What is a Content Creator?

When I go home to visit my family we always end up watching episodes from the DVR. This week it was the bachelor, not particularly my thing but we create an entire monologue of sarcastic commentary to go along with it. There was a part where one of the 30 ladies had ‘content creator’ as their line of work. We both looked at each other and said “what does that mean”

Well, what does that mean?

We live in the digital age so I opened my phone and Googled it. Wikipedia said that a content creator’s job is basically “the contribution of information to any media and most especially to digital media for an end-user/audience in specific contexts.”

So doesn’t that make everyone with any sort of social media platform a Content Creator?

Yes, here is why.

We constantly post on social media whether it is when we Snapchat our parties, Instagram our meals, or when we post a meme on Facebook. We create posts from our pictures, text, and videos. We create our profiles and explicitly add to them.

But how is this a job?

Easy, let's take YouTubers as an example. Matt D’Avella has a channel (one of my favorites) about his life and minimalism. He posts once or twice a week on top of creating a very influential podcast. While he doesn't make money from the original post or its views he has a Patreon. Patreon is a website that people can donate weekly, monthly, or daily to a channel, business, or creators. Matt D’Avella is a great example of how you can turn this into a career.

Now that being said not everyone can do this.

This takes a following and out of that following, only a small amount will contribute. It takes practice to perfect what form of content you are creating and on top of that, it takes possibly years to be able to make a living off of it.

In concluson we live in the digital age, therefore, we are all content creators but at the end of the day, it takes a huge amount of effort and practice to make it into a fulfilling career.