A Creator’s need for Digital Transformation
Wait, what do creators need it for?
Our content-audience focus has been along the business industries and brands. But, in 2020, let’s acknowledge the fact that the creators are contributing to the rise of the global economy.
And, let’s talk about how digital transformation has impacted the creators to create better.
Before that, let’s talk about our definition of creators:
1.Who are these creators?
For us, everyone who produces content worth consuming is a creator.
From the musicians on your spotify playlists to your favorite content writers on Medium. And from, the web-series production group on Netflix to the stand-up comedians and dance-choreographers on YouTube.
Creators are the ones who use their creative abilities to not just produce the best content but also, provide happiness, comfort,inspiration and ability to be your best self.
For the matter of fact, the graphic designer who built our logo to the web-designer who built our website are creatives too.
2.Why do Creators need Digital Transformation?
Well, The creators don’t just need to be creative. They do need catalysts that allow them to better reach out to people about their art.
Consider yourself as an independent musician. For the production of the music, you have a choice of using the audio-hardware platform of your choice and the audio-processing software on the operating system of choice.
For example, a lot of musicians prefer to go with a Audio Technica Microphone with a custom D.A.C and use Logic Pro X on a Mac to produce their music.
But, speaking of post-production, here’s where the digital transformation comes into play.
The post-production operations for an independent musician would be to:
a.Label Outreach
b.Distribution
c.Advertisement
d.Public Relations
e.Sell the physical copies and manage payments
Now, the downside of these operations is that it consumes a lot of time and effort. And the unpredictable time-value of money leads to a different issue altogether.
3.How Digital Transformation does it all?
With digital transformation, the creator can easily manage all the above operations with lower-monetary investment and the predictability is analytics based which allows the creator to improve with time.
Here’s how:
3.1.Label Outreach:
With the internet being credited for, the independent creators no longer need to approach the labels for production and licensing. Meaning, the creator is the sole-proprietor for the content produced and is not liable to pay royalties to the labels.
3.2.Distribution and Advertising:
The creator can make use of the omni-channel touch points to make sure that the content is available for everyone based on their comfortability with:
1.Distribution Platform
2.Distribution Device
3.Distribution method (online or offline)
And, to make the content experience better, you can use the three main components of Digital Transformation:
3.2.1.Content Consumption Experience
To increase the content Consumption experience, the primary goal is to distribute and advertise your content over omni-channel touch points.
In this case, the musician’s omni-channel touch points are:
a.Audio-Streaming Platforms:
The musician can distribute his/her content via the widely available streaming platforms like Apple Music, Spotify and SoundCloud among many others.
The content will be available to everyone on the Internet. Thus, indirectly increasing the content experience and global outreach.
The upside of these distribution platforms are the freemium memberships that allow the user to listen to the songs for free but, thanks to the advertisements played before the start of the song/album,a part of the ad-revenue generated would even be shared with the creator.
And, for the subscription based users, the part of their subscription payment would be shared with the creators who frequent the playlist of the user.
b.YouTube & IGTV/Instagram:
The creator can not only post the content on YouTube and reach out to a wider audience and obtain revenues with the help of ad-sense. But, also, use the latest platform IGTV to attract an audience and attract advertisers to host in-video advertisements.
The upside here is the fact that the advertising brand can also act as a promotion catalyst for your content. The down-side though with YouTube is the 4000 hour watch time and the 1000 subscribers requirement for the ad-sense.
The creator can use the Instagram app to stay connected to his audience on a daily basis.
c.Website:
The single-most impactful catalyst for the creator would be the website.
You could use a dedicated website to share your music, sell physical copies of the content, merchandise and connect to your audience sharing your whereabouts.
You can distribute your content on the website, where people can discover you and to improve the experience, you can drive the audience from other platforms to your website, where they can purchase your content.
Thus, increasing the Content Consumption Experience.
3.2.2.Digital Agility
And with time, you can adapt to an attention-model where you derive your audience to the website to not just sell your content but, you can also attract brands to advertise on your platform and collaborate with you.
Based on the analytics of your content on different platforms, you can devise plans to derive audience to your platform in a better way, thus increasing your personal brand value.
And, with the increasing brand value, you can target potential brands that you would like to collaborate with, requesting them to advertise on your platform.
For a musician, it would be the instruments brand or the audio equipment brands to work with.
This would in turn generate revenue and increase your personal brand value because of the cross-promotion by the advertising brand.
3.2.3 Work Automation
To make the experience better for brands and audiences, you can use custom emails,chatbots with automated replies and connect different aspects of your work such as advertising, collaborations, distribution, legalities,public relation and sales.
For example, automated digital sales services mean that you will not have to go to individual customers to deliver your product and neither worry about not being able to break a 500 or a 2000.
You can accept payments online and automate the process that sends a notification to the delivery service with the instructions to pick up from the ful-fulment center and then deliver it to the address.
And for the returns/refunds, no matter what email the consumer sends it to,the automation service will automatically transfer the email to the concerned representative.
Meaning, your PR representative will not have to deal with refund emails anymore.
And for events and collaborations, the brands can speak to your chatbot on the website and reach the concerned representative and so,easing up their time to better work with you.
Thus, the creators can focus on creating better content and improve their content consumption experience.
