The Rise of the New Digital Creators

I don’t know if anyone fully appreciates the opportunity that a creator has at their literal fingertips today. To me it seems limitless. But before I tell you why I think that opportunity is so immense, I want to define what I mean by “creator”. Since I named a company after this group of people that I admire and aspire to be a part of, let me clarify who I think they are.

A creator is anyone who uses their imagination and intellect to produce original ideas and content. While this definition has very broad applications, there is a subset of people who I think really embody creativity today. They are photographers, videographers, illustrators, YouTubers, graphic designers, musicians, bloggers, podcasters, entrepreneurs and more. This new creative class combines their artistic and creative abilities with modern technology and social media to create unbelievable influence, economic value and opportunity for themselves and others. Before the search engine, social media and digital advertising revolutions creative people did what everyone else did. They got hired by a company and went to work for a boss.

Today, there is nearly unlimited opportunity for a creator to make a living, work remotely and be self-employed. The best and most successful of these creators set out not to make money but to make their mark and help others. With standard bearers like Gary Vanyerchuk, Chris Do and Pat Flynn, the movement to hustle and create with empathy and philanthropy is well underway.

In order to be a successful new digital creator, you have to have a sense of what makes this possible. I’m willing to bet that every person reading this has a device in their hand or in their pocket that allows them to:

-Shoot high quality video

-Record and publish high quality audio

-Take high quality photos in various conditions

-Communicate with almost anyone in the world (1:1)

-Communicate with almost everyone in the world (at scale)

-Publish original work and ideas for the entire world to see

-Use apps to custom design graphics

-Learn almost anything

I could go on, but I think you get the point. That smart phone is powerful. Years and years of audio, visual and computational development has made it possible to carry around an entire recording studio, PR team, videographer, photographer, personal coaching staff and more all in your pocket. This means that if you are creative...you have no excuse. You can do anything you want. You can learn how to do anything you want. The internet and technology, like smartphones, have really leveled the playing field. You no longer have to be held back by not having the right equipment, money or know how. This means that the only thing holding you back from achieving the creative success you want is...you.

Work ethic, discipline and mindset are now the new frontier and sole arbiters of your success.

The new creator class has proven that when you can combine the the opportunity afforded by the technology with a solid dose of hustle, you can move mountains. Young freelance creators are now getting paid tens of thousands and more by big brands because of their influence. Creators are amassing millions of followers across social media and podcasts gaining audiences that TV show pilots could only dream of.

The new creators are here to stay and Creatr is here to celebrate their world. Creatr is here to interview the best creators to others can learn from their success. Creatr is here to show you some of the most inspiring work, quotes and ideas to get you motivated to achieve your dreams.

It’s our time.

We are the creatives.

Growing an Instagram account: What I've learned

On January 8th, I officially started CREATR by opening the Instagram account @Creatrbrand. Today is January 25th and the account currently has 467 followers. This is not exactly meteoric growth, but I’m happy with it. Instagram is an amazing platform and it’s growing rapidly. According to Hootsuite, 500 million people use Instagram every day and 1 billion people use Instagram every month. Also according to Hootsuite, Instagram users will spend an average of 28 minutes per day on the platform and 200 million users visit at least one business profile per day. Instagram now qualifies as a major media company. For comparison, a recent Forbes article notes that according to Nielsen, ABC’s World news Tonight with David Muir was the most watched broadcast evening newscast for the 2018-2019 season with a total audience of 8.609 million viewers. The Rock, AKA Dwayne Johnson, currently has 169 million Instagram followers and his latest post got almost 3 million likes. Enough said.

So, If Instagram is such a key platform, how do you grow your account? How do you attract followers and build an audience. I’ve been all over the web looking for answers to this question and while there are no silver bullets, I think I’m on to some of the key principles to Instagram growth so take notes…

First, you have to carefully consider and decide what your page will be about. Part of the key to Instagram growth is focusing in on a specific audience and then delivering a ton of value. Pick a focused niche.

Second, and somewhat related to the first tip is to really think about what your brand is. What do you stand for? What is the voice of your content? What is the visual style of your content? Generally, CREATR Instagram content is either amazing creative work shared form other accounts or Inspirational and thought provoking quotes that we design. The quotes have a specific style, always on a black background and always with the same font and color gradient fill on key words. I’m trying to establish what the CREATR brand is. Some photographers are also great at posting images that all have similar editing done to them so that although they may be of very different subjects, they feel cohesive and appear to have a single style thread connecting them all.

Third, you need to post incredible content. According to Nathan Chan, CEO of Foundr magazine and Instagram wiz, you should use what he calls the Unicorn strategy. This entails going to other popular pages similar to yours and reviewing their content. before you screen shot something (always giving the author credit of course), consider how many likes and comments each post has received. This essentially gives you a bulletproof means of knowing how well the content will perform when you report it. if you like a creators content and think it will resonate with your audience, look for their absolute best posts and then report it.

Next, you need to ask for the engagement that you want. if you just post a beautiful image or video, don’t expect a ton of comments. if you post a beautiful image and in the description you ask your audience a direct question, you greatly improve the chances that someone will comment. I posted the image below asking if AI will eliminate graphic designers and then said “TRUE OR FALSE?” right in the graphic. This promoted 49 comments, my highest engagement on almost any post.

Another key aspect to think about is your posting frequency. When I first started on Instagram, many people cautioned me about over posting. However, posting at least twice a day, in the morning and the evening, is critical to getting your account in front of more people. I’ve been posting 4-5 times a day with @creatrbrand and I don’t think my audience is getting tired of the content. As long as the content is great, I don’t think posting too much will be an issue. The manual nature of posting on Instagram and the tedious process of adding hastags means that you almost can’t post more than 5 times in a day unless Instagram is your full time job.

I hope these tips are helpful to you and I hope you keep creating on Instagram and other platforms. We live in such an incredible time when you creatives can get their work in front of thousands, hundreds of thousands or even millions of people just by understanding and leveraging the power of social media. Keep creating!

Resources:

If you like this video, and want more help growing your instagram account, check out our course- Instagram Domination: http://bit.ly/2tFjbYj ​LIke this video? SUBSCRIBE to the Foundr YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/foundr?sub_confirmation=1 ​If you like this video, be sure to comment and share on your favorite social media site.

Foundr Magazine Podcast EP045: OUR TOP 7 INSTAGRAM HACKS TO GENERATE 100'S OF THOUSANDS OF FOLLOWERS So we've decided to mix things up a little with this podcast episode. This one is a short bite-sized episode, detailing our top 7 hacks for Instagram.

Sources:

https://blog.hootsuite.com/instagram-statistics/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/markjoyella/2019/09/25/abcs-world-news-tonight-posts-largest-lead-over-nbc-in-23-years/#50d1fa0d1381

The Spark We Lose

When we were kids, we found joy in creativity.

Most of us now find fear in it. There was a time when we painted pictures of our families, built new worlds with LEGOs (more on this later), talked with funny accents in made up languages and built forts with couch cushions and bed sheets. Somehow, by the time we are exiting middle school, our creative spark is all but out already. When most adults are asked to draw a picture, create some artwork, sing, or even play for that matter, we freeze in fear.

Our education from junior high through college does little to fan the dying creative spark into a creative firework. Instead, the standardized expectations of the system blow out the last wisps of ignition.

I too was a young child who loved LEGOs and all the creative exploits that most young children enjoy. I too began to lose the spark the older I grew. When I was in high school and considering what I should study in College, I didn’t even realize that some people made a career of Graphic Design. I didn’t know that the job title “Creative Director” existed.

But today, it looks like the tide is beginning to change, especially in corporate America. Today, companies all over the world are looking for ways to foster the creative spark of their employees. Today, smart business leaders recognize that creativity and innovation that comes from engaged and talented employees is about the only competitive advantage anyone can hope to have.

Companies in every industry, not just tech and social media, are realizing that they need creative employees in every field not just the traditional “creative” fields like design. As evidence of this, businesses are doing everything they can to make their work environments more playful.

In a recent blog post on the the art education website Artsy author Eli Hill showcases creative workspaces that would rival any child’s playroom. As an example, a firm called Evolution Design was hired by Google to design a space for their office in Zürich. The article from Artsy states:

Evolution Design’s solution to Google’s unique request required an equally individual approach. The designers began interviewing Google employees and found that many of them are, as Ruegg suggested, “kids––like big kids.” To better support Googlers’ playful nature, the firm decided to include recreational areas like a room for video games, an aquarium with napping pods, and space for athletics, as well as a range of unconventional workspaces.



(Interior view of Google’s Zürich office, designed by Evolution Design. Photo by Peter Wurmli. Courtesy of Evolution Design.) - Artsy.net, These 7 Innovative Offices Were Designed to Spark Creativity

If a company like Google (one of the most successful in the world) can make a meeting space look like Ewa, the sacred glowing tree from Avatar’s Pandora, just to encourage more playfulness and creativity from employees, maybe we should all be trying to figure out how to keep our creative spark’s glowing.

Keep your spark alive…

Sources:

https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-7-innovative-office-spaces-designed-spark-creativity

Welcome to CREATR

Today’s young creatives live in a world of incredible abundance. Social media has opened doors for creatives like photographers, videographers and designers that creatives a decade or two ago could only have been dreamt off. However, until recently, society hasn’t quite shifted as fast as technology and online opportunity have. I’m sure that most young people with a creative streak are still urged by their parents to become doctors, lawyers or engineers.

Finally though, I think the tide has begun to change. Gary Vaynerchuk, a hugely successful entrepreneur, online personality and owner of the fast-growing agency Vayner Media has nearly become a household name among young entrepreneurs. I truly believe that his nonstop encouragement to hustle and do what you love has helped to change the winds. People like Tim Ferris, Pat Flynn, Sam Kolder and more have trailblazed as digital creators and entrepreneurs and they have shown the world what is possible. Whether you have gone to college or not, today’s young creatives have the ability to learn a creative craft and share it with the world online with nothing more than a smartphone and a data plan.

If you are lucky enough to have a little more at your disposal, you have access to professional video editing software, drones more advanced by the ones Skynet produced in Terminator 2, cameras capable of 4K resolution and higher, state of the art graphic design applications and more with Adobe Creative Cloud and enough free and paid resources online to learn how to do anything.

Today, the young creatives who have mastered their craft and understood how to harness digital marketing and social media are running the table. They are making an incredible leaving by working remotely, working for themselves and expressing themselves creatively.

At CREATR, our goal is to help young inexperienced creators go from weekend warrior to world beating creating professional on their own terms. Being a creative usually means that you feel like a square peg trying to fit into a round hole. In school, standardized testing and the traditional circiculum don’t measure your ability to tell a story, use creative software or create an image that tugs at the heartstrings. Creatives often don’t measure up in school. But now, the conditions are finally right for creatives to live the life they have always wanted, and CREATR is hear to help them do it.