The creator economy is changing marketing in various ways, and keeping up can be challenging for content marketers unfamiliar with this relatively new landscape.
Fortunately, HubSpot invests in creators and keeps a pulse on the latest content creation trends. I spoke to creators in HubSpot’s Creator Program and asked for their advice on how marketing professionals can adapt to the creator economy.
Lessons Content Marketers Can Learn from HubSpot’s Creators
Here’s what HubSpot’s creators say about how marketers can thrive in the creator economy.
Create Valuable Content
“When creating content, you have to keep your ideal audience in mind,” John Lee Dumas of the podcast Entrepreneurs on Fire said. “What challenges, questions, or struggles are they facing right now? Every piece of content you create should aim to help them get a quick win or aid them in overcoming a challenge, question, or struggle.”
To understand what’s valuable to your audience, create buyer personas based on data and research. Buyer personas represent your ideal customers and include information such as their age, habits, problems, occupations, and more.
Buyer personas will help you create content that suits the need of your target audience and will help ensure your work aligns with your vision.
Another key to creating valuable content is not to get hung up on algorithms. While it’s okay to keep social algorithms in mind regarding the visibility of your content — algorithms are not your target audience.
“Create for your audience, not the algorithms,” said HubSpot’s Director of New Media Kyle Denhoff. “Provide news, education, and information that is helpful for your niche.”
Be Consistent
The only way to get better at content creation is to keep doing it consistently, but that’s not the only reason consistency is essential. Consistency also builds trust with your audience.
“Your audience will continue coming back to you for advice and guidance when they know, like, and trust you. And the fastest way to build knowing, liking, and trust is to be consistent,” Dumas said. “If you’re not providing them with answers, they’ll find them someplace else.”
Consistency looks different for everyone. Some content creators post every day, some post once a week, and some once a month. It’s up to you how often you put out content, but whatever you decide — it has to be regularly.
“Publish every day or every week,” Denhoff said. “Select the day and time that you release your content. Help your audience build a habit.
Create for Community
“The creator economy is pushing marketing to a 100% community-first approach,” said Troy Sandidge of iDigress. “The community has always been important, and with its increasing popularity and valuation of $13.7 billion last year, it is expected to rise exponentially.”
This community-first approach stems from platforms like Twitch and Discord rising in popularity and becoming spaces where people with similar interests can come together and connect.
“Instead of focusing on personal personas, marketers will be focusing on community personas and trends and also find overlapping micro-influencers within identified communities to help drive their marketing initiatives,” Sandidge said. “For marketers to win in the creator economy, they must create for the community and connection, and command attention for consistent conversions.”
To create relevant community-based content, revisit those buyer personas I mentioned earlier. Conduct research and gather data to determine what platforms your target audience uses and what communities they are a part of. From there, you’ll be able to create helpful content for that community. You can also find creators and influencers within the community to introduce your brand to their audience.
Make Multipurpose Content
Of course, creating fresh content regularly can be daunting, but there’s a way to work around that obstacle — make content that serves multiple purposes!
“One of my best pieces of advice is first to take the time to understand why you’re creating content and who exactly you are creating that content for,” said John Jantsch, host of Duct Tape Marketing. “Then create every piece of content with the idea that it is going to have multiple uses.”
This can mean creating a TikTok video that can be repurposed for Instagram Reels or adding an image to a podcast recording and uploading it to YouTube. You can also take snippets from your Twitch livestream and upload them to YouTube Shorts.
“For example, we will do a webinar that turns into a podcast that turns into a blog post that turns into multiple social media posts,” Jantsch said. “This allows us to plug our content into the channels that people like to use. Ultimately meeting our audience wherever they are without feeling burnt out or overwhelmed as a creator.”
In short, to set yourself up for success in the creator economy, you should create valuable, community-focused, and consistent content. Now that you have these principles, you’re ready to craft or refine your content marketing strategy.
