By Amaury Abreu
Social media content creation is not an easy task and many social media influencers make it seem like that. In today’s reading we will learn about the process of creating content, what are some of the technical aspects of creating content and how monetizing content actually works and how female social media creators do struggle and some solutions from my experience to help them transition from unpaid work to paid work. “ Investing as little as six hours a week in content marketing was enough for 91% of marketers to claim an increase in web traffic.” (84 Facts You Didn’t Know About Content Marketing By Jaykishan Panchal).
As a social media content creator myself I have to say that creating content has been a vital part of opportunities that have been presented to me that have helped me become a more known public figure. In this week reading we learned how many female social media creators do a lot of good work for no compensation. I have to say that it is true, many companies take advantage of female entrepreneurs. I have friends who have promoted, bought into and given a lot of their time in pursuit of the “social media blogger lifestyle” but yet they lack the business savvy to know how to not let companies take advantage of them. Social Media content creation is not an easy task, it requires putting extra time out of your day to day work to increase the traffic of people reading your blog or watching your videos or following you on social media.
“Technological innovations have had a major impact on our environment and the opportunities it presents for development. Initially opportunities for socialization were restricted by boundaries of space and time, e.g. interactions tended to be face-to-face and at set times; at best they could be supported by telephone calls and email. However, the introduction of Web 2.0, especially mobile applications, has blurred if not broken the barriers of space and time and expanded the opportunities for socialization and identity development and creation on a global scale.”(Terras, M. M., et al. “Digital Media Production and Identity: Insights from a Psychological Perspective.”) While social media content creation has created a whole new economy for us creators, there is still a complex case of female content creators who struggle to monetize their platforms. But before we go into more detail on that, we must speak on the actual aspect of what it looks like to create content.
The first step to creating content is to figure out what topic you want to focus on as a creator, this will depend on who the creator is and what they are good at. After setting up an schedule for what the content is going to be, we have to take time to sit down and either write, voice record or video tape what we want to share, but the process does not end there, we also have to make sure to edit the content created and last but not least, we need to distribute it and that is where things get fun. Content promotion takes money and understanding how to get people’s attention, and if you find your niche that can become an easy task but it also never ends.
Once the content and audience is growing over time, this is when we get advertisers interested in using our platform to promote their products and the type of advertisers we get will depend on the content we post and industry we belong to. Content creation is not only about creating and posting, it is also about business fundamentals. Sadly, many female social media creators do not educate or get educated in the topic of the business side of having a business and trying to sell their platform in exchange for money. Some of the solutions I am able to provide to female social media content creators is to take the time to educate themselves on the business side of their labor and get to know how to monetize and get paid for their work. No female creator should be taken advantage of and taking the time to educate themselves will help with avoiding situations like that.
Monetizing one’s channel comes by understanding the audience reach and what is the industry standard of what is good to charge a company that is looking to use our platforms to promote their products. Another way that a content creator can monetize their platform is to create their own product and sell it, this will help with making sure that they are able to tap into their already established audience and sell their own product. These are some ideas on how female creators are able to make sure they are paid for their labor. Social media has been a great gateway for people to monetize the content that they create and specially for female entrepreneurs who are in rising up to be industry leaders and in the forefront of better quality of work and we must make sure to support them in this process
Author: Amaury Abreu
