Maps Maponyane talks about how he combats algorithm anxiety:
I focus on my why and the things that make me happy. My journey, the work I’ve put in. I take stock a bit. A lot of the time I’d also just move away from social media. If I feel like it, I’ll get back on. If I feel like it’s changing me, I take a break.
Bouwer Bosch echoes this sentiment when he explains:
I should probably post more consistently because then I’m sure it’ll become more profitable, but I don’t have the capacity to produce content daily, like Katinka die Kat does. Or even weekly. I’m just not in the mood to be funny every single day. I know from working with Nadia Jaftha on Tropika Island of Treasure that she’s amazing and super disciplined at this. To me it often feels as if I’m bipolar because I often have to give myself a pep talk, that it’s okay not to have something to post now. Because you tend to look at the profiles of others, their projects, the audiences they pull in and that’s your downfall. When you start believing that your work doesn’t have an impact. Then I usually go and look at what I’m actually busy with: Liefde Wen has more followers than Mr Price and Superbalist. Francois [van Coke] beats me on the follower front, but he primarily makes music. I get up in the morning and run Freckle, Liefde Wen and other projects. If you focus only on music, you’ll probably eventually be able to also sell out the Sun Arena. But in my case, I make TV ads and I make movies too. It’s important for me to sometimes tell myself “Hey dude, it’s ok!” I love acting, I love TV and film and all those things. I recently did a live improv theatre show called Intermissie, which earned award nominations ...
I think the truth lies somewhere in the middle. You need to look at what your audience expects and what delivers real results, like Wian says, among that audience. I have experimented with a variety of approaches: long breaks between content, various posts per day, more video than stills, more trend-based stuff, and then the opposite of that in timeless “how-tos” as well. I have struck a balance that doesn’t overlap with anyone else’s approach here, which is why I think that, in the end, you just need to be consistent in whatever approach you choose.
Decide which expectations you can keep meeting while being generous, honest and productive at the same time. As Wian pointed out:
The guy who has the second highest number of followers on TikTok right now, only posts every second day [he makes video editing tutorials]. His videos are amazing and generate loads of likes, so for him it works to post less frequently.
5
SHOW ME THE MONEY
What is my voice worth?
On YouTube it is relatively simple to start earning an income when you attract a solid following. They call it “monetisation”, which is when the actual platform pays you cash for the adverts they run on your content – you only need to activate the monetisation setting on your channel and submit the information required.
The views you attract lead to eyeballs that also watch adverts and, eventually, YouTube shares a slice of the revenue you created with you. TikTok has a similar model, which allows viewers of live broadcasts to send creators monetary gifts.
As Wian explains:
It works just like on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram Live, but viewers can send you emojis that are called gifts and they all have different cash values. Users can buy these emojis with actual money, so they’re worth R100 or R200 or R400, and then when they send it to me while I’m live, I get half of the cash paid into my account and TikTok keeps the other half.
I am interested in what the viewer or follower gets out of sponsoring these emojis. Are we showing off how much cash we can splash or is it true organic appreciation from your fans?
Wian says it is more transactional than this.
I’d suggest it to viewers along the lines of: “Send me gifts and I’ll follow you back.” The reason some of them want me to follow them is so I might like their videos and grow their engagement. Also, some just want me to mention their names in the video, to acknowledge them. To wish them happy birthday or whatever. Look, some nights it makes more sense for me to sit and answer my e-mails and set up event bookings or content deals, but on other nights R1 000 in gifts can totally make an hour’s worth of a TikTok live worthwhile.
If your aim as an influencer is to build a solid enough following in order to earn an income, then this is the crux of the exercise. However, I know monetisation tends to be something influencers seldom discuss. There are a few people in the industry whom I know I can call to compare notes and we give each other a fair bit of advice, as well as support, because it is sometimes difficult to navigate on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. However, because of the inherently competitive nature of it all, I have also encountered plenty of people who don’t want to share these trade secrets.
I like referring to webfluential.com or influencermarketinghub.com for guidance on this as well – these are like a kind of “Uber for influencers”. The Webfluential
