NOVEMBER 18, 2022

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

In Friday 5s: Let’s talk community vision and guidelines, plus MrBeast does something new, and a creator who cut 90% of his community members explains why.


5 things to do

Guide Your Community

Whether motivated by the new ownership and changes at Twitter or simply ready for that next stage in your content business, starting an online community presents a great opportunity.

But that power can quickly be lost if the members encounter irrelevant conversations, personal attacks, spammers, and more. Publicly shared – and enforced – community guidelines can prevent that from happening.

Follow these five steps:

1. Detail the vision: Define the “why” behind your community. Briefly explain in a sentence or two the purpose of gathering your audience in this digital space. To help, revisit your content mission statement.

2. Set the tone: In the beginning, your presence sets the stage. Show up, pose questions, tell stories, or make comments to encourage members to step up and interact with you and/or each other.

3. Write down the possible rules: Detail every rule to cover every possible behavior or action you do or don’t want. If you already have an audience, ask for their input – learn what type of community they would want to join and how they would want that community to behave.

4. Delete most of them and go with the most important ones: Delete every potential rule that would apply to a limited few and would have little impact on the overall community. As the community creator, you can deal with those one-off occurrences on a case-by-case basis.

Then, look for commonalities among the remaining potential rules. Use those themes to create several broad rules that cover many on your list. These five community guidelines from the National Geographic Society cover a lot of territory.

Don’t forget to detail the penalties for violations.

5. Enforce the guidelines: Your guidelines are worthless unless you ensure they’re followed. Address the violation directly with the community first. Depending on the violation and penalty, you may ask them to edit, remove, or apologize for their misstep. You should tell your community that you’ve handled a violation without naming the offender. They need to know you enforce the rules.

Resources:


New Report from The Tilt and HubSpot

Are you interested in working with a brand? Don’t be intimidated – you are the one with the audience and influence with them! Do you feel inspired to create great content for a brand you love? Reach out and share it with them. Aim high and you will be rewarded!

Learn more about working with brands in The Business of Creators report from The Tilt and HubSpot.


5 things at the tilt


5 things to know

Money
  • Revenue tag: YouTube Shorts creators may soon add product tags to their videos, allowing viewers to shop the products in the app. It’s in the pilot phase. (Social Media Today)
    Tilt Take: Affiliate marketing can be a lucrative revenue stream for creators, so this would be a plus for those who publish on Shorts.
  • Locked up: Creators using Linktree’s link-in-bio may soon add a paywall for access to files, PDFs, etc. The Payment Lock feature is in beta mode. (Tech Crunch)
    Tilt Take: Always think about how your paid content is a uniquely different product than your free content. It’s more important to ensure your audience gets a premium experience rather than go for a quick buck.
Audiences
  • More reports: TikTok’s added audience insights filters in its ad manager. Among the options: age, gender, interests, video interactions (i.e., categories), creator interactions, hashtag interactions, and device. (Social Media Today)
    Tilt Take: Test a sample paid campaign to understand the three interaction types and use the information to inform your content planning.
Tech and Tools
  • No checkmark here: Substack introduced a bestseller badge. Writers can opt to add the badge next to their byline. White indicates hundreds of paid subscribers, orange means thousands, and purple indicates hundreds of thousands. (On Substack; h/t Inbox Reads)
    Tilt Take: We like a validation system that’s based simply on what matters most – the audience.
And Finally
  • MrBeast beats: MrBeast overtook PewDiePie as the most-subscribed individual YouTuber with over 111M. He took to his channel to celebrate and thank his audience (Insider)
    Tilt Take: We love that even though Jimmy Donaldson is a mega-millionaire, he still frequently recognizes his audience has made it all possible.


5 things to read, watch, or hear


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the tilt team

Your team for this issue: Joe Pulizzi, Pam Pulizzi, Ann Gynn, Laura Kozak, Marc Maxhimer, and Dave Anthony.