We need to talk about the BIG opportunity for mom content creators, because it’s really important for everyone to understand what is available to you now in 2022 than what was available a few years ago or even last year, because there’s a lot different and by “different”, I mean – it’s crazy, it is exploding.
What is the creator economy?
The creator economy is “a community of independent content creators, that can be bloggers, writers, YouTubers, influencers, and content curators who follow the passion, build a following, and monetize their skills.” Also, of course creators / educators could be listed in here, and again, we are speaking of regular content creators, not necessarily influencers that have an audience.
According to SignalFire, there are now 50 million content creators, but what’s so interesting about this report is that it states that almost 47 Million of the 50 million are amateur creators. That means only 7% consider themselves professionals. The world has taken notice of this, meaning industries are understanding that content creation is the next big thing and they want to help aspiring content creators on their respective journeys by providing resources and tools.
Why do brands care about content creation and the creator economy?
The biggest reason why brands care about this kind of explosion of content creators, is that user-generated content or UGC, which is content that is generated by users or customers (really anyone that is not the brand) is 42% more effective than branded content*, and has almost seven times higher engagement rate than branded posts*, meaning posts from the brand. (Wow!)
The average conversion rate for an ecommerce website in the United States is 2.86%. When you add UGC into an ecommerce site, conversion rates JUMP. According to Yotpo, people who look at UGC are converting 161% more than people who are not looking at UGC.
In layman’s terms, conversion is significantly lower when a brand takes a professionally produced photo and puts it up on the website. For example, taking a picture of a pair of shoes on a white background probably won’t convert that well. But if the brand has a creator simply take a video of themselves wearing the shoes and walking around, that converts at a much higher rate.
Not to say there aren’t some considerations there. It has to be a somewhat quality video, it can’t be uninspiring, boring dimly lighted and generally terrible.
As a result of this clear proof coming out in industry studies, brands say, “Okay, we need this content. We need UGC big time because we want to get the higher conversion rates”. Online creators are in demand and are quickly becoming the new business moguls, they are becoming the new entrepreneurs. There’s an expression,”content entrepreneur” coined by content marketing superstar Joe Pullizi because really content creator is almost interchangeable or synonymous now with the word entrepreneur.
Mom Content Creators
When this comes down to women in general, this could not come at a better time, because so many women, specifically so many mothers were displaced during the pandemic from their jobs. And they’re looking to be more entrepreneurial, they’re looking to make money in a more flexible way. I mean this new generation of millennial and Gen Z moms are naturally entrepreneurial.
Moms make up about 30% of the creator economy right now. And it’s not really “mommy bloggers” from the 2000’s – it’s female entrepreneurs, influencers, female content creators. And what I think was just really wild is that more than 25% of TikTok users are moms. Again, this is presenting a huge opportunity for moms; the brands need the content. At Gugu Guru, we’re focused on getting moms on the right path to connecting with the brands that need your content.
Why does all of this matter to you?
You may be wondering, why does this matter to you, especially if you’re starting out as a content creator. Maybe you have it in your head that it’s too difficult to become a creator. I am here to tell you it’s not.
Really, in the past, one of the most difficult parts of being a creator was that it was pretty much synonymous to influencer and influencers were really looked at and measured for their audience or following and that is no longer the case. If you have tried to be a mom influencer or if you are an influencer, you know the struggle of building an audience. Building an audience is difficult. You can buy followers or whatever. But now brands are super savvy, they know we can just use the content on our own channels, it’s going to convert versus going for somebody who has 3 million followers when we have no idea if the audience is… maybe it’s authentic, maybe it’s an organic audience, but we don’t know if they meet our demographic, we don’t know if they’re actually going to convert.
I saw a woman on TikTok the other day – a TikTok strategist – and she was saying that there is an influencer with over 3 million followers that a brand paid to help them get t-shirt sold. She only had to sell 26 t-shirts to her 3 million followers for the brand to consider it a success, yet she could not sell 26 t-shirts. Brands are seeing this – having a huge following, it doesn’t even matter anymore. This is really key to people starting out as a content creator and I still get so much flack for saying this because so many people argue, “No, you need to have a following.” You don’t, you don’t need to have a following anymore.
However, the big caveat there is even though you don’t need to have a large audience or following, it’s still imperative to have an audience to serve, especially if you want to make this your full-time career because you need to have – we could call it a niche, we could call it a point of view – but you need to have somebody that your content is going to serve. If you’re working for a brand, you’re going to be serving their audience with the content that you create. But if you want to be a full-time content creator, you’re going to want to have an audience that you can help with your content, because that’s going to make it even easier for you to connect with the brands that you’re going to vibe with as far as your content creation goes.
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