It's that time. Welcome to Digital Creator. Thank you so much for tuning in today. We haven't even dove into the episode and I'm already thanking you just because I wanna start it off with gratitude. Glad to be here, glad to be, with you. So this episode, normally, I cover 3 different topics within an episode, but I'm gonna chop this up into 3 parts, but it's all gonna be around one main central theme or idea, which is that content creators have unique jobs. And I think sometimes hearing about unique jobs can sometimes help us do our own job more effectively because we can think outside of the box. We're not stuck to the way things are supposed to be. We're like, oh, I didn't know you could do that or oh, I didn't know they did that, Because when we talk about being a digital creator in 2024 and beyond, it's interesting times. All I can really give you as I kind of sit in my unique position of looking at a lot of this stuff day in and day out, what I'm seeing and what I've kind of messed with myself and, hopefully, like, relay that back to you so that you can shorten the curve from where you are to where you want to go. Have a clear GPS, if you will, But, part of the fun is the excitement and experimentation along the way. It's not having it all figured out. I set that up because, in this episode, I'm gonna be talking about 3 unique content creator roles that span way different industries. Number 1, we're gonna be talking about AI content creators. What the heck is that? We'll get into it. Number 2, we'll be talking about wedding content creators. I don't know many people who actually know about this industry, it's really interesting. And then number 3, we'll be talking about UGC content creators which you might well, I'm sure you're familiar with but we'll we'll explore the depths of the UGC content creators. And again, the goal here is that, not that you wanna become a wedding content creator, it's more to expand your knowledge that you know it exists and maybe, just maybe, there's some little takeaway from what these wedding content creators are doing or UGC content creators are doing or AI that you could, maybe, incorporate something in what you're doing to make what you're doing unique, powerful, and resonate with people. Let's get into it. So, first up, we're gonna be talking about AI content creators. So, what is an AI content creator? I'm not talking about a human content creator talking about AI. I'm talking about a content creator who is AI. Now maybe programmed by humans, but a large part of the content creation is AI. What a interesting topic that just probably 3 years ago, we would be like, this is way far out, but we're really here right now. I just used the app captions from the app, the company is called Captions and I just gave it a link to a post I made on threads. Now, the feature in the captions app was like AI ad creator or something. I didn't know what it was so I was like, let's just experiment with this. So I took a link from my thread, I put it in the app and that's all I did. And then, what I got 2 minutes later was this realistic looking person with a green screen behind them with my threads post and they were making an ad talking about threads and how cool threads is and it looked really organic. You know me, I've messed with a lot of AI stuff and I even looked at it and was, like, woah, this looks real. The hands were weird. Not that they looked weird. It was just like the AI generated person. It was like they were moving their hands a lot and I feel, like, even if they had just their hands where I couldn't see them, it would have felt even more natural. But it is bizarre looking from just a couple minutes. I was, like, oh, this is perfectly in line with what I'm gonna be talking about in today's episode, because we're headed this way. Like, people are already consuming AI content, you know, you scroll, you see those videos that are mashed up of b roll from whatever the thing is talking about or maybe it's a video game with an AI voice over it and they hook you instantly and this is what I would classify as an AI content creator. Whether or not you see a person on there, it's still AI driven. It could be from the complete script to the actual production of the video. You know, I'm sure there's a way to automate the posting of that video too. There's a little bit of human, intention behind it though, of course. But still, like, this is again the early early days because just 3 years ago, if we talked about the type of stuff we're talking about today, no one would stick around because, like, they would say that sounds too crazy. Right? But we're here, and this is happening now, and it's only gonna get crazier. So how does AI content creators differ from traditional content creators? Well, for 1, they have limitations. Humans have limitations, but when it comes to, interaction, there's not the same limitations. Right? And, sure, it may be a matter of time before AI content creators get to that level. Like, maybe one day that does happen. But, right now, an AI content creator is not gonna pop up in your city and go grab lunch with you or host a live call and you're gonna feel great afterwards. Right? So, when I think of AI content creators, I think there's a huge opportunity there and just like I was using the app, it's so close. Right? We're already there. It's just gonna be ingrained more and more. As these large language models and technology just progresses, it's gonna feel more natural with what we're viewing. And while I can't name you any huge AI content creators off the bat, I I think it's just gonna be a matter of time before we are able to start naming them. And it's kinda funny I can't now because I bet in 6 months or a year, we're gonna see a large number of these start popping up because they're easier for a group to work towards. Right? It's, kind of, like, if you had a band and you could have 20 people work on a song, but when you play live, you might have one person play live. Same thing with these AI content creators. You could have 20 people work on 1 content creator and just that one content creator is being controlled by the technology and it can scale across so many different platforms and so many different languages. The ceiling is so much higher. Now, there's, obviously, a bunch of ethical considerations behind all of this AI generated content technology. But I do think, you know, naturally, my brain goes to where are we? Where do we where do we fit in all of this? And I really think it's kind of like driving a car. If you just got in a car, you know, you don't need to know how the technology works to drive your car from a to b, but you do need to know where you're going. And a car needs a driver. And what companies like OpenAI are saying is possible is something like general artificial intelligence where it could think and grow on its own and it just basically becomes smarter than humans and it can predict what we need and all that stuff. Now there's, you know, a bunch of debate back and forth on, like, whether that's already here, whether that's even possible. And until we see it, we just don't know. But just like we are, you know, humans in this meat sack, we are the ones driving where we want to go. And so, I think, it's our responsibility as content creators whether or not we're using AI tools, whether or not, you know, we're the person on camera and behind the microphone, we have our responsibility to be driving to where we wanna go. And even if you are just a human organic content creator and you occasionally use AI tools to help, you know, do certain tasks for your content creation easier, being aware of the whole landscape at least at a high level, I think is gonna be crucial to maintaining any sort of relevance. And again, I don't say that to, like, overwhelm or stress you out. It's more from a place of you're listening to this. You are knowing what you need to know. You're not behind. You're actually like on the cutting edge. So I'm kind of preaching to the choir here, but a lot of this is just to say, keep going. We're the ones, at the end of the day, that are going to be powering this stuff. Okay. Next up, I wanna talk about something super unique, and this is what is now called a wedding content creator. What is a wedding content creator? Those two things don't seem to go together. Well, we can think about the typical roles for people that work in weddings. Right? My wife who I rarely talk about in my content, this is actually how I'm informed about this whole topic because she was the first one to tell you about it. We know there's obviously photographers, videographers, DJs in the typical wedding ceremony world. Well, there is a new trend popping up of wedding content creators. A wedding content creator is someone who shows up, typically, day of or could be the day before, capture any parts of the wedding and turns it into content. Now, that content could be for YouTube, the content could be for social media, but the whole vibe is to capture the wedding to make it feel very natural, to not just get your standard wedding shots, to not just get your standard wedding content, is to really make it feel organic, so that guests can just be enjoying the moment and everything is just very organic and natural. So the typical gear that a wedding photographer would use would be, like, your nice Canon, Nikon, Sony cameras, like, high end cameras. They would use those for, probably, videos too. Wedding content creators, they use their phones. So they're filming kind of like how you would film anything else. You'd be filming, like, TikTok or something. They're putting together Instagram reels, adding trending music, things like that just from their phone. So there's this huge opportunity popping up for people, you know, before this would have been, like, I would say in the social media marketing kind of realm, but it's not like that. Right? No one's selling something from their wedding. They just want their wedding to maybe, you know, trend on social media, I'm guessing, or basically to feel like they had someone at their wedding that was really good at social media, you know. We all have those friends that aren't the best at snapping photos and then we have some, maybe, you are better at taking photos because you know how to work the camera on your phone. These couples that are doing this, they just don't wanna just post the highly polished videos. They want a real natural feel. So could you imagine after a couple gets married, you know, they're out on the dance floor, and there's some really good vertical videos coming out of that versus only the polished video that it took the, you know, videographer months possibly to get back to the couple. This could be done as soon as the next day. And, I've seen, through the agreements of some of these wedding content creators is that they just deliver the next day, like, you know. And they might guarantee some, like, 3 Instagram reels and they might give all of the footage that they shot and it's just a bunch of clips. So there's nothing crazy going on here. This is literally what you think it is if someone is showing up with the phone. Now, could you imagine if you're, like, I'd say, over the age of 30 like myself, could you imagine, like, that's a real job just taking your phone, showing up to a wedding that they have spent, who knows, $50,000 plus on, you don't show up. You're showing up with the same device that you get text from, that you ordered Postmates from, that you're using Instagram on. That's all you show up with. Like, you just showed up with yourself because you would have taken your phone anyways and you're shooting content for your phone. Like, there's something really cool about that. On the flip side, I could also see photographers, people in the wedding industry not welcoming them as much and I have seen some pushback online against wedding content creators saying it's not a real job, but what is a real job and what makes, being a content creator, like, have to fit into some type of, like, you have to use this camera, you have to use this software. We see the same pushback from designers who don't like when other designers use Canva. I don't know if you've gone down that rabbit hole, but there's a big feud, if you will, between people that use Adobe products and then people that use Canva products. And the people that use Adobe products kind of look down on people that use Canva products, you know. I see it happen all the time. And it's just silly because the end goal is whatever the end goal is and regardless of how the tool got there and most of the time people can't even pick apart how someone got from point a to b. Like, in the topic of design, you know, so many people can't even tell if something was made on Canva versus Adobe Illustrator. All that matters is the purpose of the image. Right? When it comes to, like, being a wedding content creator and using your phone, if the goal is to post the content on social media or YouTube and nobody can tell the difference between what model phone was used or what kind of camera was used, does it really matter at the end of the day of what was used? Because the fact of the matter is there's wedding content creators out there making 1,000 of dollars from doing this. So if you're looking for, like, a new niche to get into, who knows? Maybe being a wedding content creator could be in your future. Seems a little bit less stressful than having the job of highly editing photos. You're going for that raw feel. I don't know. I might just be looking at this through rose colored lenses. Alright. And, last, I wanna talk about the UGC content creator. Now, for those who don't know the definition of UGC, UGC stands for user generated content. I have had, I believe, a couple of guests on here talk about UGC contact creation before. The one that sticks out in my mind the most is my good friend, Lloyd George. Shout out, Lloyd, who is a fantastic UGC content creator. I think he talks about this openly, but, you know, for a while, most if not all of his content was exclusively made, as, like, a UGC content creator, meaning, he was paid to make the content that he was making and it was made for brands. Now, let's talk about the benefits of UGC content for brands and platforms in particular because we're seeing a lot more of this and we're also seeing a lot of confusion around this. So UGC content, it sounds just like what it is, but, like, a brand will be like, hey, Dylan. I see you like Shure SM 7 B microphones. It's the microphone I'm using right now. And Shure reaches out and is, like, hey. Can you make us 3 videos for the Shure SM7B? I'm, like, cool. Maybe I'm just speaking this into existence because I don't really do deals like this. It would be cool doing one with Shure but they pay me to make videos about Shure. They can use my image. They use my likeness. They use my words. Maybe, I even write the whole script but they can use it to sell more Shure SM7B's kind of, like, how I'm doing in here although I'm not getting paid to do this just me talking about their product gets more people interested in it. It creates a more authentic environment for brands to thrive in. Because when they're strictly relying on ad dollars to sell their products, you think about, like, going from someone who doesn't know about you to just the brand telling you how great they are. If I tell you about something, you're more likely to trust it faster because you trust me and that trust is transferred to the brand. So UGC content is wildly successful because of that reason alone. Now, some of the challenges UGC content creators are facing, a lot of it comes down to content quality control and monetization. Content quality control has to do with the brands that they're working with. Right? Are they able to maintain a high output of content with a good quality number of brands? When I think of Lloyd in this example. Right? At first, he's making content for brands that, maybe, he kind of likes and he's not super familiar with. So he can't really maintain too much of the quality, because he is just making it for the brand. He doesn't know a whole lot about the product, only as much as he can know within a short time period. Right? But as he's grown and done more, he's able to work with, you know, brands that he's quite familiar with, and he would have used their product or service anyways, and then he can naturally talk about it in his content. So it's a win win in that case. It doesn't feel like as much of a win in the beginning, and you're also not making as much money in the very beginning because you don't have as big of a following, you're kinda new to the whole thing, you don't know how to set your rates, and that goes to the monetization challenge that, a lot of UGC creators face, which is not making enough money for it to be worth it. And that's where it can be a challenge too is, like, figuring out how to monetize it without selling your soul is how I'll put it bluntly. But there's a lot of opportunities there. Right? And I've spoken about this before on this podcast but brands need creators more than creators need brands and I think it's difficult sometimes for creators to realize that there's such a big opportunity there and brands will sometimes be jaded to the fact, a good creator could do a world of difference for their brand. Creators entertaining the idea of stepping into the whole UGC content creator realm really owe it to themselves to recognize how much value they can provide right off the bat. It's not about the number of followers you have. It's not about how long you've been doing it. It's not about how perfect your content is. It's the fact that you're a human being and you're building an authentic audience who is gonna be there whether or not the brand is there. So for them to rent space, they need to pay a premium. It was just a few episodes. I was talking about the premium tax. Right? So So whatever you're thinking about charging, add in 20%, and you could, you know, liken that to your digital creator premium fee, if you will. Say, you know, Dylan's making me charge an extra 20%. You don't have to tell them that. I'm telling you, like, add in extra 20%. And I'm also saying every time. Right? Every time you should be looking to increase your rates, every time you should be working closer with brands that you align with and make sense for both you and your audience because it's gonna be a win win win at the end of the day, a three way win for you, the brand, and your audience when everything's aligned. Right? So despite all of the challenges that UGC creators face, there's a lot of money to be made whether you go the exclusive route where you just make UGC content, like, I mentioned Lloyd is doing a lot of, or you just sprinkle it in your content, like, other people will do as well. Last thing I'll say about UGC content creators is something that you need to be aware of. Do your research, do your homework on what the FTC says you need to disclose in your captions across the platforms that you're posting your content on. It's, like, once a year, it seems to pop up where something big happens because people aren't disclosing that something was an ad properly. I really believe there's just gonna be more ramifications further down the line as we see people get paid to make UGC content. Alright. I hope you found this episode interesting and the unique angles for these 3 different types of content creators that weren't really a thing just a few years ago are now something that are here, there's going to be more of, and there's something from from each of these that I know we could incorporate in what we're doing in our own stuff. So I'd be curious to know what your takeaway was for that. I've been hearing from a lot of people around their takeaways from episodes lately, and it's been really useful for me because it starts to feel like a two way street. I feel like I'm not talking into a void. So please keep sharing those with me and I'll keep recording episodes. Deal? Alright. I'll see you in the next one. Have a great day.