2023 is the year of the “Creatorpreneur”

Hey folks👋🏽

There’s no better way to kick off Women’s History Month than today’s newsletter, chock-full of content from women succeeding in all spheres. I’ve never been more inspired than I am when reading the stories from the creators and small business owners we highlight on the blog. We hope you’ll be inspired too!

💌 In today’s email:

• 🔓 The coach of coaches — Dre Fox — takes us behind the scenes of creatorpreneurship
• 📱 Mitra recommends using AI for social media captions (we told ya!)
• 📣 What’s happening in social: A U.S. TikTok ban inches closer to reality, incoming YouTube CEO shares his plans for the future, and Snapchat jumps on the AI train
• +All the best content from the blog

Finally, we’ve launched the 2023 State of Remote Work! Check it out.

Have a great weekend, and we’ll see you next Friday!

Warmly, 

Tami & the Buffer team

P.S. We’re (still) hiring

🔓 Creators Unlocked: Dre Fox

Welcome to the second installment of Creators Unlocked! Today, we have Dre Fox on the docket. Dre, also known as Time of Dre, is a content creator and social media coach who specializes in helping others improve their personal branding and create income streams through their online presence.

She is known for her entertaining yet informative content and has a dedicated following of creative individuals looking to succeed online. In this interview, we discuss the many hats she wears as a Creatorpreneur.

What inspired you to start creating content on social media?

Before I became a solopreneur, I worked for a social media software company directly with the social media teams of Fortune 500 companies. I was always too busy working to start my social media, but it was a recurring question from my clients. I knew the power of it, so I took the plunge and started with the advanced knowledge I had learned from working with all the big accounts. Thanks to my expertise, it took off quickly, and it was just so fun to finally feel creative and like I had my own corner of the Internet.

Choosing creatorpreneurship

There is a fundamental problem when you rely on influence or brand deals to build your income: every month, you begin back at zero because you do a deal that's not promised the next month. So when I was influencing, some months would be $5000, others would be $800, and I realized I would never feel safe relying on that. When you are really trying to go full-time online or build wealth as a creator, you need monthly recurring revenue – a guaranteed baseline of money coming in every month. That’s why I’ve gone this route.

Business or creativity? Or both?

For many people, the perceived loss of creativity from becoming a real business is the biggest resistance to the creatorpreneur route. And balancing that has been my biggest challenge in business because I am a true Creative at heart. If you handed me a phone and said to create anything, I'd probably create more whimsical content than I do right now. But there's this dance you do when it comes to having a business and being a creator. I operate under a 60-40 rule where 60% of my content is super value and education driven. And then 40% is more personality-driven, like lifestyle content or humor about the content creation space.

Influencer to course creator in 8 months 🧑‍🏫

I knew that I had this Harvard-level social media knowledge from my nine-to-five, and people were always asking how I put together this awesome page with great content. So little by little, I started teaching others and turned that into a full-fledged business in under 8 months which allowed me to quit my full-time job. Had I done that on brand deals alone, I think I would have waited two or three years before I could get enough consistent income to make that happen.

Money, money, money 💸

Sorting my income streams from the top to the lowest, I would start with courses and coaching about content creator topics like personal branding and launching and selling your products. Second to that is consulting, where brands come to me for help figuring out how to improve their social media. Third is user-generated content – making content for brands you don't see on my platform. And finally, the lowest is traditional influencing – sponsored posts and brand deals.

Know your worth

When it comes to pricing my products and services, I am pricing based on the transformation that I'm creating and the knowledge that I'm bringing. With that in mind, I try to find a price or an investment level for my courses and coaching that helps hold people to their commitment and accountability but also honors the knowledge, experience, and investments that I've made to help them be able to do the same.

Navigating burnout

You wear many hats as a creator, and when you try to delegate by hiring support, you’re now responsible for someone’s livelihood. So when things are good, they’re really good, but when things are rough, and you're not getting the visibility, people aren't joining your program, or brands aren't coming through like they used to, it can feel like full-blown panic mode. The pressure to post more and more in that situation can be hard to sustain. Once you’ve matured as a creator and have routines and systems, it’s easier, but when you’re early, it’s a constant grind that can be hard to keep up with and drive you to burnout.

🌧️ It’s raining free tools!

Along with our robust social media management capabilities, we also offer an extensive list of free tools with everything from a UTM generator to a link-in-bio tool to a tool that turns your URLs into IG posts. Best part? You don’t even need to sign up! 

👇🏽 The latest from the blog

• 5 Steps to Figuring out Your Creative Process (ft. Advice from Creators): In this article, we explore the creative process of three creators: Jayde Powell, Dre Fox, and Katie Xu. Each of these creators has a unique style and approach to their craft, making them stand out in their respective fields.
• I Started a Six-Figure Company During My Junior Year of College — and I’m So Glad I Didn’t Wait: When Annelise Hillmann had an idea for a company while still in college, she could have waited until after graduation to get started. Instead, she started building while she was still a student—and she’s so glad she did. Here’s how her unique path helped her find success.
• This Entrepreneur Made More in the First Year of her Small Business than at her 90K Salaried Job: In our second installment of 'How I Grew My Small Business,' we take a deep dive into how Juliana Pache left her unfulfilling media job and turned a side hustle into a thriving jewelry business.

💡Join our live sessions from the APAC region

We run live demos and Q&A sessions every other week and folks in the APAC region are not left out. You won’t want to miss the tips and tricks up our sleeves for getting the most out of your Buffer accounts. Register for our next one (or a few) 😉.

📱 Social Tip of The Week from Mitra, Buffer’s Social Media Manager 

Struggling to come up with some captions for your social posts? Check out Buffer’s AI Assistant! I like to use this feature to help me brainstorm when I just can’t seem to come up with the right words. Here are a few prompts I like to use for brainstorming and inspiration:

• “Write a caption to promote this blog from [account name’s] Twitter: [link to blog]”
• “Write a caption about [topic]”
• “Write a tweet with a question about [topic] that we could ask the [social account name] community”
• “Reword this caption: [caption goes here]”

I usually generate multiple responses when using the AI Assistant, and then I’ll take bits and pieces from each of them to use for the final caption. It’s a great tool to use for brainstorming and to give you a starting point for your captions!

🤳 What's Happening in Social

• 🚫 A news item to keep an eye on is the U.S. House panel’s bill that gives President Joe Biden power to ban TikTok.
• 📸 Incoming YouTube CEO Neal Mohan has shared his initial vision for the future of the app which includes better monetization opportunities and generative AI.
• 🤖 Speaking of AI, Snapchat has jumped on the train with a new GPT-like chatbot experience for Snapchat+ subscribers called “My AI”.

Thanks for reading! 💟

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