NEWS: NEED TO KNOW 🔎
Patreon's First Creator Census - The power of naming your fanbase community
Patreon, the membership platform that makes it easy for artists and creators to get paid, released its first-ever Creator Census 2022. Building online and in-person communities is very important for creators, especially since the pandemic began. One interesting finding is that creators who give their patrons or their community a custom fandom name, on average, see a 4-8% higher monthly retention than those who don't.
Researchers have long known that naming a fanbase makes up an essential part of how fans see and present themselves. Fandom names like Potterheads (Harry Potter), Tolkiendils (J. R. R. Tolkien), and Trekkies (Star Trek) foster a strong sense of community and deep belonging. Remember that the name you choose brings your group into existence as a collective. It allows a group to differentiate itself and makes it easier for fans to bond with both fan objects and other fans.
LGBTQ+ TikTok creators offer advice to brands during Pride Month 🏳️🌈 🏳️⚧️
Minority creators could learn from LGBTQ+ TikTok creators They're speaking out about how brands can better reach out before Pride Month for a campaign. June is Pride Month and National Indigenous History Month.
Cyrus Veyssi, a nonbinary content creator known for their comedy content, received 15 to 20 inquiries from brands for Pride Month, from May 25 to June 2nd. Veyssi says the last-minute approach "can feel like an afterthought" and advises a brand's outreach to begin with something personal that shows familiarity with the creator's content.
The biggest change for Pride Month, says Veyssi, is that 95% of requests are for TikTok videos in 2022, while most requests last year were for Instagram content. TikTok reported getting to 1 billion users in September 2021 with 386.6 million TikTok users aged 18 to 24 or 43.7% of all users worldwide.
PROFILE: DO WHAT YOU ARE ❤️ 🫶
Fiona Fairbairnn on bimbofication, the soft life and letting others help you 🌈 👂 🎀
Fiona Fairbairnn's mantra is “No thoughts, just vibes”. The 19-year-old Black, Indigenous woman is a pre-law student at The Toronto Metropolitan University. The TikTok creator has more than 178k followers and created The Bimbo Manifesto podcast. The traditional definition of bimbo is "a young woman considered to be attractive but not intelligent". It puts attractive women down by viewing them as "airheads".
Fairbairnn wants to reclaim a new-age definition for today's bimbo. She says,
Being a bimbo is a woman who is unapologetically themselves and doesn't feel the need to prove herself to anybody. It's someone who chooses a soft life over a hard life – letting people help them and do things for them, making decisions that make their life easier and relaxing.
Pursuing a soft life is a message that resonates for women of color who often feel compelled to be "the strong independent one". She says,
A lot of Black and Indigenous women don’t let people help them. I’m saying, why don’t you let people help you sometimes?
Part satire, part political, and part lifestyle choice, Fairbairnn's motivation for #bimboism #bimbotok and #bimbofication was having to endure a toxic relationship with a narcissistic ex-boyfriend. After it ended, she became empowered to never let someone control how she felt about herself. Instead, focus your energy on yourself, your looks, and on feeling good. Today's bimbo concept has expanded across race, gender, body type, and sexuality to include non-binary "thembos” and a male variation "himbos".
RESILIENCE HACKS 💪🏾 ✌🏽💯
If you want breakthrough ideas, get good at scratching
Sooner or later, people get stuck on something they're working on. They struggle to get a foothold and don't know what comes next. Twyla Tharp, the great American dancer, and choreographer, who is 80, writes about how you can regain your foothold and find great ideas in The Creative Habit. She says you must recognize:
"You don’t really have a workable idea until you combine two ideas."
Workable or great ideas require scratching, which involves:
digging through everything to find something. It's like clawing at the side of a mountain to get a toehold, a grip, some sort of traction to keep moving upward and onward."
Scratching is about finding the smallest idea when a big idea evades you. The first step is about getting physical like putting pen to paper or brush to canvass. It's different for each person. It involves taking action like visiting a vintage clothing or craft shop, a bookstore, an art exhibit, people watching from a cafe, or attending a concert, symphony, festival, or convention.
In the 2002 documentary, Scratch, DJ Shadow describes how rummaging through crates of forgotten vinyl records in a store's basement led to breakthroughs. The art of digging means there is a treasure waiting if you spend the time sorting through the junk. DJ Shadow say,
There’s the promise in these stacks of finding something that you’re gonna use. And in fact most of my first album was built off of records pulled from here...
...People that dig, don’t stop digging, cos it’s part of who we are. .. It'll make a good DJ better.
WE ❤️ FEEDBACK 📋
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Spinning Forward is an award-winning, trusted, local, independent media company that informs, engages, and uplifts aspiring content creators of color aged 16 to 34 in the Toronto region. Flavian DeLima (LinkedIn), the founder and publisher, launched Spinning Forward to help level the playing field in the online economy for creators of color.
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COMMENT 💬
This week marks the start of summer outdoor events and activities. The summer is a reminder to have more fun, not be so hard on yourself, and to reduce overthinking every decision you make.
Inspired by Fiona Fairbairnn, who appears in this week's "Do What You Want" section, I think people (including me) spend too much time overthinking.
Susan Nolen-Hoeksema in her book, Women Who Think Too Much, defines overthinking as:
We tend to constantly ask ourselves big, hard questions like,
Since answers don't come easy, we continue searching, pondering, and worrying even more. The author believes our mood goes deeper and darker, which opens up even more concerns - both big and small. Every small and big concern can lead to hours or days of overthinking and distress in pursuit of perfection. Overthinking can paralyze and overwhelm us to the point where we feel trapped and stuck.
If you're an overthinker, try to not be a perfectionist this summer. This means learning to let go, reducing expectations of yourself, asking for help, and seeing how things unfold. After the past couple of years, you owe it to yourself to have more fun, be happier and live a more satisfying life.
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Have an awesome week!
Flavian
Publisher and Founder, Spinning Forward
Tw: @flaviandelima IG: @flaviande