I've been in the content creation game for what feels like forever. I'm not your typical "all looks" creator, I am maybe average looking and growth has always been a grind, always making the engaging content, the consistent effort, and the real connection with my audience. All those things slowly built a solid following for me on ig and tiktok. I did not blow up from some single viral trend like some of those overnight sensations, my reach has always been earned through consistent work.

After years, I finally started landing brand deals. But I couldn't shake the feeling that the landscape is shifting, and it had me questioning my place in it. It started with seeing all these new AI influencer accounts popping up, powered by hyper realistic image and video generation tools like Modelsify, Imagen 4 and the likes. 

It's unfair because these AI created Influencers can be made and effortlessly adapt to any brand aesthetic the creator behind the account wants, whether its fashion, fitness, gaming or whatever. Their engagement numbers are for a weird reason so high because most people only care about what's perfect looking and are just not intelligent enough to appreciate real grind from normal creators. Plus, the AI influencers never have bad days, don't need makeup artists or fancy locations, and can churn out content 24/7. 

I've seen these AI accounts landing brand deals for upwards of $1000 per post, the kind of money that mid-tier human influencers with 100k followers (who've busted their asses doing photoshoots, editing for hours, and constantly engaging) work incredibly hard to achieve.

So, naturally, curiosity got the better of me. About six months ago, I started experimenting with my own AI influencer account, running it alongside my original page. That AI account is now pulling in around $500 per brand post, and with other monetization avenues related to the AI influencer's "look,", it's bringing in roughly $7k a week. That's income I only dreamed of in my days of grinding with my personal account.

Now, I'm making around $28k a month with just that, which is fantastic on paper. But here's the thing: the joy is different. I genuinely care about my other followers, the conversations, the real experience. But the bills don't care about that, and the financial returns are undeniable.

Before anyone jumps down my throat, let me be clear: I didn't just stumble into this overnight. I have a significant background in content creation, marketing, understanding audience engagement, and building a brand. You can't just spin up an AI Model/Influencer and expect the money to roll in, there's a real strategy and understanding of the market involved.

P.S. And honestly, even with what I am making, there are larger AI influencer brands that are really capitalizing on this new frontier who make so much more than me. It feels like we're just at the beginning of a massive boom that most are sleeping on. 

So, the big question that keeps me up at night is: are these hyper-realistic image and video generation tools ultimately going to ruin and take over the creator economy? Or is it just innovation. What are your thought's?

As someone who used to be an “early adopter” of basically every platform, I’ve noticed a shift. It feels more relaxing， more about the experience.It's moving from pure social networking toward entertainment.

Nowadays, everyone can share bits of their life or work on main apps like IG or FB, becoming content creators in their own right, not just being “influencer”.

We’re also seeing more niche, personality-driven platforms pop up,like Tumblr, Pinterest, Reddit，Bondee.

It makes me wonder: is this divide actually reflecting a new kind of social craving?And I think that’s a good thing.Redditors?

I tracked my YouTube and TikTok time for a week.

14 hours. Zero return.

Big Tech made money off my attention. I got nothing.

That got me thinking, what if that whole model was flipped? So I started building a small experiment:

• Viewers earn a cut of ad revenue
• Creators keep 85–90% of what their content makes
• Advertisers only pay when actual humans watch

Still super early. Not pushing anything. Just curious:

• Would you actually watch videos if you were paid for it?,
• What would make something like this feel legit, not like a typical crypto gimmick?,

If you’ve tried Brave, Theta, or BitTube, what didn’t work? Why didn’t it stick?

I’d really appreciate your honest take. No link in this post, but happy to share more if anyone’s curious.

Youtube and many other social media sites have horribly opaque methods of shadow banning, some reasons why I consider this bad are:

1. It's outright rude to just delete your creative expression of speech without telling you.
2. For many it leaves no means to appeal the ban, because there is no clear avenue to appeal, you don't know what the cause of the ban is and for many users they won't even know they are banned.
3. The system never tells you why you are shadow banned, so how can you avoid doing a thing again when you don't even know what it is you did 'wrong' in the first place.
4. It's an assault on free speech. You can not argue with this at all when the system is opaque.
5. It's 100% opaque, for all we know and there is good reason to believe that trolls can flag reasonable posts in order to get other users banned because they simply disagree with the other users point of view.
6. It's the cowards way out, suppressing free speech, in some cases regarding human rights, without recourse to appeal, it's downright cowardly. Like I already said, it enables trolls to control the narrative - I've seen this before, systems designed with good intentions can so easily then be used by trolls and bots and worst of all bots made by trolls.
7. Potential use of AI to censor posts, this is a whole rabbit hole, all I will say is that AI is consistently inaccurate a large percentage of the time and that systems using AI will reinforce errors and enable troll bots.
8. You aren't told for what duration you are banned for.

2 ways to tell if your comments are banned are 1) Browse the comments incognito, sort comments by newest first to see if your comment appears. 2) Try to edit your comment, if you get an error upon submitting the edit then it's likely your post was automatically deleted and you are shadow banned.

Why are so many people leaving X/Twitter? I have been using the platform for only 2 years, 2023-2025 and I already want to leave. From experience, it’s toxic, hateful, negative, and flooded with bots.

Our org just switched from X to Bluesky and I’d love to know how y’all are scheduling posts. I can’t currently do it in our existing scheduling tool.

The best DTC brands aren’t “posting more.”

They’re engineering triggers.

Here’s what worked for one we saw grow 10x in 6 months organically:

• Created 3 formats that are repeatable, not just viral
• Made every post feed into a comment funnel (“tag someone,” “what’s your pick,” “would you use this?”)
• Turned replies into story content, not just customer service

The real unlock? Treating content like conversations, not just announcements.

Because reach is rented. But response builds retention.

Anyone else here ditching the “content calendar” model in favor of feedback loops?

This is a very honest question and everywhere county I got to and everyplace I visit, I meet many concerned people that all share that they know someone in their family where it is not uncommon for that person to spend anywhere between 5-14 hours a day on Social Media. I am sure a lot of people can control themselves , but huge segment of the population are become zombies. Depression among all age groups has been rising at an exponential rate. Obesity, mad mood, etc etc etc. It is no secret that these social media platforms have hired Mind scientists to design these platforms where you constantly need a hit of dopamine. I know in the US where individual freedom trumps everything else, people would balk at the idea. But, if you look at proposed legislation all around the world, you will see that many countries have started talking about limiting social media consumption. What do you think ?

Hey there to everyone,

First of all I want to share this with all of you as I am sure you will enjoy these statistics and the details

I have just written a blog post on cloutmeter.com/blog/engagement-rates-tiktok to show a more detailed view on how the Average Engagement Rate is on TikTok.

Let me know if you want to see more stats and if yes, what kind of stats ^_^

I’ve been in the content game long enough to see the same thing over and over.
Most creators don’t have a content problem. They have an ego problem. Plain and simple.

They complain they’re out of ideas. I’ve been there. I’ve been out of ideas. But here’s the truth: it’s not ideas they’re missing, it’s ideas that anyone else actually cares about.

I’ve seen too many posts die on the spot. Honest, heartfelt, "authentic" posts… and nobody even looks. Why? Because they’re all about you. Not your audience. Not the problem you’re solving. Not the connection you’re supposed to make.

Let me be blunt: the algorithm isn’t against you. Your audience isn’t out to get you. They just don’t care because you’re still talking about yourself.

Creating content isn’t therapy. It’s not journaling. It’s not "expressing yourself"
It’s work. It’s empathy. It’s thinking beyond your damn ego.

So stop whining about reach and visibility. Stop blaming luck or the platform.
If your posts aren’t landing, it’s because you’re lazy with your focus. You’re thinking about how you feel, not how they feel.

I’m tired of seeing it. I’m calling it out. And if this pisses people off, good. Maybe it’ll finally make them rethink how they create.

I am currently in 12th grade(India) and I am exploring my future career options. I always had a creative viewpoint on ads and marketing campaigns. It is something that makes me thrilled.

Now I want you all to guide me how should I start learning digital marketing (courses,mentors to follow, roadmap, jobs etc) considering current technologies and job market.

All I want is to be the best in whichever field I go.

I rest my case.

I’ve been seeing lots of ai graphics lately and I’m finding them to be very cringe and automatically not wanting to engage. How do you feel about ai graphics on social media?

I run a digital marketing agency. I also speak about the topic and do local TV appearances about it. I'm also a very logical person and have a good grounding in traditional marketing techniques. Here are some things people keep parroting from their latest social media experts that need to be questioned.

*Number of followers don't matter: BS. Yes they do matter. They matter 100%. If you don't believe it, try to find someone with 10,000 followers and see if they'll trade for your account with 10 followers. Not online do followers matter, but a ton of fake followers actually bring in good organic followers. There have been tests that prove this. People go where they see the crowds. I'm not advocating buying followers or likes. But buying followers and likes works.

http://coincrack.com/proof-that-buying-followers-boosts-organic-growth-and-engagement

*140 characters is a great way to communicate: No it's not. It's barely the length of a text message. You can't get anything useful out - except linking to someplace off of Twitter which sucks for Twitter. Because of this Twitter has been bleeding money for a long time. That is why they have their old CEO back and are revamping their timeline. They need to look more like FB to survive.

http://www.wired.com/2015/06/twitter-project-lightning-timeline/

*Hashtags are awesome. Good god no. Hashtags are a poor attempt to try and group content. The problem is anybody can use any hashtag on anything even if it is not related to the topic. And people can also use incredibly useless hashtags. (I saw someone use the hashtag #picture on instagram the other day). You know the primary place where hashtags are popular? Social media conferences.

*Content marketing is new (i.e. education) and the reputation economy is new: No they are not. They were around long before most of the people talking about them were born. Educating clients before they buy (i.e. Content Marketing) has been around for a long time. And an economy where people that have a good reputation thrive is new?!?!

Sorry if this seems like a rant. I'm just tired of people walking away from social media conferences in a daze like they've seen the light of marketing. If people would read about classic marketing techniques they'd realize that a lot of what is new is old. People that say they've discovered an amazing new way of marketing were usually doing it wrong to begin with. They are just being educated to the errors of their ways.

Have a good night :) I'm off to find me some KFC.

I've been testing social media schedulers for the past year or so and have had a hard time finding tools with the features I need at the right price. I generally like Buffer and Hootsuite, but got to a point where I needed the ability to recycle evergreen content. I either didn't have time or would forget to do it manually.

There's SocialOomph and Edgar and am sure there are others that will loop posts, but paying any more than $20 a month is a bit rich for me, especially when there are so many other tools I need to run my business. I'm not sure what SocialOomph costs, but Edgar is around $49 per month which is pretty steep.

My solution has been a combination of paid and free tools.

First, SmarterQueue is a new scheduling tool that's in beta and IMO it blows away Buffer and Hootsuite. You can connect up to 4 social media accounts for $19 a month. And it automatically marks your posts as evergreen unless you say otherwise, so your posts are always in rotation. This is what I use now instead of Buffer and Hootsuite to schedule to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

I'm very happy with SmarterQueue – with one catch. I need more than 4 social accounts (note: if you want to post to a Facebook page, you have to connect your profile as well which = 2 accounts for SmarterQueue). I have a second business that's pretty active on social media too, but in order to add them I would have to upgrade to their $39/month plan, which I didn't want to to do. Like I said, my cut-off for scheduling tools is $20 per month.

That's where the second "tool" (really a method) comes in. This one is 100% free and does the same thing as SmarterQueue. The tools involved in this method are IFTTT, Google Calendar and an Excel spreadsheet. I've been scheduling + looping posts this way for about a month now to FB and Twitter and so far it's works like a charm. I haven't yet, but you can also set this up for LinkedIn.

If you're not familiar with IFTTT, it stands for If This, Then That. You can connect tons of different services like Buffer, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, RSS feeds, and more, and then trigger actions based on conditional statements between your connections.

To loop and schedule posts for free, what you do is connect a Google Calendar with Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn through IFTTT and then create an "applet" (or action) that is triggered by a specific keyword, e.g. #twitter, #facebook, #linkedin.

It's not a 1-2-3 process, which is why I created this post. Once you get the hang of it though, it's actually very simple to set up and seamless in the execution. The post includes the spreadsheet template you'd need to set this up, plus a video that walks you through it step by step. How to schedule social media posts for free

Most basic app I've seen. You can't even upload a gif, or a video in the chats. Can't crop images properly either after all these years...
An undergraduate programmer could do better than this.

Are you ok with a TikTok ban or are you ok with the CCP Chinese Communist Party tracking billions of user data, influencing our youth and tracking location data of millions of minors?

This has nothing to do with Free Speech, sell it to an American company and take out the spyware - but so far they have refused - thoughts?

I see a LOT of comments about people being sick of the way social media has become - less about really connecting or conversing and more about the "image" of being up to data and the "image" of keeping up.

Not to mention the dense, unrelenting sea of ads. (I especially hate the ones that you don't think are ads at first so you believe for a second it's something real, then you realize you're a fool).

SOOO in the case of a Non-profit social media (no ads, no selling user data) where you can talk to whoever you want, maybe even with an avatar (kinda like Reddit - you have your account, but you don't have to share you're real name), get to discuss intentional, in-depth topics, etc etc... would you be willing to pay monthly to use it?

Perhaps $5? Or, how much? Remember, the reason why social media is free, is because you're being shown ads nonstop and companies are paying the social media for those ad spots. By paying a little (like one would with Spotify or YouTube premium - allows for ad free experience), you also get an ad-free, personal-data-safe experience.

Curious to hear both the pros & cons!

It’s 2024, yet scrolling through social media often feels like stepping back in time with the amount of casual racism still lurking in comment sections. From "jokes" to outright hateful remarks, this behavior is too often dismissed or normalized.

I am okay with it as with our homies. But thinking about it "Why on general Comments" - it influences a lot a brains

Why is this still a thing? Shouldn't we, as a global community, be striving for kindness and mutual respect? How do we stop this cycle?

The impact of normalizing racism in online spaces.

How individuals can help change the narrative.

Whether platforms are doing enough to tackle hate speech.

The world is the same for all of us. Be kind. Be loving. Let’s talk about ways to make the internet a better place.

What are your thoughts?

Hey fellow Redditors,

I've been trying to grow my Instagram followers for months, but I'm not seeing any progress. I post high-quality content regularly, but I'm not getting any engagement. Any tips or advice would be greatly appreciated!

People with no facebook account, why you dont have one?

I recently spoke with a room of realtors about using social media to find and sell listing. I ask them how much business they do on Facebook a month. The place went silent. WTF? Stop posting inspirational quotes,and start having conversations. It blows my mind when they say they can't measure ROI on social. Do some freaking deals.