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Getting Started

To conquer the internet as a creator, here's how to begin:

1. Niche: A niche is your home in the middle of the internet's vast terrain. It is the one thing separating you from everyone else. The formula to find your niche is (Unique Perspective x Knowledge = Niche).

2. Audience Building: Having an audience leads to serendipitous activity, creates opportunities, and develops authentic relationships. During this stage, you'll want to:

A. Remain Specific: Don't step outside your home. Stay in your niche. Be too general, and you'll be unrecognizable in the sea of content.

B. Interact Dutifully: Interact with other accounts who have large followings and offer something of value each time. Respond to audience members to develop an emotional connection.

C. Remix Ideas: Take an idea you adore from a creator and remix it. You could either switch its original medium or write a long-form essay on the piece. Chances are, the OG creator will promote it because it's providing free advertising.

3. Build Relentlessly: Be cognizant of the balance between your consumption and production. Creation should always top mindless consumption.

The internet is still in its infancy stages. The majority of people don't understand - truly understand - how much potential lies within.

Let down your guard. As a content creator - you have something that makes you unique, engaging, and valuable. Don’t say - ‘I don’t have anything interesting to share. You most certainly do - your followers think so too.

2. Find your niche. For some- this may be like your hobbies or interests. For others- it may be something you’ve studied, gained real-life experience through work, or lived. It’s the one thing separating you from other creators but bringing you closer to your fans.

[Formula: Unique Perspective x Knowledge = Niche]

3. Choose your format. Camera Shy? Writing reminds you of school? Fortunately, there is more than one way you can create. Start by taking an idea you adore from a creator and curate it (remix). You could either switch its original medium or on the one you’re familiar with.

4. Find your voice. Are you a natural storyteller? Is Data your bestie when making points? Or humor? The more at-bats (sports reference, i.e., tries) you take with creating, the easier it becomes to build however you like. It’s most essential to let your personality shine through.

5. Do your research. Get to know who follows you, i.e., your audience.

What questions are you asking you?

What unique Perspective can you add that hasn’t been shared yet in a niche?

What do the people who interact with your profiles enjoy?

Any pressing questions you can provide answers to?

Read good blogs and books. Surround yourself with creativity and unique perspectives on Youtube, Twitch, IRL. This is the research you can put in to create high-quality content.

6. Build and share away! Your audience and your niche definitely hang out in different corners of the web. By creating - you can curate your own corner for them. [ ie: community]. Share your content via email, social networks, text, etc. As a creator - there’s a community waiting for you. You can earn from your Perspective. Build, build, build, and ship as much content as you can.

Interact with other accounts who have large followings and offer something of value each time. Respond to audience members to develop an emotional connection. This should help you. The next lock to unlock is how you drive engagement and likes - some people say it’s virality, or some say it’s sweaty work. Find out what we think. 😉

How to find your niche?

So we always hear 'make content in your niche, 'don't post outside your niche; if you get too general, you'll lose engagement. I just want to be clear. They are NOT wrong. Let's just start out by peeling a layer back and understanding - what a niche is and how we can help you find yours. Disclaimer: we all have a lot of niches; I believe in the intersectionality of interests. There are always people who share what you like - trust that.

What does your niche mean?

Niche is what you contribute value you bring to your audience. It's the topic and everything that surrounds the issue - brand, community, business.

If you want to create a successful brand as a creator, it's not enough to just create content. The proper engagement with your followers can make the difference between success and failure.

Elements of a Niche

Topic - the targeted topic of your content.

Format: What you choose to create?

Language: How does your audience communicate?

Audience: Who do you serve?

Voice: How will you communicate?

Platform: Where does your audience live?

If you're able to develop a thesis for these questions, iterate on feedback, and talk to fans. You'll be successful. Here are three steps you can take to find a niche.

Step 1: Start by identifying the overlap.

Look inside yourself and think about these questions.

What do you want to show the world as a creator?

What aspects of your personality or life experiences do you have in common with other creators?

What have you created in the past that's gotten good feedback?

When you've figured the above out, you can conduct research on other platforms. You should figure out the following:

Where are people already spending their money?

What are they already reading, watching, consuming?

Reverse-engineer the things that other people are already doing to create content and earn. You can start by curating content into something new.

Step 2: Creates A LOT of content OFTEN to get noticed.

"When you focus - you give your audience an anchor… They go to your content and know immediately what they're going to get." - Bella Cooper.

Volume helps your audience believe your message.

When you're first starting, think of every piece of content and a|b test to a big pond of people. Be the creator who's sending out 10+ tweets a day, 205 tik-toks per week, 100 diffusion boards! It'll grow faster, thanks to compounding.

Step 3: Monetize through creating and getting feedback.

Content ->Follower -> Community -> $

You can't make money until people know who you are, trust your taste, and you've made something they find valuable.

In the creator economy, success is no secret. The secret is to focus on making things that other people value. If you want the rewards that creators enjoy, income & community. Solve the real needs of people.

Who cares if you're not an expert in everything—focus on what interests you

and position yourself as a knowledgeable resource on that topic. Be Confident. Find what content resonates with fans - how they like to digest it, what their needs and pains are. Bring those who find what you create most valuable into a community, and they'll find a way to take care of you. For successful creators, the work is listening and figuring out who before the what! They create what they can with the skills they have for the people they know. It's not until they've proven value that they reap the benefits.

is that by producing a large amount of publicly-available content, they created:

Multiple opportunities for audience feedback to help them refine their work.

Numerous entry points into their brand. More content = more discoverability.

A huge backlist of completed media that can be reshared, repackaged, and monetized.

The surest way to find your niche is to create your way into one.

Why communities are so successful?

⁠

Above you'll find a commitment curve to a community drawn by Douglas Atkins from the glue project and

Airbnb⁠

. Ultimately - this suggests that new members enter from curiosity, start contributing with low friction/simple items that can generate momentum for them in the eyes of community members.

Although this seems straightforward, the root questions to discover are: how do I build a community from scratch? Why would people want to join my community? As a creator, influencer, entrepreneur, etc., it's our responsibility to create reasons and valuable content for people to join and be engaged in the community for long-term.

To begin - let's understand why people join communities:

They perceive the community as a part or extension of their true self (i.e., shared niche, hobby, creator, passion, etc. )

They have current connections in the community and/or aim to find people similar to them.

They seek to get recognized for their quality contributions to the community, creator, or even purpose.

Though not the complete reasons that people do. This is what we've received as feedback from creators who have communities and fans who contribute to them. As we begin to leave Web 2.0 behind and are on the bridge from Web 2.5 to Web 3.0, three concepts will be key - curation, niche, and community. Community is where the top fans live and engage.

If you're a creator who believes in the power of community and niche - visit

Diffusion⁠

. We're creating a creator tool that allows you to earn by adding your perspective to your favorite web content.

Next up: How to build an organic community?

Organic growth for communities

Table of Contents

⁠

Building a community organically

Start with the groundwork for the communityFinding members who would connect with the communityGaining trustInitiating engagementDelivering valueTesting the repeatable frameworkScale with a community platformInvite the right people to the communityAdd an exclusivity layer into the communityEngage, improve participation and rewardTap into the referral networkTime to grow your community organically

Building a community organically

Now that we have an understanding of why people join a community and what could be steps to attract them as well as keep them engaged, let’s do a deep dive into the steps. Note that this post is about a brand community where the goal is to connect the customers and prospects with peers as well as the brand.

Start with the groundwork for the community

Build a conceptual personality of your community (this Kapferer’s

brand prism⁠

can help) based on what you envision if were a person. From here, the community owner should start small with a select group of people who closely match with the community. Discuss with them (either in-person or virtual conference) if it makes sense for them to join such a community and what they would expect from such a community.

Ensure that you’re able to clearly define the value the members are expecting from the community.

Here are the steps to follow in this stage:

Finding members who would connect with the community

As a business, you are already aware of your target audience, your existing customers and how they interact with your business as well as their expectations. So, start with that data and see who you already know from your custom group would like to be a part of the community.

This is a critical step since these early entrants would shape the community and all your decisions will be based on their feedback.

Gaining trust

You don’t have a community yet, so would they believe that the community will be valuable for them! That’s when you as a community owner come into the picture. The members must be able to trust that you are going to commit to the idea of the community and help them.

Ensure that your dialogue with the prospective members is very inclusive and you must make them feel that they are going to play a big role in building the community.

Initiating engagement

Since you have a small group of people who have bought the idea of the community, now it’s time to start engaging with them and connecting them with each other. That’s when the trust they have placed in you as a community owner would transcend to the trust between them.

Delivering value

c Apart from that as a business, you can also compensate via coupons and vouchers.

Testing the repeatable framework

Since you have closed the feedback loop and delivered value to the community members, it is time to test if your community proposal is valuable enough for the existing small group so that they would share the same with their network. If you are still witnessing any missing pieces, make the amendments and perfect the above-mentioned loop.

This would be successful if you truly see that people consider themselves as part of the community and looking for other members to invite to the community.

Scale with a community platform

Since you are well-aware of the expectations and what triggers your community members, select a community platform where the members can connect and perform the activities that you want as a brand. It could be anything from sharing ideas and helping each other to keeping the members updated and collecting feedback.

This stage is all about bringing in the

right technology⁠

to scale the repeatable process that you have finalized in the previous stage.

Invite the right people to the community

Start with a small group of people very much like the previous phase to ensure the tone of the community is set correct. That’s going to inspire future members and help them get involved by following the examples set by the first group. Some of the common channels to look into are the CRM system, support system, social media channels, content subscribers.

Also, note that you need to seed the community with the right content to ensure that there are enough resources to get the discussion going.

Add an exclusivity layer into the community

Keep certain aspects of the community exclusive and give some of the key privileges to the trusted members. That way you are ensuring quality and motivating the members to do good to gain those privileges. One of the most common examples for brand communities is about building an exclusive group inside a community dedicated to

super users⁠

of the community or power users of the product.

The members will a high

reputation⁠

would be able to participate in those exclusive groups.

Engage, improve participation and reward

Keep the community filled with valuable and engaging content to ensure that there is always enough resources for the members. You can also gamify the whole participation via reputation score, badges, redeemable virtual currencies, competitions, etc.

Empower the members to ask answers from the peers for the existing questions. Successful businesses are filled with examples of manufacturing engagement until they are on auto-pilot mode.

Quora team used to post questions and answer on their own until they achieved organic growth. The same goes for Reddit.

Here is a guide from Reddit for the subreddit owners and moderators:

Tap into the referral network

At this stage, you know that your members are motivated to participate in the community and are getting rewarded for the contributions. Perhaps they want to deliver the same value to people they already know. So, give them a way to invite their network.

You can open up the referral channel based tiered participation level. The first priority goes to the super users, then the loyal members, active contributors, engaged members, and so on. A popular example is the Product Hunt community that allowed only the early members to invite other members.

Time to grow your community organically

This concludes the list of steps you need to follow when launching a community from scratch based on two stages of community building. As your community evolves with time, you would notice more and more engagement from the members.

Essentially, you need to find the community identity, invite a small group of people who would resonate with the idea of the community, collect feedback, give reward and scale the whole process via a community platform (e.g.,

Tribe⁠

). The ultimate frontier is keeping the members engaged in the community and leveraging the referral network.

What’s the Creator Funnel?

The internet is noisy for new creators. It can be challenging to figure out what advice to take, what platforms to choose to monetize and get your name out. It can be a hard place for a lot of creators to break out. Over at diffusion, we’ve spoken with nearly 75 creators, ranging in cross platform followings from 1,500 to 2.5M. The most common problems that creators faced when getting started were:

How do I get people to notice the content I'm creating?

How do I get people to pay for the content i’ve created?

The answer? Develop a Content Strategy, in other words, research, plan, develop, and manage everything around content. The trends you jump on, the way you format, the release times etc. To set-up a strong Content Strategy it’s important to understand the way content is discovered in the funnel. Growth begins here.

The funnel explains how both your followers and followers turned fans will discover your content, engage with you content, and support ($$?).

4 stages of the creator content funnel are as followed:

Discovery

Trust

Access

Purchase

Stage 1: Discovery

The content you’ll make to begin will ideally be free and short. The focus here is to create content that allows you to identify your niche but also be discovered where people are already spending their time (listen to our last piece for discovering your niche

here⁠

Why free? Well, when content is free, it has no barriers for it to spread and be consumed. Your goal should be to make it easy for people understand but enjoyable for people to share This can be done by focusing on the essential points of each piece you make and letting your personality shine through.

Create content where you find it easiest to do so but reamember to spread your content where people are spending alot of the time and are sharing content that is similar to yours - Instagram,Tik-Tok, Twitter, Diffusion, Reddit, etc. This will give you the ability to be discovered and receive feedback on your content.

Stage 2: Trust

Stage two is the core of creative output — whereas stage one was a bite-sized version of what you enjoy creating, stage two presents the entire meal.

This phase aims to build trust with your audience by inviting them to engage at a deeper level with your work.

If they discovered you through short videos, now you can show them a 10-minute vlog or a 30-minute documentary. If your short content was a tweet thread, the next step would be an entire article or ebook on the same topic.

Stage 3: Access

At this step, our framework diverges significantly from other content funnel strategies. Most agree that once you've gained a sizable amount of trust with your audience, that's when you monetize through every means possible: merchandise, online products and courses, events, affiliate recommendations, etc.

Although none of these methods are necessarily wrong, the ideology that creators should monetize as much of their audience in as many ways as possible can be toxic. You don't have to search far for examples of creators whose audiences abandoned them shortly after a shady merchandising deal or product drop.

A better, more sustainable way to think about the next phase is through access.

This is your opportunity to deepen the relationship with your true fans, the segment of your audience most invested in your work. Access invites people to engage with either more of what you create or a different aspect of what you create.

Content that serves this stage is always protected, meaning this portion of your creative work will remain closed to the public except for those willing to enter an email address. Access can mean subscribing for a free members newsletter, community or getting access to content which requires an email.

Stage 4: Purchase

The final stage of the creator content funnel is where the deepest levels of engagement and business opportunity occur. It's also where your content will transform into specific, actionable, and customizable use cases versus the broader strokes mentioned in previous steps.

The point of stage four is to provide your most invested audience members with something they can't find anywhere else. This is the point where you ask your most dedicated subscribers to support your work financially, in return for additional benefits.

The questions driving your creation for this phase are:

What results can I help others achieve?

What content can I provide that people can't find anywhere else?

What would my most invested audience members pay for?

Learn about the 4 stages of the creator funnel, how they work, and the strategies required to turn your obscurity into opportunity.

Understand the big ideas driving the creator economy today so that you can ensure your strategy aligns with the trends already at play.

Growing from 0 to 1 as a Content Creator

Cool - so you’ve read about the Creator Funnel, how to get started, and how to find your niche. Now it’s time to really hit the pavement and go from 0 to 1. For the creators that we’ve spoken with this is what they were thinking about:

Where are people already spending their money?

What perspectives can I give that other creators aren’t?

In which of my niches - can I help people the most?

With these in mind you can now begin to create or curate content that will help you grow your brand and be on the path to earning as a creator. Keep these four ‘strategies’ in mind:

Organic Reach isn’t dead - just keep on switching it up.

Yes I know it’s super hard to get people. You might even go through sprouts with little views. Don’t fret. Go to where it’s hot, engage with those viewing, and continue to create.

Create and be discovered where it’s red hot and engage with people

Yes I know it’s super hard to get people. You might even go through sprouts with little views. Don’t fret. Go to where it’s hot, engage with those viewing, and continue to create. Don’t try to reach everybody just try to reach the people who are enjoying what you’re creating. Make the content for people in your niche, well the topic people are relating to the most and where you can provide value.

So you’ve got followers - take it to somewhere where you’re in control.

Remember our article on communities? Creators that earn and are successful take their fans and followers to other places they can call home outside of tik-tok, instagram,etc. They build communities to bring together those fans who support them plus share interests to deepen relationships and create a network of people with a purpose.

This is a key to monetizing.

It sounds like a lot of work but be conscious about yourself and optimize your content creation.

Follow the creators you look upto and the trending creators. Notice what they do. You don’t always have to create something new. You can always take a piece of content you enjoy, add your perspective, and share it. That’s curation - you’re helping your fans find a new piece of content by adding your opinion. Intertextuality. Check out

Diffusion⁠

- if you’re interested in curation.

This knowledge and these skills will become more popular and important as the creator economy continues to grow. Understand your followers, where you provide value, what people pay for, and don’t give up.