NOVEMBER 29, 2022

Welcome to The Tilt, a twice-weekly newsletter for content entrepreneurs.

In This Issue: It’s time to create a media kit. A lawyer and mom makes content another full-time job. Plus, the best dates to send emails in 2023. Last but not least, don’t forget about our new Tilt rewards program (more info found at the bottom of the newsletter). Be sure to share with friends to earn Tilt swag, Visa gift cards, CEX event tickets, and more!

full tilt

How To Make Your Must-Have Media Kit

A creator who intends to sell or promote their business needs a media kit.

Why?

A media kit serves as a differentiator between a hobbyist creator and a content entrepreneur. It brings a level of professionalism to your business and showcases to a brand the potential impact of working with you.

Explain your why and your audience: If you have a well-written, focused “about” page, congrats. You’ve already completed most of this step. If you haven’t, keep reading.

Highlight briefly why your business exists. (Reread your mission statement for help.)

Here’s our mission statement:

“The Tilt is for serious content creators. We help content creators grow full-time, independent media businesses that don’t rely on social media platforms. These content entrepreneurs develop, grow, and monetize audiences through content products such as newsletters, podcasts, courses, communities, and Web3/token projects.”

As you can see, the three sentences succinctly explain who the target audience is and how we help them.

With your business’ purpose detailed, you’re ready to get more specific. Detail how you accomplish your mission – formats, channels of operation, audience size on those channels, publishing frequency, etc.

But don’t stop there. Your audience’s engagement metrics matter to brands considering working with you through sponsorships or affiliate marketing deals.

Showcase professionalism and offerings: As we interview brands and agencies working on creator partnerships, one of their gripes is when they identify a creator to work with, but that creator isn’t prepared to do business. They can’t easily explain their audience, showcase what they do, or explain the impact.

A media kit also is a good place to outline how these brands can work with you. By outlining your services, brands can begin to recognize if their chosen distribution channels and formats mesh with yours. They also can envision what the partnership would look like.

Make it easier for brands, media, and you: If you’re doing cold outreach or pitching story ideas around your brand, a media kit – or (even better) a link to your media kit – can cut down the need for a lengthy explanation in your initial email or phone call. It also gives the prospect a reason to visit your website. And once there, who knows? They might see some other content that interests them.

Ready to get started? Here are two free resources:

– Ann Gynn

Learn more about media kit creations, including how entrepreneur Roberto Blake does his.

content entrepreneur spotlight

Entrepreneur: Sophia Ward

Biz: Sophia Renee

Tilt: Family life, marriage, food, and travel from a full-time lawyer and mom

Primary Channels: Instagram (37.8K followers)

Other Channels: TikTok (19.2K)

Time to First Dollar: 6 months

Rev Streams: Brand sponsorships and affiliate links. She also works full time as a law firm partner and litigator.

Our Favorite Actionable Advice:

Find your niche: Don’t just jump in and start posting. “This is not your personal page … You have to figure out what your angle is, what your voice is,” Sophia says.
See what your followers do: Once you’ve posted, engage and respond to your audience. Go to their stories and see what they’re up to. “It’s not just about you,” she says.
Keep learning: Sophia studied what successful creators did as she launched her Instagram, but she hasn’t stopped learning. Among her learning tools is a community of other creators.

– Sarah Lindenfeld Hall

Learn what Sophia Ward does when life intervenes with new content production and more of her story.

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

things to know

Money

Brand budgets: Some creators say they’re seeing fewer deals from brands and are pivoting to other income streams, such as courses and memberships. (Some creators say their holiday deals are as good or better than last year.) (Insider)
Tilt Take: Diversifying your revenue streams is a good idea in any economy.
Tip up: An Indonesian-based startup TipTip wants to help creators build communities using offline/online strategy and monetize their business by selling content, not ads. (Tech Crunch)
Tilt Take: Direct content sales can be a good idea, but one-to-one sales often require a lot more manual work than selling access to your audience through sponsorships or ads.

Audiences

Meme traffic: Social Media Today experimented with publishing memes on social to attract traffic to their site. It saw a 12% increase in sessions from social and 16% increase in users. It also found more general memes worked better than trending ones. (Social Media Today)
Tilt Take: Experiment to see what content, formats, and platforms drive the most or the best high-quality traffic to your primary owned channel.
Privacy privilege: Sixty percent of teens feel like they have little or no control over their personal data collected by social media companies, and 44% of teens say they have little or no concern about that data collection. (Pew Research)
Tilt Take: Are these teens realists, or have they yet to fully realize the impact of how that personal data collection can impact them?

Tech and Tools

Google helps: Google created a one-stop resource – Guide to Google Search Ranking Systems – so creators can more easily understand the updates and other changes happening. (Google Search Central)
Tilt Take: Thank you, Google. The more you explain and the easier it is to find, the better creators can create for search.
Best dates: Outcome Media released the 2023 B2B and B2C email calendars, identifying the top-, average-, and poor-performing dates based on stats from over 50K campaigns executed annually. (Outcome Media)
Tilt Take: Use this as a helpful guide, not the absolute truth, because your audience may be similar, but it isn’t the same.

And Finally

Twitter time: Expect to see more advertisers pull the plug on Twitter advertising in the next week or so. But that doesn’t mean everybody will leave the platform just yet. (Geekout)
Tilt Take: If Twitter is your primary platform or marketing tool, start exploring alternative channels and strategies.
Get inspired: The 2022 Watty Awards have been announced. They cover 11 categories filled with irresistible characters, imaginative plot lines, and wonderful worlds that authors have created. (Wattpad)
Tilt Take: Click and read the Wattpad spectacular stories.

the business of content

It seems every social platform is going through significant change. Now more than ever, we need to focus on our owned audiences. Here’s what you need to do right now. (Content Inc. podcast)
Joe and Robert review the latest with Twitter and make predictions on what Twitter is trying to become. (This Old Marketing podcast)
Before you sell your startup, read this. (Harvard Business Review)
Get the scoop from a CEO who grew his company from startup to $120M (Small Business Trends)
Dec. 15 is the deadline for the U.S. Healthcare Marketplace for insurance enrollment or plan changes to begin Jan. 1, 2023, for those who are eligible. (HealthCare.gov)

Be Part of the TILT Nation with Our New Rewards Program

Share The Tilt Newsletter with other content creators and get free $TILT coin, swag, and more.

the tilt team

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

Get Your Kit Together – November 29, 2022