TikTok & IMDb Help Creators Tap Into TikTok’s Thriving Movie & TV Communities

Welcome back! We’re just under two weeks into the new year, and things are moving fast!

If you follow me on social, you may have seen this already, but I was recently recognized by Business Insider as a rising star of the creator economy, alongside other creators and marketers from companies like Meta, TikTok, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Snapchat. If you have a BI subscription, you can check out the full list here. I also shared screenshots of my specific feature on my Instagram here. I’m honored and grateful!

Now, let's get into all the exciting updates and developments happening in the creator economy.

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Today’s Edition:

• TikTok and IMDb partner to bring movie and TV linking feature to creators

• YouTube introduces hashtag suggestions for Shorts to boost discovery

• TikTok launches talent manager support for its Creator Marketplace

TikTok & IMDb Partner To Bring Movie & TV Linking Feature To Creators

TikTok and IMDb are collaborating on a new feature that allows creators in the US and UK to link their videos to a movie or TV show's IMDb page.

How It Works

When publishing a video, creators can use the "add link" option to search for over 12 million movies and TV shows available. They can then add up to five titles to their video, directing viewers to an IMDb page with information about the title, including cast members, director, genre, release date, runtime, and user ratings. Creators can also add movies and TV shows to the Favorites tab on their profiles.

Benefits For Creators, Viewers & Marketers

This partnership taps into the thriving movie and TV communities on the platform. Videos tagged with movie and TV-related hashtags such as #MovieTok, #FilmTok, and #TVTok have already generated over 25 billion views, showcasing the popularity of this type of content.

With this new feature, creators who do movie and TV reviews, breakdowns, and commentary can include relevant titles to make their content more valuable for their viewers. Additionally, linking titles will group videos together, providing creators with enhanced discovery by getting them in front of viewers searching for specific titles. Production studios who work with creators to promote upcoming movies and shows have the ability to incorporate the feature into their campaigns to easily direct audiences to learn more.

Enhanced Search Through Integrations

In addition, this enhances TikTok's search capabilities, further aligning with Gen Z behavior, who are increasingly turning to their favorite creators and social media platforms to search and discover things.

TikTok has integrated with many companies other than IMDb, including Rotten Tomatoes, Instacart, The Whisk, and Quizlet. These integrations allow creators to add relevant links to their videos that lead to in-app third-party experiences where viewers can take actions such as making purchases. TikTok and its partners should consider implementing a revenue share for creators who drive conversions through these links, similar to an affiliate program.

YouTube Introduces Hashtag Suggestions For Shorts To Boost Discovery

YouTube is introducing a new feature for Shorts – Hashtag Suggestions.

How It Works

This feature, currently being tested with select creators in the US on iOS and Android, will offer relevant hashtags for creators to add to their video titles during the upload process. These suggestions are based on the creator's channel and previous uploads.

What It Means For Creators

Hashtags can be a useful tool on YouTube for driving the discovery of videos, especially Shorts. By providing creators with suggestions for hashtags to use in their titles, YouTube makes optimizing their content for discovery easier. To make this feature effective, YouTube should leverage artificial intelligence (AI) to serve creators with real-time, data-backed recommendations for hashtags that are performing well.

Effectiveness Of Hashtags

In early 2021, YouTube launched dedicated landing pages for hashtags to improve content grouping and discovery. This new hashtag suggestions feature builds on that effort, making it even easier for creators to ensure their content is discoverable on the platform.

Hashtags have been a valuable tool for driving discovery and engagement on social media platforms such as YouTube, LinkedIn, and TikTok. However, their effectiveness has decreased on other platforms, particularly Instagram.

TikTok Launches Talent Manager Support For Its Creator Marketplace

TikTok has launched the Talent Manager Portal in beta for the TikTok Creator Marketplace (TTCM), allowing talent managers to access and manage a creator’s TTCM account.

They will be able to:

• Accept or decline brand invitations

• Communicate and negotiate with brands

• View deliverable timelines, manage ad authorization, date changes, and cancellation requests

• View analytic reports for posts

How It Works

Creators can grant their talent managers access to their accounts by generating an authorization code through the Creator Tools on their profile and sharing it with their talent managers. The managers can then enter the code via an “Add Creator" button in the TTCM, adding the creator to their roster. Creators can revoke the authorization at any time.

Addressing A Growing Need

The Talent Manager Portal addresses a growing need for a better experience for talent managers. As more creators, regardless of their size, bring on talent managers to scale their businesses, experiences that support the talent manager workflow are becoming critical.

By providing talent managers with a way to act on behalf of their creator clients and manage standard campaign tasks like deal vetting, contracting, and negotiating, TikTok is helping to create a better and more streamlined experience for talent managers and their creators. It allows them to do what creators hired them for and enables creators to focus on the most important aspect of brand collaborations – content creation.

The portal also benefits brands by reducing barriers to partnering with creators through TTCM. Although platforms make it much easier for brands to run their influencer marketing programs, there can be friction when it comes to creators with talent managers since platforms tend to be built primarily for the creator experience.

What To Expect In The Near Future

This year, we can anticipate an increase in support for talent managers across influencer marketing platforms and creator marketplaces as the industry recognizes that the creator experience extends to those who assist in managing their businesses.

More News

Instagram Will Remove The Shop Tab As Part Of Its Navigation Redesign

Instagram is set to revamp its navigation soon, bringing the Create button to the forefront of the navigation bar, while the Reels button will be repositioned to the right. The Shop tab will also be removed, but users will still be able to shop through Feed, Stories, Reels, and in ads.

These updates suggest that Instagram is re-evaluating the role of shopping in its long-term strategy, recognizing the enduring popularity of photos, and placing greater emphasis on user feedback.

YouTube Revamps Partner Program Terms Ahead Of Shorts Monetization

Starting next month, YouTube's Shorts ad revenue-sharing program will begin. To participate, creators must accept the new terms of the YouTube Partner Program, which include new Modules (Base Terms, Watch Page Monetization, and Shorts Monetization).

While creators are required to accept the Base Terms as a minimum requirement, they can accept additional modules based on the type of content they want to monetize. This gives creators more flexibility based on what revenue opportunities they want to unlock and the specific terms they have to agree to.

Pinterest Gives Creators The Ability To Add Links To Their Idea Pins

Pinterest added an "Add A Link" feature for Idea Pins, allowing creators to include a clickable URL in the Notes section. This feature allows creators to direct viewers to external destinations such as their personal website, other social media content, product pages, and more. Previously, creators were limited to adding only product and affiliate links to make their Idea Pins shoppable.

The new feature also makes the content format more attractive for brands to use in their influencer campaigns, as they can now have creators include tracking links for better attribution, such as measuring clicks and conversion. This feature aligns with the trend of social media platforms becoming more flexible with linking outside their platform.

VSCO Plans To Launch Creator Monetization Tools This Year

VSCO is planning to launch monetization tools for creators, such as connecting them directly with brands on its app. By facilitating collaborations like sponsored content or projects, VSCO can enhance its value beyond premium photo and video editing tools by helping them monetize their work and skills.

This move also aligns VSCO with other platforms in the creator space that are focused on helping creators earn money. As this feature would likely be integrated into VSCO's paid subscription, it could generate additional revenue from creators upgrading to paid accounts to access monetization options. Additionally, this could open up a new opportunity for VSCO to offer a subscription for brands to connect with creators on the platform.

The Influencer Marketing Factory Podcast: Navigating The Arena Of Influencer Marketing & The Creator Economy

I was recently a guest on the Influencer Marketing Factory Podcast, hosted by Alessandro Bogliari, where we delved into a variety of topics related to the creator economy and influencer marketing.

We discussed how I identify emerging trends, strategies for retaining creators on platforms, the future of social commerce, optimizing social media content for search engines, influencers as full-time employees, and more. To top it off, we also had a fun Q&A session at the end of the episode.

You can listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts and Spotify or watch it on YouTube.

What I’m Reading

• How Gen Z social media managers became the new CMOs (Fast Company) 

• Everybody wants to influence the world: Inside the fame, money and evolution of influencers (USA Today)

  How TikTok influencers are helping companies recruit new workers (CNBC)

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