The Creator Economy is built by influencers, vloggers, bloggers, writers, artists, and anyone else who monetise their knowledge, skills, or creations. The phenomenal rise of the internet over the last decade empowered ordinary individuals to create and publish their own content and hence share a story. In order to elucidate more on the opportunities in the Creator Economy space, we had Mr. Tamseel Hussain as the speaker for Innerview – a weekly live 45-minute motivational and inspirational talk show presented by Dutch Uncles which features interviews of industry experts who bring forth informative and life experiences and techniques.
Mr. Tamseel Hussain, the Founder and CEO of People Like Us Create TV (Pluc TV), has successfully built his bootstrapped startup from scratch and is now being used by more than thirty thousand creators. With over a decade of experience in boosting youth-led virtual narratives, Mr. Hussain is building storytelling and technology solutions for the age of the creator economy.
In brief, the session had the following takeaways:
- What is the potential of the creator economy?
- How can you become a successful creator?
- How can creators produce and monetise their content?
- What can be the impact of authentic storytelling?
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A lot of ideas are being funded if you have a high user base. But the most important thing is whether you are able to generate your own first revenue. It makes the fundraising journey easy for you.
Here are some excerpts from the interview:
What will you suggest about getting funding to the aspiring young entrepreneurs?
It is really important to share your idea and build on it before you actually go to fundraise. If you are going for a fundraise, the trend that we are seeing right now especially in the Indian market is that a lot of ideas are being funded if you have a high user base. But the most important thing is whether you are able to generate your own first revenue. It makes the fundraising journey easy for you. Second, you should be able to solve a problem, people need to seek solutions and they need to come to your platform. Third, once you have actually solved the problem it is very important that you consistently solve that problem so that people keep coming back to you and these are three golden rules which really help.
Please suggest some action points which creative entrepreneurs can consider to design a robust social media marketing strategy.
The first thing we did was put everything on social media. Knowing what your product is, who your audiences are, it needs to be consistently directed through social media posts. Every platform works according to an algorithm, for example, right now reels than other types of content is really popular and you can see so many small businesses using it to the fullest of the advantage. At Pluc TV, we believe in organic growth and a paid social media marketing strategy only has limits. If you have a good story to tell and if you are hitting the right algorithm it grows faster. If you take the ad marketing or influencer marketing route, you are just ending up spending a lot of budget where if you notice your conversions are very low. I really think organic needs to be prioritised.
How do you think this creator economy space can be utilised and coordinated with sectors like Edtech, Agritech, Fintech?
You already see it happening – in edtech and agritech platforms, there is a massive demand for content creators. The biggest issue that the farming sector has, for example, is the amount of training they are given by existing methods which are traditional. It is very difficult for them to absorb it. They need training which helps them on the spot which is through the new agritech apps that are coming up. They are able to sell whatever they are producing in the best way possible and this is where content creators are coming up. We are going to see a rising trend of experts especially after the pandemic really controlling the narrative when it comes to important subjects that are related to edtech and agritech platforms.
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We believe in organic growth and a paid social media marketing strategy only has limits. If you have a good story to tell and if you are hitting the right algorithm, it grows faster.
Audience Asks:
As a part of this creator community where should our focus be – competing or collaborating with each other? How to decide one of the approaches considering that we all are trying to increase our followers?
I think this trend is about competition and having a massive follower base. You would be more interested in collaborating because it actually helps you build your followers as well. We have seen tools that have been added by various platforms on collaborative lines and with all these things it really helps you build your follower base. So, I think collaboration is definitely the way to go. But if you are really thinking of competing that means you are again falling into the trap of competition which is being forced by a social media algorithm because they have created a trend. Find your niche, find your authenticity – you can still create a trend but in your own way which helps you grow faster.
What factors to take care of while pitching for funding to investors?
The most important thing is there is a format of a pitch deck which should have an end to end information from what your idea is, what problem your idea is solving, what is the USP of your product, how many users you have, how you are going to make it something which is going to differentiate. There are apps and platforms like DocSend which really help you to track analytics and actually see who is viewing your pitch deck when. Once people are interested in your pitch deck, you as a founder should be able to say that you are the right person to do it and really scale the company into something massive. Do not fill your pitch text with a lot of text, instead make it simple for anyone to understand.
The five-crore independent content creator community
As Mr. Hussain explained that while the interest and passion to be a storyteller is on the rise, it is equally vital to choose platforms which have an existing user base. You need to make sure to create keeping in mind the algorithm of the platforms so that there is an optimal transformation and influence. This class of businesses as seen today, is built by over five crore independent content creators, curators, and community builders including social media influencers, bloggers, and videographers, in addition to the software and finance tools designed to help them with growth and monetisation.
