6 Steps to becoming a Creator in 2023.
In 2023, there has never been a better time to start a Creator business. There has never been so many tools to make getting started so quick, easy and cheap.
Now don’t get me wrong, starting is the easy part. But if you don’t do that, then you’ll never get to your goal. So we hope this list inspires you to just get started!
1. Start with why
Being a creator isn’t easy. So if you are about to embark on the journey of starting your own creator business, it’s worth taking a minute to reflect on a few questions. On days where you’re feeling a little deflated with your results or like you just don’t feel like showing up, these answers might help remind you why you got started in the first place.
Why am I starting this business?
What do I want to achieve?
Why is this important to me?
Why do I care about this audience?
What impact do I want to have?
2. Choose a niche
When you are starting out, defining your niche very tightly is not as important as you think it is. And if it stops you getting started, you are better off starting broader and focussing later.
Let me give you some examples.
When you are just starting out and you want to create a profile/business in the health and wellness industry, you might start by posting fairly general tips and insights. Then as you become more comfortable posting, decide on the product you want to sell you might start niching down into ‘health & wellness for busy mums’ or ‘energy for small business owners’.
The most important thing you do is to get started, as you will never get everything right straight off the bat. And your first post isn’t going to go ‘viral’. Every piece of content you create and every conversation you have will bring you closer to clarity and team you what you need to know to move on to the next step.
3. Claim your digital real estate
This is actually my favourite part… I’m obsessed with come up with business ideas, starting instagram accounts and buying domain names. And whilst it’s the fun part…. It’s not where success happens.
But, I invite you to enjoy this step!
Now it’s time to come up with what will form your brand name. Now it might be simply your own name, in which case it’s simple. However you might want to come up with a ‘brand name’ that may have nothing to do with your name… or it might be a play on your name.
A quick sidebar… if you choose your own name to build your personal brand, this is totally fine… however if your intention is to build and sell your business, then you may consider a completely separate name so that your personal brand isn’t as associated with the business, which makes it easier for you to step out later.
Let me give you some examples, following on from our previous health & wellness example.
A personal brand name might be …… Sarah Jenkins.
A business brand name might be… The Well Kitchen.
A hybrid name might be … Sarah’s Kitchen.
Once you’ve decided on your brand name. Now you need to secure your digital real estate. You want to check a service like Godaddy or other domain name provider to secure the website domain and then sign up for all of the social media services (even if you don’t plan on using them) and secure your brand name.
If we chose ‘Sarah’s Kitchen’ as the example.
We would want to own:
www.sarahskitchen.com
instagram.com/sarahskitchen
tiktok.com/sarahskitchen
Etc etc etc.
Why is this important? It’s important because you want to control and own your brand online. There would be nothing worse than building your empire only to find someone else had the name you picked on YouTube and was posting offensive videos!!!
4. Start creating content
OK now sh*t is getting real! It’s time to put yourself out there! It’s time to create and post content on your channels of choice.
When you’re asking yourself ‘what type of content should I be creating?’ the biggest question you should be asking yourself is ‘what value does this provide my ideal audience/customer?’.
When you create content with your audience/customer in mind, you are more likely to resonate with them… grow faster… and sell more.
5. Engage with your ideal audience/customer
Now that you have a brand and a presence online, it’s time to start building your audience.
When you are ready for this step, check out our list of 10 ways to get to your first 1000 followers.
The most important thing here is to prioritise quality over quantity. I know it might seem like having hundreds of thousands of followers is the goal… but go back to step one and ask yourself, is the goal to just get followers, or to build a profitable business? If the goal is to be able to create a profile that sells a product, then you want to prioritise the right kind of followers. The ones who are actually going to buy from you at some point.
6. Sell your first product
The biggest mistake first time business owners tend to make is investing SO MUCH time and energy into building a product, only to find out that no one wants it.
When you are ready to start selling to your audience, you want to test the waters first to make sure you don’t spend too much time and energy on something that falls flat.
Actually talk to potential customers about their problems, and whether they’d pay to solve them first. Then when you’ve got real buying signals you can feel confident investing your time, money and energy into product creation.
Better yet… pre-selling products/services BEFORE you create them is an even better test that you are on to something!
7. Repeat steps 5 & 6 everyday until you hit your goals.
Now it’s time to scale your efforts.
Increasing revenue (or income) in your new creator business will come down to 2 key things.
Having enough eyeballs on your thing - followers, website traffic, sales conversations.
Converting the people who are seeing your thing - through explaining better or tweaking your offer.
Until you hit the goal you set for yourself every day will be about consistent small improvements.
I can’t wait to hear what you’ve come up with! When you’ve set up your profile, share it with us on Instagram so we can be one of your first followers!
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