Community & creator monetisation 💰 | 👀 Anthro Newsletter #029
Your weekly newsletter on brands, culture and insights.
Welcome to your weekly source of must read content about brands, culture and actionable insights. If you’re a founder, at a start-up, in agency or in house - this is the place for your dose of industry news. I’m trying to make this one of the most valuable emails you receive each week. If you’ve enjoyed this issue, please hit the 💗 button.
Hey friends,
Happy end of Feb! Start of March!
Today we’re talking all things creator economy and monetisation and you guessed it - how Twitter is helping this all come to life.
I’m kinda mind blown by how much good work Twitter is doing for the media and creative industries right now.
Let’s get straight into it.
A world with a better business model:
To date, media companies have operated on ad-based business models, where they thrive off commodifying our attention spans (ugh, the worst!). People create content, and then the media companies sell adverts that make them money. Incumbent “influencers” then follow suit and do the same, selling themselves for “reach” statistics. Quantity over quality.
Twitter, like other new age media such as Patreon, are flipping this model on its head. How? By incentivising high quality content creation with monetization and putting that money directly in the hands of creators. In an age where many brands are realising the value of paid social ads isn’t worth it, and users are getting bored of Instagram and Facebook, Twitter couldn’t be doing this at a better time.
So what else is Twitter up to now?
Right. I know you’ve all heard me banging on about Twitter Spaces (and if you haven’t, where have you been? Catch up here!). But alongside Twitter’s venture into the audio space the company told us they are working on the concepts of Super Follow and Communities this week.
What’s a Super Follow? This is Twitter’s upcoming payments feature - allowing users to charge for extra content, from bonus tweets, access to groups or newsletter subscriptions. Patreon and Substack are two examples (aside from the obvious YouTube and Facebook) to implement payments features for creators in this way.
What’s Communities? A long awaited answer to Facebook groups - where people can create and join groups centred on specific interests.
Aside from keeping you up to date with the most exciting industry updates, this wouldn’t be an Anthro newsletter without helping you understand what you can do with this info.
So here you go…
👀 3 key takeaways for your brand:
Brands that will succeed into the future need to be part of, or creators of, community. If you're not yet invested in creating a community for your brand, check out the different platforms your fans can live on here.
Twitter is quickly moving from giving us the news now, to a creator economy hub.
There is a growing shift away from ad-based revenue models. Organic brand marketing is the best way to navigate a digital landscape where paid social ads don't get results.
Other interesting things:
Information for creators on Twitter - Twitter
For those of you that have been asking me how you can also become a Twitter Spaces host during their beta testing phase, they now have a sign up form - Sign up to become a Twitter Spaces beta tester here
Twitter’s Super Follows literally destroys the barrier between social media and paid communities. They can now be one and the same. It’s more of a game-changer than any of us realize.WHy brands should take note of Twitter’s Super Follow launch - Callum McCahon, Campaign
Li Jin launches Aterlier Ventures, a $13M debut fund investing in the passion economy - Lenny Rachitsky, Lenny’s Newsletter
Thanks for reading this week - see you again, same place, same time next week!
Sanya 😊
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Written by Sanya-Jeet Thandi, a brand strategist & consultant with a love for culture, start-ups and good karma. British Indian currently in Kent & London. You can connect with me on Twitter, but not Instagram, because it’s boring so I deleted it.
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