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Monday’s Marketing Minute: Sam Altman Back at OpenAI, Cyber Monday Sales Set to Surge, Twitter Beats Facebook and IG for Referral Traffic

Happy Cyber Monday, y’all! I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving week with friends and family. We have now officially entered the ‘lull’ part of the year for most of us. The rest of the year will primarily be focused on the holidays, our families, and planning for 2024.  In both our personal and professional lives. I hope you have a wonderful close to your 2023 and that it sets you up for an amazing 2024! Here’s some of the business stories I’ve had my eye on this year:

 

Sam Altman is back as CEO of OpenAI. The rumor is that OpenAI had recently made a ‘massive breakthrough in AI that could threaten humanity’ and Altman didn’t notify the BOD. Sounds like a cover-story, but if true, it makes no logical sense. If the BOD is worried that OpenAI will eventually have a breakthrough in AI that will pose a huge threat to humanity, why does the company exist?  Obviously, when you take some of the world’s brightest engineers and coders and put them together on a project, you can expect huge advancements in short order.

An interesting side note to this story is that when Altman was fired, almost every OpenAI employee signed a letter saying they were going to Microsoft if the board didn’t resign and re-hire Altman as CEO.  It looks like that’s exactly what happened, so that’s quite a testament to the support Altman has from his employees.

 

I think we all could use good economic news, so here’s some: Cyber Monday sales are projected to spike 8.4% over last year. Online sales every day since Thanksgiving are up solidly over 2022 levels. Let’s hope this is a sign that the economy is starting to finally rebound from the pandemic bottom.

 

I’m not a huge fan of sharing info with such little sourcing, but here you go. I tend to believe this since referral traffic from Facebook in particular has been falling for a long time, mostly by design as Meta keeps creating barriers to keep traffic locked on its site. Of course, if all three sources are going down, does that change the value of the information? Hmmm.

 

So that’s it for this week’s edition of Monday’s Marketing Minute. I will likely have another post up later this week.  Possibly one over the weekend as well, I have a few ideas from my Bible studies that I am mulling over for a post.  Till then, I hope you have a wonderful and productive week!

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Soon You Will Have to Pay for All Social Media

BOLD PREDICTION: By the end of 2024, all Facebook, Instagram and Twitter/X users will have to pay to continue to use the sites.

Since taking over Twitter/X, Elon has progressively moved the platform toward a pay model. He offered a ‘Premium’ version of Twitter, and has now started adding multiple tiers to the offering. Features that were once available to all, are being incorporated into the ‘Premium’ plans. Now, he has begun charging new users in certain countries a small fee to tweet.  This is being sold as a way to ‘combat bots’.

Make no mistake, it’s a way to eventually rollout fees to all Twitter users.  That’s where we are headed.

And Elon’s moves to make Twitter pay-to-play has opened the door for other sites to follow suit.  Facebook and Instagram will begin charging users in the EU to avoid ads. This move is being sold as necessary to combat changes in privacy laws, but as with Twitter, it will likely be used to introduce the idea of charging all Facebook and Instagram users.

Should Social Media Sites Charge Users?

These moves and their inevitable end point will prompt the logical question: Should social media sites charge users?  At the end of the day, like it or not, Elon and Mark are running businesses, and they have every right to charge users to access their sites.

That’s not the question that interests me.  What I want to know is Does Twitter, Facebook or Instagram offer an experience that is worth paying for?

In my mind, that is a far more relevant question. And in their present forms? Absolutely not.

The irony is, I would have happily paid $10-20 a month for the experience I got on Twitter from say 2007-2012.  Today? No way. And I would pay for Twitter long before I would either Facebook or Instagram.

Which makes this whole episode confusing to me. The time to attempt monetization for these sites has long since passed.  Say what you want about Elon, but he’s a very smart businessman.  I have no doubt he will figure out a way to turn Twitter into a money-maker.

But I’m not interested in paying for an experience that has been degrading on his site for years.

Social media sites started out as being free for the most part.  Monetization came through selling ads. As the saying famously goes ‘If you aren’t paying for the product then you ARE the product’, or something like that. Most of us just accepted that these social media sites were collecting our data and selling it to advertisers, and in exchange we get to use their site for free.

To me, this always seemed backwards.  The time to attempt monetization was at first, while the community was being built. Get a core group of enthusiasts, tap their brains and roll out premium features that they want. Charge them extra for extra features that are relevant to how they are using the site.

But What About LinkedIn?

Did you know that LinkedIn generated almost $15 Billion in revenue in 2022? Numbers fluctuate, with some sources claiming 21% of LinkedIn users having a Premium account and some say it’s more like double that.  Either way, LinkedIn has done a great job in offering premium features to users that they actually want.

I think a lot of this is due to positioning.  LinkedIn isn’t positioned as a social media site. It’s positioned as a career development site that has some social elements. If you are on LinkedIn, then it’s almost certain you are either looking for a job, hiring for a job, or networking to find your next partner, client, etc. LinkedIn is a very purpose-driven site in a way that Twitter, Facebook and Instagram simply cannot match.

Will We Pay to Use Twitter, Facebook and Instagram?

Overall, I don’t think we will. I do think Twitter and Meta will have some success with their monetization efforts, but I don’t think it will be as much as they will need to sustain the model.

So, what will that leave us with?

I would like to think it would lead to many of us changing our behavior and turning back to writing and reading blogs, listening to podcasts and turning away from centralized social media platforms. But I’m not expecting that to happen.

What will hopefully happen is blogs, podcasts and owned media will see a bit of a revival. But past that, it will hopefully lead to new social sites and tools that are more thoughtful about their monetization efforts. Twitter and Facebook should have always been founded with the idea that this will be a money-maker. So to that end, the user experience should have been designed in a way that provides an experience that’s worth paying for. The community should have been involved in strategic planning and development from the jump. This would have led to users being more invested in the platforms and their success. So when monetization options were rolled out, the moves would make sense to the users, and the users would be the biggest sellers of the new offerings.

Think of it this way: How many Twitter users have told you that you need to get the Premium version?  I haven’t had a single Twitter Premium user promote the service to me.  But I’ve had many LinkedIn members tell me that it’s worth the money to upgrade to its Premium service.

A social media site’s monetization efforts should be driven by providing utility to members that improves the user experience. Not by trying to make a fast buck to fix a broken balance sheet.

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Monday’s Marketing Minute: Another Elon Misstep, Instagram Still the King of Influencer Marketing, YouTube Adds AI Tools for Creators

Happy Monday, y’all! It’s the first official full week of Fall! My favorite time of the year! I hope you are ready to have a productive week, here’s a few stories that caught my eye over the last week:

 

I started to spin this story into its own post, and probably will at some point soon. Elon is floating the idea of charging ALL Twitter users a fee to use his platform. This is the first time in my 16+ years of using Twitter that I am seriously considering if it is time to leave the platform. Working on the Power Lists for Technology, Retail and Tourism (with Restaurants debuting on Weds) has been an eye-opener. I had always heard peers claim that there was a mass exodus of professionals from Twitter when Elon took over, but I just assumed that was overblown. It’s not, at least not in the four industries above.  Pros from technology, retail, tourism, and restaurant are absolutely more active right now on LinkedIn than they are on Twitter. In reviewing hundreds of Twitter accounts over the last month, I lost count on how many pros hadn’t tweeted in 2023, who were active on LinkedIn. I’ve been hearing ‘Is Twitter dying?’ for at least the last 10-12 years. This is the first time I think it’s a legitimate question to ask.

 

Companies working with influencers are still spending more marketing dollars on Instagram than anywhere else. Perhaps it’s simply a desire to be contrarian, but I’m wondering if there’s an opportunity for a certain brand to partner with the right influencer and create some momentum on Snapchat? Sometimes it pays to go in the opposite direction of the herd.

 

Social media platforms continue to integrate AI as a way to aid creators. LinkedIn has done it, Elon is working on an AI alternative to ChatGPT that will no doubt be integrated into Twitter/X, and now YouTube is doing the same. I think we will eventually see a time very soon where video platforms like YouTube will allow you to create a video on the fly from a simple prompt, using AI. An additional app YouTube announced is YouTube Create, which is a standalone app that is geared toward mobile creators, giving them simple editing tools to use on the fly. I actually think it will be a big hit with smaller YouTube creators.

 

So that’s it for this week’s edition of Monday’s Marketing Minute. On Thursday, I will have a new post on tourism marketing. But tomorrow the debut edition of The Restaurant Power List will launch, so be sure to check back here to see who ends up #1! Hope you have an amazing week!

 

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Monday’s Marketing Minute: Elon’s Huge Legal Promise, AI Use Grows For All Age Groups, Meta Betting on AI Chatbots

Happy Monday, y’all! I hope everyone is having a great summer and is ready for another productive week! Here’s a few business stories that caught my eye recently, I hope you enjoy!

 

Elon is totally confounding me right now. Almost every day he makes a move that seems incredibly smart on the surface, then 10 mins later he will make another announcement that seems to undercut what he said in the first one. For instance, multiple users are reporting that accounts that they have held for years, were suddenly taken over by Twitter, with zero compensation. Of course that’s Elon’s right, but it is a terrible look and it makes it much harder to defend his future moves.

Then, he turns around and does this: Announces what he claims will be a bottomless defense fund for anyone who has been treated unfairly by their employer due to activity on Twitter.

 

According to eMarketer, AI usage across all age groups will spike roughly 1,000% in 2023 over 2022 levels. It’s not surprising, and given how immature the AI space is, that growth should continue for the next several years at least. If I’m reading the numbers right, it looks like almost half the population will be using AI in some form within 3 years.  I think that number might be low, if anything.

 

Keeping with the AI trend, Meta is looking for integrate personality-based AI chatbots into Instagram and Facebook. As the technology behind AI matures, I think you will see much more use of AI chatbots, I could see going to your favorite rock stars’ website and being greeted with an AI chatbot that lets you ‘chat’ with them.  At first it would be text-based, then add audio, then eventually video.

 

So that’s it for this week’s Monday Marketing Minute, I’ll have a new post up on building customer loyalty in the restaurant industry via digital up tomorrow and….I’m not sure what Thursday’s post will be yet. I want to do a case study post as I haven’t done one in a while, but I will have to find a good one I can share.  Saturday’s Bible study post will feature one of the most amazing stories of faith in the Old Testament, and probably the greatest foreshadowing of the coming of Jesus, hundreds of years before His birth.

So that’s what you can expect this week. As I wrote about last week, I am loving Claude as a tool to boost my writing output, here’s where you can learn how I am using it to write more.

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Monday’s Marketing Minute: Twitter’s New CEO, Instagram’s New Twitter Killer, Amazon Prime’s Killer Advantage

Happy Monday, y’all! I hope you are having a wonderful week and getting ready for the Memorial Day weekend. For today’s Monday’s Marketing Minute, I’m highlighting three stories that I plan on delving into deeper in future posts. But for now, I wanted to give a quick overview of each story so you are up to speed as we head into the week!

 

Elon Musk has finally confirmed who his new CEO will be, and it is Linda Yaccarino, formerly of NBCUniversal.  Here is Linda’s profile on LinkedIn so you can see her work history.  As you can see, she has a heavy background in media and advertising, which I think helps signal where Elon wants to go with Twitter under her leadership.  As I said above, I’ll have an upcoming post that focuses on what I think Elon’s plans for Twitter are and how Linda’s expertise fits into those plans.

BTW as a bonus, here is a very short clip of a fascinating interview with Elon on CNBC.  I love his answer that he will say what he wants and believes, and if the consequences of doing so is losing money, so be it. Of course, that’s easier said when you are already a billionaire!

 

Instagram is readying its Twitter competitor. Instagram will launch a standalone, text-based app this Summer, code named Barcelona to compete with Twitter.  The app will be interoperable with Mastodon and allow users to use their Instagram login and will encourage your followers on Instagram to follow you on this new app.  No definitive launch date other than ‘this summer’. I will have more on this story in an upcoming post, but for now I will say that companies shouldn’t be trying to build the next Twitter, they should be trying to build the next Truth Social. I’ll explain what I mean by that in a future post.

 

Amazon Prime continues to dominate the retail membership club space. Why does Amazon Prime have so much more success than its competitors? It identified a reason why customers weren’t purchasing (Slow and costly shipping) and offered the solution to that problem as a perk of being a member.  Viola.

 

So that’s it for this edition of Monday’s Marketing Minute. I will have a deeper dive on all three of these stories upcoming soon, as well as some other issues I want to touch on, so there’s a busy Summer upcoming! Hope you have a wonderful week!

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Monday’s Marketing Minute: Elon’s Texts to Twitter, Instagram’s NFT Integration, Podcast Listening Dips in 2022

Happy Monday, y’all! Hope you are having a great fall as we are now in October!  This is my favorite month of the year!  I love the weather, I love the colors, the falling leaves, and Halloween!  The best time of the year, in my opinion!  Here’s 3 marketing/business/web3 stories I read over the last week that caught my eye:

 

The Twitter account @techemails is absolutely fascinating.  They release text messages that have been made public via the proper filings.  Recently, they shared some text messages that Elon had with both Twitter’s current CEO as well as one an exchange with one of its co-founders, Jack Dorsey.  Dorsey’s comments about regretting that Twitter became a company were very telling. Dorsey said that Twitter should have stayed a protocol. One of the issues that has dogged Twitter throughout its history is its rocky relationship with developers. Often, Twitter would encourage developers to build apps and functionality on top of its platform, then either cut off API access with no warning, or buy an app, then cut off API access to any apps with competing functionality.  For instance, years ago Twitter bought livestreaming app Periscope, integrated it into the platform, then cut off competitor Meerkat (which was arguably more popular at the time) from having API access.  Twitter bought Tweetdeck, cutting off competitors like Twirl, and bought Summize, hurting competitors as well.

Elon seemed very intrigued by Dorsey’s vision of having Twitter as a protocol and wants to pursue moving the platform more toward decentralization. In my opinion that could only happen if Twitter went private. Even then, it would be messy.

 

Meta recently announced that it will allow Instagram and Facebook users to integrate their existing NFTs with the platform.  Why is this important? My guess is Meta would like to eventually develop an NFT marketplace.  Adding a shopping functionality to the sharing of NFTs would give creators another revenue stream, but it would also do the same for Meta, as it would likely want a cut of sales.

 

Podcasting listening is projected by Edison Research to dip slightly in 2022.  This is a bit surprising, but as Edison points out in its findings, the dip for 2022 still puts listening levels at marginally higher than 2020 levels.

 

So that’s it for this week’s edition of Monday’s Marketing Minute.  Apologies for the late arrival of this post, seems there were some issues with my hosting service.  Will have a pretty interesting post up on Weds (again assuming no more site issues), so try to check it out in 2 days.

Hope you have a wonderful week, you deserve it!

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Monday’s Marketing Minute: Elon Apes Into Twitter, Livestream Purchases, Paid Music Streaming Grows

Happy Monday, y’all! Hope you have a wonderful week ahead of you, we have some breaking news and some other stories I enjoyed, so let’s dive right in!

 

This will be the story of the day and possibly the week. Elon Musk just bought a $3B stake in Twitter, and is now the company’s largest shareholder. For reference, his stake is almost 4 times that of Jack Dorsey’s. There will be a lot of commentary about what this move signals, I’m already seeing a lot of chatter about how Elon will stop shadowbanning and ham-fisted censorship, etc.  Let’s take a step back and remember: Elon’s Twitter account is essentially Tesla’s marketing. So this is simply about Elon getting more control over his company’s primary marketing channel.  That’s all this is, a smart business move. Do I think this signals that Elon is coming in on a white horse to save Twitter from itself? I do not.  I think he is going to use his ownership stake to push for changes that make it easier for him to use Twitter as a platform to market himself and his company. That’s it.

 

Facebook and Instagram are the dominant players when it comes to driving purchases via livestreams. This isn’t a huge surprise, but I think we will see a lot of growth in the coming years from YouTube in this area as the platform is seriously trying to up its streaming game.

 

2021 was another strong year for growth in paid music subscription services. As I’ve talked about for the last two years, covid and the ensuing lockdown changed consumer behavior and purchase patterns. Certain industries and products benefited greatly from these changes, and music subscription services are one of them. To be fair, paid music subscription services were already seeing solid growth prior to the pandemic, but that growth was only accelerated by customers spending more time at home, for both work and play.

 

So that’s it for this week’s edition of Monday’s Marketing Minute! I hope you have an amazing and productive week!

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Monday’s Marketing Minute: Yuga Labs Acquires CryptoPunks, Massive NIL Deal, Social Media Engagement Rates By Platform

Happy Monday! Hope you had a wonderful week as we (hopefully) begin to tip-toe into Spring like weather over the coming weeks! Here’s a few business and marketing stories I read over the last few days that I wanted to share:

 

Yuga Labs, which previously acquired the Bored Ape Yacht Club and Mutant Ape Yacht Club brands, has now acquired CryptoPunks and Meebits. As you can see from the tweet, and article here, Yuga will be granting the same commercial rights to the NFT owners as BAYC and MAYC owners enjoy. I want to do some more digging into this ownership issue, because it almost seems like we have a licensor/licensee arrangement happening here. Which isn’t true ownership, and a bit contrary to the intended web3 ethos. But still very cool move by Yuga Labs, regardless! Either way, it will be interesting to see what develops commercially from this, either with individual NFT owners, or as a collective.

 

So last Summer, I wrote a post on NIL laws going into affect in multiple states. When it happened, I immediately knew this was the story of the year, because of the huge impact it would have on the business, sports, and branding worlds in the future. Well now the future has arrived. As my friend Kristi writes, there is an offer on the table to an unnamed Class of 2023 football recruit that would pay him $8 Million for the exclusive rights to his Name, Image and Likeness for 4 years.

Read those numbers again: A high school junior football player is being offered $8 Million dollars over 4 years.  Not to play football, but to post on social media, make public appearances, etc. Kristi talked to the NCAA about this deal and it would likely be a violation of its rules on pay to play. Still, it feels like it’s only a matter of time before similar deals become commonplace, and if that happens, the worlds of collegiate and amateur athletics will effectively be over.

 

Marketing Charts has a very interesting analysis of engagement rates for content posted to Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Before reading, which platform do you think has the highest engagement rates?  Instagram, and it’s not even close. Visual content drives engagement, it’s just a fact of digital life. But what industry on Instagram drives the most engagement? Would you believe Higher Education? I found that very surprising. The 3 percent engagement rate for content about higher ed was almost double the engagement for the 2nd place industry: Sports teams.

 

So that’s all I have for this week, hope all of you have a wonderful and productive week, and I will see you here next Monday!

 

SPONSORED: If you’ve noticed, the content here over the past several months has moved more to covering the emerging web3 space and technologies. A big reason why is the emerging opportunities these technologies will create for content creators to build engagement and monetization opportunities around their content. My friend Joe Pulizzi has been one of the content marketing and creation leaders for well over a decade. He’s teamed up with Brian Clark (of CopyBlogger fame) to create an event just for content creators, CEX. CEX is the Creator Economy Expo. If you are a content creator who is looking to build engagement, a larger platform and maybe even an INCOME from your content, then CEX is your tribe. The event will be held in May in Phoenix, and features a who’s-who list of content speakers, including Joe and Brian, along with Ann Handley, Dan Pink, Jeremiah Oywang, Pam Slim and many more!

If you want to build a business around your content, CEX is where you need to be! You can register here, and when you do, use code Collier to get a $200 discount! And please note that the Early Bird rate ends on April 1st. Hope to see you there!

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5 Common Mistakes Businesses Make on Instagram (And How to Fix Them!)

In the early days of social media (2006-2010), most businesses created content for three channels; Their blog, Facebook and Twitter.

All that changed in 2010 with the introduction of an app called Instagram. What made Instagram stand out from the social media crowd was its focus on visual content. Today, Instagram boasts over a billion users, and it has revolutionized social media, forcing all competing platforms and apps to adopt more visual content options in order to compete.

Yet as businesses are rushing to use Instagram, they are still making many mistakes.

5 Common Mistakes Businesses Make on Instagram (And How to Fix Them!)

 

1 – You business uses Instagram the same way it uses every other social media channel. Instagram is about visual content. The focus of your content should be images and videos, obviously. You can’t just post the same image that you did on Facebook and Twitter and expect the same results.

More than anything, Instagram is a wonderful platform for visual storytelling. If you are reading this post and want to know how to get better at using visual content, I would suggest reading The Power of Visual Storytelling, by my friends Ekaterina Walter and Jessica Gioglio.

Want to see an amazing example of using Instagram for visual storytelling? Check out what Whole Foods did to its Instagram feed.

2 – Your business focuses too much on itself, and not enough on your customers. Keep in mind that social media is best used as a way to build awareness. Who do you want to build awareness with? Your customers! So why not have your customers create your content for you?

For instance, the Alabama Mountain Lakes Tourist Association has partnered with ambassadors throughout North Alabama to photograph the sights of the area. This partnership gives AMLTA access to much more content, and the photographers have a vested interest in promoting that content to their friends and followers. (Disclaimer: I advised AMLTA on their ambassador program as it was being created and launched)

By focusing on your customers, either in creating content about them, or letting them create the content directly, you are giving other customers a reason to engage with your content.

Instagram AMLTA

3 – Your business isn’t using Instagram Stories. If no one sees your content, then they can’t engage with your content. One problem that businesses face when they first join Instagram is building a following. Building a following in necessary to get more visibility and engagement. But there’s another way you can improve both: By using Instagram Stories.

 

Look at the top of that picture.  The bubbles for Amber, NickMercs, Donna and Stephanie are Instagram Stories. The big benefit to using Instagram Stories is that the Stories are moved to the top of the IG feed of your followers. That means better exposure and visibility. If you are simply posting to Instagram, then your updates are going to the regular feeds of your followers. With Instagram Stories, your content stands out and is more likely to be seen.

4 – Your photos are poor quality. Instagram is a visual medium. Your content is competing against businesses that are investing in creating top-notch visual content, both photos and videos. If you want your images to stand out, they must be top quality. If you don’t have a photographer on staff, or access to high quality images, you should make an effort to acquire them.

instagram

5 – Your posting is erratic. Success in building awareness and engagement with social media content is rooted in consistency. You need to create a schedule for when you post content on Instagram, and stick to it! Keeping a consistent schedule ‘trains’ your followers to know when your new content will be posted, so they know when to look for it.

 

So there’s 5 common mistakes that businesses make on Instagram, and how to fix them. If you want to learn more about using Instagram for your business, check out all the posts I’ve written on how businesses are using Instagram.

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Research Study: Here’s the Types of Content We Want (and Trust) From Influencers

influencer shopper Influencer marketing continues to thrive as brands look to align themselves with social media darlings who have cultivated the audiences that brands covet. A new study from SlickText has some wonderful insights not only into the type of content we want from influencers, but how those views change across different age groups.

Before we get into the study’s findings, what IS an influencer? An influencer is someone who can produce a change in behavior for other people, via the content they create. So in general terms, any content creator is also an influencer. The influencers who are the most coveted then, are the ones that can product the change in behavior that a brand desires.

Here’s some examples:

  • If 7 Eleven wants to connect with millennials to help drive sales of a new flavor of Slurpee, then the brand might partner with popular streamers on Twitch
  • If Ford wants to connect with married adults to promote its new SUV, it might partner with YouTube content creators who do video reviews of automobiles
  • If the state of Missouri wanted to draw attention to its bicentennial celebrations happening this summer, the state might partner with travel bloggers to create images and videos of landmarks in Missouri for Instagram

 

With that overview of influencers in mind, let’s take a closer look at the study’s key findings:

Reviews from influencers are considered the most helpful and desired content

38% of respondents listed reviews as the content they preferred from influencers.  Additionally, almost 35% of respondents said that unbiased product reviews is the content that makes influencers feel more authentic. This type of content also helps develop trust with the influencers’ audience. This is why you are seeing many influencers shift toward product reviews and unboxings as their main source of content. If the content is tightly focused on a particular product grouping, space or line, it can quickly establish the expertise of the influencer and help them develop a niche following that’s highly desired by brands.

Now, I mentioned that the study found that 38% of respondents listed reviews as the content they most preferred from influencers. Reviews are the most preferred form of content from influencers, and that held for all groups and genders except for Gen Z women. Females in this group prefer how-to content. Additionally, Gen Z women said that the best way for influencers to win their trust is to interact with them. This ties into what I’ve written here before about how streamers on Twitch use the platform to engage with their followers as individuals.  This makes their ability to influence the behavior of a large group scale more effectively than it can on other social platforms.

 

Too much sponsored content erodes influencer trust.

All age groups agreed that too many sponsored posts made respondents less likely to trust the influencer. This creates a problem because for many influencers, sponsored content is their main or only source of income.

For influencers trying to walk that line when it comes to sponsored content and maintaining trust, it helps to be completely open with how sponsored content is required to help support you. I’ve noticed on Twitch that streamers are extremely upfront about their sponsored content, and why they need it and how it helps support them. I was watching one streamer and someone donated $100 as he was playing a game. The streamer thanked the person profusely for the donation, and then explained to his audience that he had taken his car to have a tire replaced earlier that day and that it was an expense he wasn’t counting on, and that donation would cover the expense. This level of transparency with your audience helps establish trust and I think it even makes the audience (at least on Twitch) more likely to donate more since it helps them understand how the streamer will use and need their donations.

As always, honestly and transparency leads to trust.  In all areas of life.  There’s many more interesting takeaways if you want to check out the study for yourself.