WATCH EMILY REIGART’S INTERVIEW WITH SHIRA
Shira Lazar, founder/CEO of What’s Trending, will serve as the first-ever host for NAB Show’s Main Stage. Register online now to attend NAB show, scheduled for April 14-17, using code AMP05.
“I’ve always loved NAB Show,” Lazar says, “because it has this mix of the technologists, the innovations, the disruptors, and then entertainment and media.” NAB Show represents her “sweet spot” and enables Lazar to “learn and educate myself while also connecting with people that I’ve known for years.”
So what’s on trend for the Creator Economy? NAB Amplify asked, and Lazar answered. Watch our full conversation, above, or read on for some of the highlights.
Short form or long form content? These days, the answer, according to Lazar, is “both” — and it depends. TikTok, Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts are all “huge,” she says.
Creators will “need to be playing around with both” since nearly “every platform supports both.” However, the money is with YouTube, and “on YouTube, longer form content is what wins in terms of monetization.”
In terms of which social platform she thinks will break through next, Lazar has noted an uptick in LinkedIn content creation. “There’s literally influencer marketing companies that have launched just for LinkedIn content creators,” she says.
Lazar recommends that content creators do their best to be “very flexible and nimble with your content creation, your workflow and your processes, so that you can shift very quickly.”
Due to the number of formats, she says, it’s important to consider: “How do you take one piece of content and make it available to consume in different ways, depending on the platform?” Lazar thinks that this a good use case for AI tools, enabling solopreneurs to “create more efficient[ly], and for cost and time processes for all of us to exist in the right way on these platforms.”
Lazar says that the “democratization” that began with social media content distribution is “on steroids because of AI.”
Still, Lazar suspects that specialization will continue to be the name of the game for some creators. “When you’re building a brand, you do sometimes need to specialize at first, to then go general or to bring in other interests that you have.”
She says, “Depending on people’s interests, or where they get their audience, where they see traction, they will double down and hunker down on that, and they will be known as the TikTok star, the LinkedIn star, the YouTube star.”
However, she points out, “MrBeast now is going everywhere. He just signed a deal with Amazon Prime. In many ways, he will always be known as the YouTube star. You will have the 1% of creators, of course, go everywhere and make it work everywhere.”
Spatial Computing and the Future of Content
One future trend Lazar is willing to bet on? Spatial computing coming to the Creator Economy.
“I think we’re gonna see content creators rise from Apple Vision Pro, and whatever other tools or tech that we have, and content created specifically for” immersive devices. At a minimum, she predicts content will need to be “interoperable” or “able to exist on mobile, on desktop, on VR, AR, whatever.”
For content creators, that means they’ll have to consider, “How do you make your content translate to all those places?”
“I think it will be a tool, and there will be people that become Vision Pro masters, experts, stars, but it won’t be everyone” who migrates to this platform,” Lazar says.
She doubts that the XR glasses will be set up as a competitor to existing services like Twitch, but rather thinks “the smartest thing” will be for companies to consider how to integrate their offerings and leverage the new tools from Apple.
Working in the Creator Economy
“This idea of the digital content creator being a job, I love it,” says Lazar. “I love that it’s become more mainstream, that more people want to do it because that means we’re all in this together.”
She explains, “The reality is, it’s challenging. And this idea that you can just become this — blow up on this platform, and now it’s your full time job and make X amount of money — is just a fallacy.”
Instead, Lazar urges would-be professional creators to “lean into your passions, lean into your purpose, what do you care about? And start with that and start creating right now. But don’t leave your entire life behind.”
“Know that sometimes it’s going to be great, and sometimes it won’t be, so have different revenue streams and options for yourself,” Lazar advises. “Use content and what you love to build thought leadership and lead to” potential brand deals or other partnership opportunities.
It’s important to “be practical, be reasonable, and then take care of yourself and your mental health.”
That solidarity and focus on mental health is meaningful to Lazar, who also founded Peace Inside Live, which she describes as a “wellness agency and collective,” in 2020.
“You can’t necessarily create when you’re in a bad mental state,” Lazar explains.
She also disputes the idea that the only successful creators are making their content full-time. “That is not true. We all create in different ways, and so I think we need to be looking at our lives as individuals in terms of what we each want, what I want is different than possibly what you want.”
