Insights for Creators & Marketers

While it is starting to feel like TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram are all morphing into one app, YouTube continues to differentiate itself with investment into learning and education. As the second largest search engine in the world, YouTube has become one of the most important education destinations on the internet. Whether you’re studying for a calculus test or you need help fixing your thermostat, YouTube has you covered in ways TikTok and Instagram simply do not.

Does this sound familiar? Explaining to your accountant what you do for a living feels like you’re speaking in a foriegn language. When you applied for a mortgage, the loan officer couldn’t understand why you didn’t have a W2. Or when you try to explain to your credit card company that you need a bigger limit, they ask why you don’t have three months of recurring pay stubs.

If you have been doing sponsored integrations with brands long enough, you’ve probably been through at least one round of unfair edit requests from a brand. Brand managers aren’t content creators, so they often do not know how much work it can be to edit a video or reshoot an element.

It is becoming increasingly popular for brands to leverage influencer generated content for Facebook ads. The trust of an influencer and the distribution of Facebook create a powerful combination that can result in massive sales volume.

The FTC has done an excellent job helping influencers, brands and agencies better understand how to safely promote on social media. However, many brands have yet to rigorously follow these disclosure guidelines as closely as they should.

A few months ago I published an article entitled, “Three Ways to Show Brands You Care.” Having worked with thousands of content creators, I pinpointed three common traits of the content creators that take brand partnerships the most seriously and consistently prove they care about the success of their sponsors.

As a creator, it is important to show brands that you care by building strong relationships with the ones that support your channel. For one, the income brands offer can help you turn YouTube into a full-time career. Secondly, your fans want to see you promote brands you believe in. I always recommend creators find a handful of brands they truly love, build genuine relationships, and then come to mutually beneficial long-term partnership terms. Jumping from brand to brand causes distrust in your audience and in my experience, that distrust leads to poorer results for brands. It is a negative cycle you want to avoid at all costs.

Creating content takes a lot of time and resources. The last thing any creator wants is to have a brand request a reshoot or significant edits prior to publication. And vice versa, the last thing a brand wants is to miss their content calendar / budgeting goals because videos require significant changes. It is in everyone’s best interest that videos and integrations meet brand requirements on the first round of approvals and that publication is not delayed. Here are three ways I have seen highly professional creators “take control” of the content creation and review process to ensure a quick and easy approval process.

Should creators license their content to brands? The last time you walked into a company’s office, did you see a video studio? Probably not, right? It is hard for brands to create entertaining video content for their audiences. With more than 80% of the content consumed online today being video, it is increasingly important that brands communicate to their customers via video.