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Are you thinking of how to become a content creator? Content creation is how you connect with the world whether you’re a brand or an aspiring influencer. It’s the best way to get the message out and it’s one of the most desirable career paths in 2023. That’s because the glamor of becoming a social media celebrity attracts people from all over the world and everyone wants to be a content creator. The best part is that the internet is so vast that there will never be a “surplus” of content.
People are hungry for new content and brands are always looking for new content creators. If you have that inner desire to become a content creator, now is the best time to start because there are many platforms and technologies that can help you achieve stardom in no-time. In this article, we will explore the 7 important steps to becoming a content creator in 2023. Without further ado, let’s get started!
Understanding the Role of a Content Creator
Understanding the role of a content creator is essential before taking your first step. A content creator is someone who produces and publishes unique, creative, catchy and informative content particularly across social platforms. The main job of a content creator is to keep their audience engaged and offer value to them in return. However, it all depends on the niche you’ve chosen and who your target audience is.
Your content can either be entertaining, educational, informational or a combination of these. By doing this, you’ll be able to build a solid connection with your audience while establishing yourself as an expert in your field.
Plus, it’s up to you to decide what type of content you want to create. In an educational niche you can put out blogs, podcasts or long-form Youtube videos. To become an entertainer you can make memes or short skits. It all depends on your skills and interests – the possibilities are endless. With that being said, here are the steps you need to follow to become a content creator.
1. Find Your Niche and Target Audience
Your journey as a content creator begins with finding your niche and target audience. Here some of the steps that you can follow to identify these two:
- Choosing a Niche: Discovering your niche can be very challenging if you're a beginner. Start analyzing your passion, interests, hobbies, and experiences, which will give you insights into choosing your specialty.
- Defining Target Audience: After you identify your niche, create an outline of your target audience by learning about their behaviors and interests. For example, a fitness creator should target people who are health conscious and are engaged in physical activities.
- Researching Target Audience: You should also carry out a thorough research on your target audience by learning their preferences, screentime, pain points, passion, etc. Use a tool like Hypeauditor to monitor some of your competitors and see social analytics to understand how audiences interact with them.
2. Equip Yourself With Content Creation Skills
Producing content which is attractive, catchy, and worth your audience’s time requires exceptional skills. There are plenty of skills that you can equip yourself with. These include writing, photography, video editing, graphic design, and social media marketing. Knowing about each of these skills is important in this era because writing will help you communicate your ideas, photography will make your ideas visually appealing, video editing will allow you to create professional-quality content, graphic design will enable you to make social media posts, and eventually social media marketing will effectively help you make strong online presence.
It is not mandatory to learn all of them but having a basic understanding of each one of them is really critical nowadays. You can either learn about them from watching online tutorials, reading blogs, or taking online courses. It is up to you.
3. Choose the Right Platform
When you’re starting out on your journey as a creator, use a platform that allows you to:
- Reach your actual target audiences
- Monetize your work as quickly as possible
For instance, if your target audience is primarily business owners then you wouldn’t go out searching for them on TikTok or Snapchat. LinkedIn would be the best option in this case. Also – your choice of platform also depends on what kind of content creator you are. Here’s a quick rundown of platforms:
Youtube
Youtube is for all of those video bloggers or vloggers out there. While Youtube does have a Shorts feature, it mostly prioritizes long-form content in horizontal video format and has done since its very first day. The platform is highly competitive and has very strict monetization policies. It takes a while before you start earning paychecks on Youtube so a lot of people use it in combination with monetization platforms like Patreon or Paysenger to support their work.
Facebook is great for brands or B2B businesses thanks to its ads network. You can easily promote educational content, short videos and even articles. However, it’s very hard to get impressions on Facebook because it doesn’t help propagate your messaging to target users unless you have a big advertising budget to spare.
As you might know, Instagram is great for reaching millennials with short videos and photos. This platform is all about creativity and posting content that grabs its viewers attention immediately. That’s why a lot of content creators focus on creating shocking or visually appealing imagery to boost their following on Instagram.
Paysenger
Sadly, current social platforms like Youtube or Instagram are highly competitive and don’t offer easy monetization features to creators who are just starting out. Without any income, it becomes very hard for small to medium size creators to grow in a reliable way. Monetization only works for those who have established themselves as big names or who have backing from sponsors. Youtube’s algorithm generally favors top creators because they bring more engagement. Small creators get trapped in the noise and are forced to use donations from their viewers to earn income since Youtube ad revenue is very unreliable.
A platform like Paysenger gives you the perfect tools to grow your content creator business. Content creators on Paysenger can easily reach out to new audiences using paid messaging and earn money for fulfilling requests. It’s fully decentralized – all transactions and revenue payouts are made in EGO tokens (the platform’s native cryptocurrency). The income levels for all creators are equal and your earnings depend only on your creativity.
There’s no monopoly or competition from big celebrity names. Other features for creators include:
- On-demand content: Earn for fulfilling content requests from users. For example, this feature is used by sponsors to get a special video or shoutout from you. You get paid each time you complete a paid request.
- Subscriptions: Sell subscriptions to exclusive content and features to your followers. This can be on a one-time or a recurring basis.
- Collaborations: Collaborate with other creators to get extra exposure and to produce content together with them.
- NFT minting: Every piece of content you create on Paysenger can be minted into NFTs. If you create something in collaboration with others, both you and the other parties will own a partial stake in the content.
- Earn money for going viral: Paysenger rewards creativity by paying tokens to content creators with high engagement. These tokens can easily be exchanged for real-world currencies to fund your business.
Try Paysenger on iOS, Android or Web.
4. Create a Content Plan and Schedule
A content plan and calendar is like a content creator’s business plan. Having a plan is extremely important as it allows you to have a clear picture of what’s ahead. Content creation can become hectic, so a content plan helps you coordinate with others with ease. A content calendar is all of your content topics, publishing dates and platforms in one place. Creators produce this weeks and sometimes months in advance so they can keep rolling out content consistently at fixed intervals. This also helps you stay organized. You can even plan content ideas relevant to important events, holidays and special dates in advance so that you’re always posting the right content at the right time.
Here are some other pointers to remember when creating your content calendar:
- Set days or time dedicated to content creation
- Allocate time for research and idea brainstorming
- Allocate time for editing in order to refine your content quality
- Allocate time for content promotion
5. Build a Strong Online Presence and Personal Brand
In the digital age, you must accumulate a strong online presence and an indestructible personal brand if you’re looking to be a successful content creator. Since the content creation industry is highly saturated, you’ll need to have a unique brand and identity to stand out. One way to build a strong brand is by developing cross-platform consistency. Your content should be pushing the same ideas and values across all social media channels.
Don’t forget about showing consistency in your bio, design language and brand identity all over the internet. This will make you appear trustworthy and respectful. In addition, engage with your community. Offer giveaways and “perks” to people for supporting your cause. Reply to comments, DMs and work with other creators to build a solid community in your niche.
6. Build a Strong Network in Your Niche
Collaborations will help you develop a presence as a content creator. Partnerships with brands and co-creation with other influencers will give you access to a bigger audience. Use platforms like Paysenger to easily co-create with other influencers. To collaborate with another content creator on Paysenger, simply:
- Sign up to Paysenger (iOS, Android or Web)
- Find creators using search filters or by their name
- Go to their profiles and view their portfolio
- Send a paid message to immediately get their attention
- Describe your request to collaborate
Other creators and potential sponsors can also reach out to you in a similar way. So create an account on Paysenger and start posting content there – this will help you get noticed faster.
7. Analyzing Your Content's Performance
To keep growing and improving, you need to measure your content’s success through key performance indicators (KPIs). Metrics that you want to measure include number of views, average social media engagement rate, reach and impressions. If you want to run paid collaborations with other influencers or ad campaigns, then you can also track metrics like return on investment (ROI).
You can either do that using spreadsheets or platforms like Hootsuite, Sprout Social and Google Analytics. This will ensure that every decision you make is in the right direction. Use past data to improve your strategy such as topic selection, content calendar and so on.
Successful Content Creators Who Built Their Brands from Scratch
There are undoubtedly a lot of real life success stories in the content creation industry. Here are a few content creators out of millions globally who built their brands from scratch:
- Casey Neistat: One of the leading Youtubers worldwide kicked off his journey by shooting his life using an iPhone. Since then, he has gained tremendous popularity and has around 12.5 million subscribers.
- Michelle Phan: A beauty blogger and Youtuber who commenced her career by filming makeup tutorials in her bedroom. She has also got a large fanbase mainly because she simplifies complicated techniques and makes them easier to understand for the general public. She currently has 8.7 million subscribers on Youtube.
- Tim Ferriss: A best-selling author and podcaster who also self-published his book "The 4-Hour Work Week," which became well-known in the self-help and productivity genres.
Being a Content Creator in 2023 Can be Challenging!
In this digital era, people are continuously bombarded by notifications and spam on social media. Facebook revealed that the average attention span of a social media user on desktop is 2.5 seconds whereas on mobile it’s just 1.7 seconds. And that’s primarily due to information overload. There’s just way too many distractions and too much competition for you as a creator on traditional platforms. That’s why you must extract every last bit of your creativity and make your content stand out. Copying others just doesn’t cut it anymore.
Let’s say, if you’re a food blogger, you can’t expect to become famous or keep your audience hooked if you’re not doing something shocking or exciting. You will get ignored if you can’t hook them in in the first 2 seconds. Technical skills and having a strong craft are essential to leap forward. So, you must improve your videography, photography, editing skills and social media marketing to compete with millions of other creators for attention. However, you can get rid of this competition by using Paysenger. It’s a relatively new social marketplace that’s in its early growth stages. You get a chance to get extra exposure by becoming an early adopter. Your achievements on Paysenger can easily be translated to successes on other platforms once you grow.
Conclusion
To wrap it up, pursuing the journey of becoming a content creator in 2023 is not a cup of tea for everyone, but it can be extremely rewarding and fulfilling if done with the right tools. With the right approach, staying true to your goals and by following the 7 steps laid out in this article, you can achieve significant growth as a creator. Become an early adopter of Paysenger now and boost your journey as a content creator! Earn a living by selling content, monetize your brand and find sponsors for your content.