Creator fan engagement platforms have come a long way, baby!

And everyone from beehiiv to link-in-bio sites are launching new features faster than I can say, “Wait, is that in settings?”

Well, actually, strike that. They continue to revisit the same value propositions with new packaging.

Back in 2006, I was telling MySpace stars to start building their mailing lists so they could actually reach their audience.

It’s all just bundling and unbundling, then bundling again.

I digress.

It feels like many challenger platforms (I define this as any platform not one of the major social media platforms) are launching a ton of new features exceptionally quickly.

Is this the impact of AI and vibe-coding? Almost certainly.

But it’s time for my Boomer POV on how platforms should be considering these ‘everything store’ moves and how creators should look at implementing these technologies into their content mix.

Also in this edition:

📳 Syracuse Goes All-In on the Creator Economy

📝 TikTok Puts Up a Bulletin Board

💰 YouTube Courts Advertisers with Show ‘Premieres’

❤️ iHeart and TikTok Podcast Together

💪🏼 Jobs from TMZ, Team One, and Sepulveda Sanchez Accident Attorneys

🎭 …and a dank meme from yours truly!

Let’s get into it.

TLDR:

Here are the new features beehiiv announced last week:

That’s a lot of stuff!

In normal times, this would be years of announcements.

But these are normal times. Welcome to the vibe-coding era.

AI can make digital building 10 times as fast, and giving users access to AI can make these features 10 times more scalable.

And there’s absolutely zero shade to beehiiv for this announcement, as I plan to use almost all of these features in the near future.

So the obvious question, “Phil, how are you going to turn this objectively good announcement into something annoyingly troublesome?”

Glad you asked!

As someone who has spent a lot of time working on both platform businesses and creator businesses, let’s break down the challenges and benefits to launching a ton of features for both the platform business and their creator customers.

THE PLATFORM

Benefits

I’m a big fan of the “if this is true, what else could be true” method of product features.

In beehiiv’s case: if this platform is already helping me slide into my fans’ inbox and collect their e-mails, something big tech would never allow, what else is valuable?

Of course! Websites! Another place to capture even more and even better data!

And from there, now that I know who I’m talking to, digital product sales makes sense!

And since most people don’t go to websites first from socials, but rather link-in-bios, the full integration is a natural!

If you can start by solving one problem, and through that solve make it simple to solve a lot of other problems, that’s a winner!

Challenges

Every feature needs its own marketing.

I’ll repeat that: every feature needs its own marketing.

Think of a platform like a Walmart. Getting people in the door is step one. Getting people to buy things is step two.

Marketing the platform then expecting the features to be adopted and celebrated is simply not reality.

Think of all of the stuff Facebook has launched in the past decade. Facebook Dating? Instant Games? Lasso? Never heard of these? Exactly.

These were all important enough for earnings calls for a multi-billion dollar company, but not important enough to focus on real marketing heft on the platform.

Because the platform had and has other more important priorities for the future of the business.

In other words, they launched expensive projects that were doomed to fail because they didn’t understand that every feature needs its own marketing.

THE CREATORS

Benefits

If you’re a savvy creator with business acumen, you’re looking at your business holistically to create the best outcomes for your customers (fans).

To name a few: distribution, branded sales, IP exploitation, merch, production, and community management.

And if you’re looking at these and thinking, “Great! I have a platform for all of these!” then you’re correct!

But that’s also a problem.

You have a lot of platforms. Way too many to give each proper attention.

That’s why even the biggest creators have Facebook profiles that haven’t been updated in 5 years, Shopify storefronts with designs from 2017, link-in-bios with broken links, and inactive Discord channels.

If there is a simple way for better management of a larger portion of the business in one interface, that should be beneficial to you as a creator and your fans who want more high quality output from you.

Challenges

Creators can’t change platforms every day.

But if you’ve ever been in the business inquiries inbox of a popular creator, you know the market wants them to.

One example: I just ran a quick search in one of our popular creators inboxes for “link-in-bio” and found over 100 e-mails from link-in-bio sites trying to move them over across maybe 20 companies.

That means these creators need to set up 20 different link-in-bios to evaluate which one is most effective.

Then, once they decide, they need to stick to that for a while so their audience doesn’t feel the whiplash of changing platforms every day.

Suddenly, just going with Linktree because it’s the most popular doesn’t sound too bad!

In other words, platforms are always fighting against habituation and creators’ own time crunch.

So your platform won’t get adoption if it’s 10% better than the alternative. It needs to be 200% better.

There needs to be something you do so dang well that a creator is willing to dedicate their precious time into validating that it actually does it so well.

So when I see ‘website builder’ I always think “Great! My creator spend 10 hours building their Wix site. Is your solution so much better that they’ll spend another 5 hours redoing it over here?”

And if there are too many value propositions that the creator already has covered, will they start thinking they’re ‘buying’ a bunch of stuff they don’t need, even if the price is the same or lower than where it was before that value was offered?

Platforms don’t often think of these creator challenges, but this explains 95% of the reason they aren’t rushing to adopt your product.

Have you thought about selling your creator business?

RockWater advises owners in the creator economy on the sale of their business. We have the largest buyer network, and negotiate the best deals possible for our clients. We’re proud to be the industry’s top M&A advisor.

We recently advised on the sale of Feedfeed, a social media publisher and creator network, to People Inc., a publicly traded media co. We’ve also advised Click Management (sale to GameSquare), Lionize (an IM platform, sold to gen.video), Long Haul Mgmt (sold to Wasserman), Bottle Rocket Mgmt (sold to Night), Bounty (a UGC platform, sold to gen.video), and more deals are in the works.

If you want a POV on your company’s valuation and readiness for a sale, reach out to to chris@wearerockwater.com to setup an intro call.

What creators, brands, governments, and platforms are making waves this week in the name of fortune, fame, and fun?

📳 Syracuse University launched a first-of-its-kind Center for the Creator Economy with a star-studded launch featuring a keynote by Jon Youshaei. As someone who hired a ton of Syracuse students in 2012 at Fullscreen I feel like I can finally say it: “You’re welcome, Syracuse!”

📝 TikTok has officially launched the Bulletin Board feature that allows creators to send announcements, polls, and more to their followers. Finally you can build community on TikTok without having to turn your information into a trending dance!

💰 YouTube has always loved premium content (remember YouTube Red? Rentals?) and now they’re courting brands with ‘Creator Premieres’, where they announced premium initiatives made by their top creators from Trevor Noah to MsRachel.

❤️ Off the heels of Netflix announcing a deal for podcasts with Spotify, TikTok announced their podcast deal with radio heavyweights iHeart. With this slate of 25 shows and a studio space in Los Angeles, they plan to make longform podcasts built around short clips for promotion.

Content Creator, TMZ

Did we start calling papparazzi ‘content creators’ now? Maybe. But this role seems to be a bit less about shoving a camera in Britney’s face while she’s trying to have dinner at Grandmaster Recordings and more about social-first formats about pop culture, which could give you a leg up on your own reach as they’ll need a face to put on camera!

Content Creator, Team One

Don’t let the name fool you. Team One is actually Publicis, one of the largest marketing firms in the world. This role will get you involved in loads of top content creation challenges across brands and B2B markets and command a salary higher than most content creator gigs.

Social Media Content Creator for Law Firm, Sepulveda Sanchez Accident Lawyers

I love this job post. Anyone who has ever seen a billboard knows that accident attorneys are some of the most aggressive marketers in the world. Why? Because their revenue per client is massive. But few, sans Johnson & Johnson, have done much with social media. Though this isn’t the biggest firm, this shows their understanding of social media as a funnel that can be even more effective than that $2k billboard off of the 405.