ICYMI: Was TikTok's 150M Users Humblebrag a Good Idea?

+ examining where creators should post instead - March 24, 2023

Lia Haberman

Mar 24, 2023

⏰ 1-SECOND SUMMARY

TikTok’s CEO hypes up the app’s 150M users
The rise of the nano influencer and other key creators trends for 2023 *
Instagram shares the latest demands it has of its creators
“Beyond Social” is a new series where I ask creators about the communities they’re moving off social feeds, starting with Matt Navarra and his appreciation for broadcast channels

💻 ROADMAP

📲 Instagram Updates:

“Meta Verified” is now being tested in the US. But the company removed increased reach as a subscription feature for paid verification, saying it caused too much confusion. If only “confusion” could get rid of other less useful features.

📲 LinkedIn Updates:

LinkedIn just rolled out a bunch of updates for brand pages, including:
- Scheduled posts
- Following other pages as a brand page
- LinkedIn Audio Events

🧮 DATA OF THE WEEK

Nano influencers received 192% higher effectiveness rates than micro-influencers and 213% higher engagement rates than micro-influencers 🔥

- Download Dash Hudson's Global Insights Report: Social Entertainment in a Cross-Channel Landscape* for more key insights on the connection between creators, entertaining content and meaningful action, including:

Creator trends and strategies for 2023 — clearly the rise of the nano influencer is one of them!
The top performing brands based on their Entertainment Score
Measuring how entertaining content drives click-through rate
How one brand leverages UGC to boost fan engagement

Download Dash Hudson's Report

*sponsored

👆🏻 CLICK THRU

🤩 “It’s Shou here”
TikTok CEO Shou Chew’s video showed up at the top of everyone’s FYP feed this week, appealing to the app’s 150M users for support and emphasizing the impact a potential ban would have on SMBs.

The executive was in D.C. for Thursday’s congressional grilling and he brought creators and virtual supporters along to lobby on behalf of the app.

Chew putting an emphasis on small- to mid-sized businesses makes perfect sense. During the 5-hour hearing, Chew said more than 5M businesses use the app to find and connect with customers. This is all part of the company’s narrative to aim for hearts, minds and Main Street support. People might want to dismantle Big Tech but small businesses need to be protected, right?

However, it may not have been wise of the executive to confirm TikTok now has 150M US users — almost half of the country. That just goes to show the undue impact the app has on American culture.

While the threat of a ban is largely tied to the fear that user data could be passed along to the Chinese government, the possibility that TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, can now reach half of all Americans at any given time has to be a concern.

As I’ve pointed out before, relations between the U.S. and China are not great — especially after China's Xi Jinping met with Vladimir Putin in Moscow this week. So, while creators and SMBs might support TikTok, a ban could be a solid bipartisan measure to create the perception that the government is protecting American interests.

Beside, a ban is not actually the worst that could happen at this time — it would actually take months if it were to happen. A more immediate concern would be if advertisers got nervous and paused ad spend. TikTok’s reportedly been reassuring advertisers and my own quick (and totally unofficial) survey shows that’s not happening yet.

“We’re monitoring closely and not worried now,” Sara Stuart, growth marketing manager at Yummers texted me. “Concern would rise if lawmakers started making any kind of moves. Hearings are usually just for show IMO.”

Either way, creators should be diversifying where they show up. Algorithms, new owners, geopolitical factors and shifting allegiances… all can impact the success of a platform. Which means now would be a good time to:

Download video files for storage and/or use on other platforms
Maintain a presence but increase the time spent on other platforms
Migrate audiences to these other platforms or owned & operated properties
Show up and engage on other platforms

🤯 New Rules from Instagram
Creator Amy Marietta got some guidance from an Instagram partner manager on the app’s expectations from creators. Deep breath — here are the latest demands:

Don’t use CapCut to edit Reels, they want you to edit in-app (CC is owned by ByteDance)
Post to the Feed twice a day, everyday
Post Stories 6 x a day
Use 3 to 5 hashtags maximum
Captions should emphasize keywords that relate to your video topic
Use the app’s trending audio, not imported audio

For more details and a healthy dose of skepticism, watch Amy’s Shorts.

💫 BEYOND SOCIAL

Welcome to BEYOND SOCIAL, a new series I’m launching with creators and influencers who have branched beyond social feeds and are finding new or different ways of connecting with their audiences. Since we all need to think about diversifying which platforms we show up on, I want to hear from people who’ve launched a podcast, a newsletter or a private community and get them to share their best tips for doing the same!

▶️ MATT NAVARRA, GeekOut Creator

Lia Haberman: What’s your primary social platform?

Matt Navarra: Until now it's been Twitter and that's how I became known in terms of what I do and where I leak loads of stuff and where I've got the biggest audience, 150,000. However, I'm massively recalibrating because I realize that Twitter is probably in a lot of trouble. So, I already had the newsletter and had other things like the Facebook Group. But I’m trying to diversify further.

LH: Where else are you looking to connect and communicate with your community?

MN: I saw that they launched WhatsApp Communities… I don’t have the time to do all the engagement pieces in a community. But people that follow me [say], ‘Matt, I just want you to be a source of news.’

And so a broadcast channel that is not algorithmically sorted and fits in with their existing workflow or existing messaging behaviors and sits there in that very personal space is, for me, really powerful. And it's proven to be the case.

LH: How does this channel help you?

MN: The reason why this appealed to me was because it wasn't a huge lift and I don't think that devalues the service. I think it just shows that actually there's something that I wasn’t being efficient and effective at making money from. And it's something that people value and will pay for. But I hadn't found a way of making money from doing it.

People use my Twitter account as a go-to resource, but I can't monetize it. Twitter's s**t, it doesn't have any tools to do that, and I couldn't really do it in on Facebook because the algorithm kind of b***ers it up because people don't see stuff. And so when these broadcast channels came out, I was like, ‘This is f**king great.’

LH: Are you monetizing this channel — what does that look like?

MN: The interesting thing is that when people started to join in… Forget the newsletter, forget my Twitter, forget anything else. People said, ‘This is the best thing you've done. This is the most useful thing. This is the thing that I would pay money for.’

And I was like, ‘Oh, I've been looking for something where I can charge a monthly fee. Maybe this is the thing.’ So I surveyed the community using a Google form and about 60 to 70 percent of people said they would pay something. The majority said they would pay $5 to $7 and a few more would pay $7 to $10.

So I’ve got a tool that manages it. When people pay, this tool lets them in the community and if they don’t pay or stop paying, the tool removes them from the community without me having to manage it. It’s great, the tool is Nas.io.

LH: What’s the percentage breakdown between time spent on social and this other channel?

MN: It's hard to make a judgment because everything bleeds into one. My job is sitting here most of the day in front of my screen, and I'll have client calls for consultancy and I'll have a few other bits unrelated to this.

But my constant is checking the RSS feeds. ‘Oh, there's a new story about Facebook. I'll share that.’ And I'm doing that all day long. And 70 to 80 percent of my working day is just doing that.

And so this is still doing that and it's just an extra click away, an extra 10 seconds away. So, once it's up and running, on a day to day basis it's probably going to be an extra 10 to 20 percent at most.

LH: What’s your BEST tip for other creators considering this?

MN: Find what people value. What is it that people want to have a steady stream of… your tips or your ideas. Maybe it’s an aspect of what you're already doing.

Creators would lose nothing from saying, ‘I'm going to stick it in my calendar and several times a week I'm going to drop a few useful things in here and I'm going to engage with the community on a few bits and pieces.’

That's a low-effort strategy for most creatives that they can experiment with and see what the appetite is. And it doesn't have to be WhatsApp Communities, you know, Instagrams Channels does it perfectly well.

*This interview’s been condensed to fit this space. If you have an interesting story about how you’re moving beyond social, let me know!

📖 ALSO ON MY RADAR…

Amazon is laying off 9,000 workers, including 400 Twitch employees -CNBC
Database: Top talent management companies and agencies for YouTubers, TikTok creators, and Instagram influencers -Insider
Why YouTube subscriber counts have become an unreliable 'vanity metric' in the era of short video -Insider
New Study Finds that Including Negative Terms in Headlines Drives More Clicks -Social Media Today
FTR, Emma Chamberlain denies she was selling a $10,000 Instagram DM -E! News
Mark Zuckerberg is at the center of TikTok conspiracy theories -Passionfruit
Are Video Podcasts the Future? I called this out last week and all signs point to YES! -The Publish Press
Creators can now create a podcast in YouTube Studio -YouTube’s Creator Insider
Canva just announced a host of new AI tools and branded workspace features -The Verge
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