FEBRUARY 15, 2022

Welcome to The Tilt, a twice-weekly newsletter for content entrepreneurs. Each edition is packed with the latest news, strategies, and tactics, plus inspiring creator stories and exclusive education, all to help you create, grow, and monetize better.

In this issue:

Full Tilt: Ignored to Billboard
Content Entrepreneur Spotlight: Mental Health Talk on Twitch
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full tilt

Ignored to Billboard: Jay-Ann Lopez of Black Girl Gamers on the Importance of Community in Content Creation

Last fall, a series of hate raids that blasted Black and LGBTQ+ streamers with racist and bigoted comments didn’t surprise creators in those communities. Neither were they shocked when a leak of Twitch data revealed only three women and just one of color are among the platform’s top 100 earners.

“When the Twitch leak happened and we commented on the fact that there was a lot of white males who were the highest earners and that wasn’t surprising, the toxicity comes,” says Jay-Ann Lopez, the founder of Black Girl Gamers. “They try and find our platform. We’ve had emails with the n-word. It’s still there. There’s a lot of shifting to be done, but it’s happening slowly, but surely.”

Black Girl Gamers is a thriving community of Black streamers who identify as women that now boasts more than 36K followers on Twitch and 54K on Twitter.

Creator to community builder: Jay-Ann, who is based in the United Kingdom, was a creator before founding Black Girl Gamers. In 2014, she co-founded Curlture. The platform, which includes over 45K followers on Instagram, empowers Black women to embrace their natural hair and beauty.

But Jay-Ann’s always been a gamer. Her uncle bought her her first console — a Super Nintendo — when she was 6 or 7. Later, she started a variety gaming channel on Twitch and made videos for YouTube, but her goal has never been to be a solo content creator. “That’s not my bag,” Jay-Ann says. “I like building things. And, for me, the main thing was how big of a change can I make. By creating a community-powered organization, I can have the biggest impact.”

Her experience building Curlture gave her the knowledge to launch Black Girl Gamers in 2015. “I didn’t have many people to play with,” she says. “Some of the experiences with racism and sexism had just pushed me in this little corner of gaming. I didn’t want to just exist there by myself. I thought there must be other Black women.”

She connected with a few on Twitter, created the group, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Standing tall in Times Square: Today, Black Girl Gamers is a vibrant community of more than 8K Black women from around the world. The focus is on cultivating an online safe space and platform for Black women and advocating for diversity and inclusion in games and the gaming community.

The Twitch stream features gameplay, game-side chats, conversations, and other programs. Within its Discord community, gamers take part in movie nights and talk about beauty, cooking, and other interests, forging close bonds over time.

“From the beginning, I always had the phrase ‘ignored to billboard,’” Jay-Ann says. “At the beginning, we were ignored or not really taken seriously. And last year, our members and myself were on a billboard in New York [as part of a Twitch Black History Month campaign]. It’s literally been from ignored to billboard.”

– Sarah Lindenfeld Hall

Read all about the evolution of Black Girl Gamers and Jay-Ann’s advice.

content entrepreneur spotlight

Entrepreneur: Marie Shanley

Biz: Mxiety

Tilt: Mental health

Primary Channels: Twitch (7.9K), website

Other Channels: Twitter (9.6K), Instagram (1.1K), LinkedIn

Rev Streams: Twitch subs, partnerships deals

Our Favorite Actionable Advice:

Get boundary reinforcements: Establish your boundaries for each platform and activity to avoid creator burnout. Get someone else, such as a moderator, to help you follow them.
Get a hobby: When you turn your hobby, such as Twitch streaming, into a business, find another hobby, so you have something to do outside of work.
Listen, but don’t always do: Take in all of the advice you can. Be open-minded, but also do not take it at face value. Instead, sift through it for you and your circumstances.

– Sarah Lindenfeld Hall

Read all about Marie Shanley and Mxiety.

Know a content creator who’s going full tilt? DM us. Or email [email protected].

quick talk

Caught on … Twitter

“There are so many little pulls on our attention that it’s a good practice to declutter.”

– Odilia Rivera Santos

things to know

Money

Mo’ money: More brands are paying real money to influencers. It’s about 50/50 monetary payment vs. free products. Also, in 2022, +75% of brand marketers say they’ll dedicate a budget to influencer marketing. (Influencer Marketing Hub)
Tilt Take: Money ups the game. Get any deal in writing, and make sure it’s sufficiently detailed.
Not enough money: Twitter’s CEO says creators use the platform to build their audience but go elsewhere to make money. That needs to change. They’re coming up with more ways to monetize and reduce the friction to get paid. (protocol)
Tilt Take: We think a lot of Twitter’s challenge centers around marketing and messaging (or lack thereof).

Audiences

Hit pause: Only 23% of subscription businesses often resist allowing their audience to hit the pause button. Yet, those that do find paused subscribers originally accounted for 3.4% of total revenue. (MarketingCharts; h/t Dara Schulenberg)
Tilt Take: Do a trial period for a pause button. See how well it helps you retain at-risk subscribers who may have canceled without the choice.
Watch time: In 2021, consumers watched even more video content than they did in 2020 – 20% more. (Wistia)
Tilt Take: Expect those numbers to only rise in 2022.

Tech and Tools

Look at this: Instagrammers can now press and hold to share the content with a friend. (Matt Navarra; h/t tl;drMarketing)
Tilt Take: It’s great when your followers help grow your audience.
YouTube NFTs: YouTube’s chief product officer says the platform may integrate NFTs for YouTube creators. They see it as a possibly compelling prospect for creators and their audiences. (YouTube; Matt Biggar in Tilt Discord community)
Tilt Take: An opportunity for YouTube to differentiate itself from other platforms that rely on creators? Only if they do it soon.

And Finally

QR at big game: Coinbase’s ad during the Super Bowl was just a QR code. So many responded that the digital wallet brand had to slow down traffic for a few minutes. (Surojit of Coinbase)
Tilt Take: Creativity doesn’t have to be exciting. A simple QR code stood out from the many highly produced (i.e., costly) Super Bowl ads.
Ask this: Among the 12 powerful questions to ask yourself if you’re a creator is this: Where do you fall on the artist-entrepreneur spectrum? (Josh Spector/For The Interested)
Tilt Take: You need to be honest with yourself. As a creator, do you also want to be a business owner and all that comes with that?

the business of content

Your Content Brand Is Critical. Here’s Why. (Content Inc.)
Do Platforms Need Editorial Oversight? (This Old Marketing)
10 Tips for Customizing Your Marketing Strategy (Small Business Trends)
Founders of Hiring App Share Best Career Advice (CNBC)
Pick a Lawyer for Your Startup (Lexology)

the tilt team

Your team for this issue: Joe Pulizzi, Ann Gynn, Laura Kozak, Marc Maxhimer, and Dave Anthony, with an assist from Angelina Kaminski, Sarah Lindenfeld Hall, and Don Borger.

Community First – February 15, 2022