finally launch my brand new newsletter after putting it off for a year! (better late, than never, right?)

In this weekly newsletter, you will get the latest news, trends, insights, and analysis related to social media, influencer marketing, and the creator economy through industry dives, quick hits, curated articles, and much more.

Enjoy the first edition and please consider passing it along to a friend, family member, or colleague who might be interested!

This Week’s Edition

TikTok is rewarding creators with new monetization tools
LinkedIn is offering creators access to more tools with Creator Mode
Clubhouse lets creators expand the lifespan of content with Replays
Spotify joins the short-form video world

TikTok Rewards Creators With Creator Next Initiative

TikTok is rewarding creators with Creator Next, a new initiative aimed at helping creators monetize and develop their communities. As part of Creator Next, eligible creators who opt-in can use new monetization features in Tips and Video Gifts.

Tips allow creators to receive money from their followers through tipping, while Video Gifts allow creators to receive “Diamonds” by doing live streams and by sharing popular videos, which can be redeemed for money.

Creator Next also includes the expansion of TikTok Creator Marketplace, TikTok's in-house platform for connecting brands and creators for influencer marketing campaigns. Now, creators with more than 10,000 followers (down from the previous threshold of 100,000 followers) can join TTCM, and brands can reach out to them for paid collaborations.

What It Means: It's no surprise that TikTok is diversifying the ways that creators can monetize on its platform as creator monetization has been a focal point for all social media platforms and their respective creators this past year.

Tips and Video Gifts align with the recent push to enable creators to receive direct support from their loyal fans, while the expansion of TTCM gives creators more opportunity to be discovered by brands for branded content deals, which is currently the primary way creators earn income.

With Creator Next, TikTok can offer creators multiple monetization methods allowing creators to leverage the tools that are most suitable for them when it comes to making money.

Along with continuing to strengthen its ties to creators, TikTok adds firepower to its ongoing battle with the rest of the social media ecosystem that is trying to cater to creators through audience growth and monetization tools.

Competition brings out the best; stay tuned.

LinkedIn Offers Creator Mode Users Access To More Tools

LinkedIn is offering creators who toggle on its Creator Mode access to more tools. Starting this month, creators with Creator Mode activated can utilize the platform’s Live Video and Newsletters features, which were previously only available to select users. As well as this, creators will have the opportunity to be listed as "Suggested Creators To Follow.”

What It Means: New tool access and enhanced discovery through Creator Mode continue LinkedIn’s recent efforts to help creators build an audience and drive conversation across LinkedIn.

But that isn’t all it’s doing. The platform has also taken a hands-on approach with creator relations through its Creator Manager Program, where a dedicated team of Creator Managers engages and meets with creators, helping them with the resources they need to be successful.

Also this week, LinkedIn announced its Creator Accelerator Program, further demonstrating its commitment to creators. 100 U.S.-based creators will receive a $15,000 grant, be featured on LinkedIn channels, and participate in a 10-week incubator program.

When you add the fact that LinkedIn is now hiring an Influencer Marketing & Partnerships Manager to start a new influencer marketing and partnerships department within the company, LinkedIn may start to resemble more traditional social media platforms where influencer marketing campaigns are the norm.

Clubhouse Adds Value With Replays

Since becoming a household name last spring, Clubhouse has become somewhat of an afterthought for marketers and creators alike. While the buzz has died down, Clubhouse has stayed busy with the launch of several new features including Replays.

With Replays, creators can record and save public rooms so that they are available for listening later. Replays also brings the release of Total Attendee Count, a new metric for letting creators know the cumulative number of people who have joined a room.

What It Means: Clubhouse’s latest feature launch removes some of the barriers that prevented creators from totally investing in the live social audio app.

With the ability to make their recordings available after the fact and repurpose them across other channels such as YouTube and podcasts, creators now benefit from wider reach, discoverability, and efficiencies.

The addition of the Total Attendee Count helps creators in assessing the success of their rooms.

This, along with a recent update on the adoption and early success of Pinned Links, another recently launched feature that lets creators add links to their rooms provides more value to creators hosting rooms on the platform.

Despite influencer marketing being rare on Clubhouse, these should help marketers make the case for Clubhouse as a viable channel to engage creators on, now that ROI will be easier to measure.

With the live social audio space getting crowded with Facebook, Twitter, Spotify, and Reddit participating, it’s key for Clubhouse to boost its product offerings to become the preferred live social audio platform.

Spotify Joins The Short-Form Video World

Spotify joins a long list of platforms that currently support or are testing TikTok-like experiences. Spotify confirmed it's testing a new Discovery tab in the bottom navigation bar of its app that lets users scroll through short-form music videos vertically, similar to TikTok.

What It Means: Thanks to TikTok's popularity, a generation of video-hungry consumers has emerged, resulting in all types of digital platforms creating their own short-form video experiences. Spotify hopes to meet the demand for short-form video content by testing short-form video capabilities.

Considering Spotify's recent investments in creators, it doesn't seem far-fetched to think the platform may eventually team up with creators to create short-form video content on behalf of musicians.

In many ways, the adoption of short-form video is similar to the widespread adoption of the Stories content format over the past few years. As the internet is a copycat space, digital platforms of all kinds will be trying to figure out how to make short-form videos work in order to keep users engaged, and ultimately attempt to recreate the magic of TikTok.

Right now, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, Pinterest, Reddit, Netflix, and Spotify all have short-form video features. Who will be next?

Quick Hits

Features, Tools & Experiences

TikTok relaunched its Q&A feature with new functionality including the ability for users to tag others.
Facebook enables Facebook Group admins to monetize through new subscription and shopping features.
YouTube is experimenting with a Search Insights feature to provide creators with insight into the type of content that their viewers are searching for.
Reddit is shutting down Dubsmash and developing its own video features, including a new camera and editing tools.
Reddit added new real-time features including voting, reading, and comment indicators to drive engagement.
Twitter is prepping to introduce Reply Downvotes, a way for users to identify replies to Tweets that aren’t relevant to a conversation.
Patreon is developing its own video product to allow creators to host and share video content directly on the platform as an alternative to third-party platforms like YouTube and Vimeo.
Dropbox announced the launch of Dropbox Shop, a new platform that allows creators to sell digital content, such as e-books, recipes, prints, and workout videos.

Initiatives, Causes & Campaigns

TikTok is writing a textbook on creator marketing and seeking experts and thought-leaders to build out the curriculum.
YouTube launched a new hub for creators in YouTube Creators, which provides resources and guides for new and emerging creators, following in the footsteps of its parent company, Google.
Pinterest revealed TwoTwenty, a new in-house team, made up of engineers, designers, and content and product experts, that is focused on driving innovation through tests and experimentation.
Triller announced a new funding program to pay Black creators $4K in cash and equity per month over the span of a year.
Meta opened up applications for the second year of We The Culture, its Black creators program.

Web 3.0

Music rights startup, Royal, which allows users to purchase NFTs for ownership in songs from their favorite artists, secured a $55 million investment from Andreessen Horowitz, who continues to make a number of smart investments in the creator economy space.
Islands, a start-up by Tiffany Zhong focused on helping creators enter the NFT world, raised $3.5 million in funding from Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian’s even Seven Six firm. Zhong and Ohanian recently launched a podcast together titled Probably Nothing about NFTs.
Stir is exploring NFT Splits to let creators, collaborators, and fans share ownership of NFTs.

Listen: A Conversation On Race & Influencer Marketing

Last week, I had the opportunity to join Jason Falls on his Winfluence podcast to discuss race and influencer marketing and share my perspective on the role that brands, marketers, and creators can play in closing the influencer pay gap. Listen to the conversation here and let me know what you think!

What I’m Reading

Influencers get an upgrade. Now they’re in charge (Vogue Business). Kati Chirakorn examines how brands are hiring creators to work in-house.
Indexing the creator economy (Stripe). Creators are on pace to pass 10 billion in aggregated earnings by year's end across creator monetization platforms like Substack and Gumroad, according to a new report by Stripe.
The State of NIL in College Sports (Boardroom). Russell Steinberg examines Opendorse's NIL Insights Report, which discusses the compensation and activity trends through the first three months of name, image, and likeness monetization in college sports.
Why influencers need the metaverse (Inc.). Joan Westenberg explains why tokenization will be key for influencers to monetize in the future.

Thank You!

Thank you for reading! I hope you have a great weekend!