The Evolving Creator Space: Insights & What's Next with Lia Haberman

In this episode of The Creator Effect, we sit down with social media expert, Lia Haberman to explore the evolution of the creator and influencer space. Lia shares her extensive experience and background, discussing the shift from the early days of content creation, blogs to social media and the emergence of creators and influencers. The conversation dives into the impact and future of social media, the importance of personal branding, and the potential directions the industry could take. 

Join us as we gain insights and predictions from Lia on the ever-changing landscape of content creation and digital influence.

About Lia: 

Lia Haberman is a creator economy and social media expert. She publishes a weekly newsletter called ICYMI (In Case You Missed It) and has been named by Buffer as one of the best marketing newsletters of 2023. Additionally, Insider named Lia as a Top Creator Economy Expert to Know.  Lia is a consultant, brand advisor, and adjunct professor, teaching social media and influencer marketing courses at UCLA Extension. 

Links & Resources

• ICYMI by Lia Haberman 
  • 2024 Social Media Predictions - Survey Results 
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/liahaberman/

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Transcript

Lia Haberman: 0:00

we've gone kind of full circle. Where it started with bloggers and the idea of, like you know, my own journal and whatever it moved over into social media. I think people are now pulling back a little bit from social media or kind of reevaluating their relationship with social media and looking at alternatives. I just think people are going to be much more choosy and are going to really evaluate you know, what am I posting? Where am I posting it?

Aliza Freud: 0:37

Welcome back to the show. This is our final episode for 2023. We are rounding out the year with a great episode. We have the wonderful Leah Haberman on our show. Today, insider named her as a top creator economy expert.

Aliza Freud: 0:53

To know, leah started her career as an entertainment director for E Entertainment Network and one of the things that she saw there was the power of having people talk about the shows. And I don't know if you remember this back in the day that a lot of the shows on Bravo and E Entertainment they would have the stars of those shows create blog posts on their websites about that week's episode and then people could comment and they could engage with it and talk about what was going on on the show. And one of the things that Leah saw when she was at E Entertainment was the power of having people talk about what was going on. This kind of spurred her interest in the influencer space, the creator space, social media and today she is considered an expert in this space. She publishes a popular weekly newsletter called Icy why Am I, in case you missed it and really has a great perspective on influencer and the creator economy and how it is that we are being influenced.

Aliza Freud: 2:07

We had such a great conversation. Leah and I are both very interested in how the creator, the influencer, space is impacting everything from how we vote to how we shop, to how we think about all different kinds of issues. Leah gives us her key predictions for the new year, for 2024 and beyond. I think this is a really interesting episode that if you have, again, like me, an interest in the cultural phenomenon and what kind of impact creators and influencers are having on us as everyday people, I think you'll find this episode really interesting. Lots of insights. So we are going to jump right into it. Leah, welcome to the show.

Lia Haberman: 2:56

Hey, thank you. Thank you so much for having me. It's good to be here Well.

Aliza Freud: 3:00

I am so excited to talk with you because we both have been in this space a long time and understand the creator, the influencer space. But let's start with your career first. You started as an editor, you were on the editorial side and you spent a good number of years at E-Entertainment. Can you talk a little bit about what your responsibilities were there?

Lia Haberman: 3:26

Yeah, so I worked. That was kind of my first big job out of college. I worked at E for almost 10 years and then also worked for a while at Style Network because they were both owned by NBC Universal. So I worked very much in the entertainment and style space. So I kind of got, I would say, a little bit of experience in as social was launching essentially and the early influencers or creators were launching both celebrities who were the original influencers.

Lia Haberman: 3:53

I moderated the show pages, message boards for E at the very beginning, which was kind of a hot mess. Anybody gives you like don't read the comments. That was literally my job was to read the comments. In those days you had somebody moderating the message boards of the shows. At the time they were really bloggers. Which bloggers were the original? You had celebrities. Then you had bloggers. Then you had influencers. Now you have creators.

Lia Haberman: 4:21

When I worked at Style Network you had people like BagsNob. You had people like Tom and Lorenzo. You had people I'm trying to think of, like all these people that were at the front row of fashion shows, that were live blogging fashion shows and sharing their photos on Instagram, live blogging on their blogs and we like. To us that was UGC content and we were putting stuff on the Style Network website and pulling. It was amazing because the fashion editors weren't doing it, the retailers weren't doing it, the models and designers weren't doing it.

Lia Haberman: 4:55

At that stage, the only people that were sharing from the fashion shows were these fashion bloggers, and so it was like these new people that were giving you an inside look. That, to me, was way more interesting than kind of like the very professional, polished look that was coming out of the fashion shows. That was very controlled, it was a very controlled message, and so this was kind of like a VIP backdoor entrance to what was going on inside the fashion world, and that was kind of my entry into something's shifting. There's like a new way of getting across things across to people, and I want to be part of this.

Aliza Freud: 5:33

I want to ask you, because you had this really unique vantage point you were on these message boards and probably starting to see what an amazing tool, this instant feedback was it welcomed by the higher ups?

Lia Haberman: 5:54

at E. That's a really loaded question. I will say it was appreciated by me. I thought it was super interesting and it did. It was the start of a two-way conversation, which social media became.

Lia Haberman: 6:11

I don't want to put words in anybody's mouth. I do not think at the time people really grasped the potential of like, oh hey, we can see what people watching our shows are interested in or who they're most interested in, the moments that resonate, the people, the characters they hate or whatever. I'm not sure that it was fully grasped. Again, I don't want to paint anybody into like they loved it, they hated it, whatever. I'm not sure that the full potential of what we were seeing was realized. But I think, just for me, as the person that was at that time because I was much earlier in my career sitting at the desk, being the person kind of on the front lines, talking to people on Twitter, instagram, talking to people on the message boards and getting all of that input I think for me, just at the stage of like, this is amazing we're putting stuff out there, but now we're also getting stuff back and I think that if you were maybe a little bit further along in your career, especially in media you had been used to very much.

Lia Haberman: 7:19

It's a one-way street, one-way communication. You're blasting out to people and so I think, from my perspective of seeing feedback come back to us now, there's just an expectation. There is that expectation. We don't just blast a message out there. We run polls, we listen to what people are interested in. I think creators do that too. Like do you like this? What do you want to hear from me? What should I wear today? What should I do? I think now it's much more common and appreciated. Was it then? I don't know, I don't think people grasp the potential.

Aliza Freud: 7:51

So we talked about this evolution of how advertising marketing worked right. Let's talk about the evolution of who are these people who have built a social media following and are now what you consider to be creators, influencers. Talk a little bit about the evolution of, let's say, the person who said I want to have an online journal to what we see now as these powerhouse creators.

Lia Haberman: 8:22

Well, I think it's kind of funny because I actually think blogs are coming back, so everything is cyclical. So if you had a blog, hopefully you kept it up. If you didn't keep it up, go dig up the username and password to that blog, re-launch it. I think we went from blogs social media. I would say like by 2010, 2012, everybody switched to social media, especially if you switched to Instagram or Twitter, I would say it was shorter, faster, easier. Blog took more time. It was longer, it required more effort and I think social media was more visual. You could reach. That was kind of where the audience was shifting, so you could reach more people and I think it was just a lower lift to be able to publish stuff there and connect with more people, build a community. There was a little bit more back and forth as we started to see that kind of conversation happening and so things were evolving. What we're seeing now, I would say, is because of the way social media has evolved, because of multiple factors like audience attention shortening platforms pushing platform algorithms Adam Massari saying that, ok, people's attention is shifting to DMs and stories. The platform has to take some responsibility for that, because the algorithm kind of pushed our friends and family out of the feed in favor of advertisers and creators and kind of pushed our friends and family interactions to DMs and stories. So it's the chicken or the egg Like was it the audience, was it the platform? Whatever, we're spending more time connecting with the people we know in DMs and stories. So things are shifting.

Lia Haberman: 10:03

I think creators are trying to figure out where is my audience? How do I connect with the people that were in my community that I want to have a close relationship with? And I think, given the volatility also, especially like you look at Twitter or X or whatever we're going to call it next year and people are seeing like a platform could get renamed, it could disappear, it could be entirely overhauled in a way that I'm not comfortable with, and I think creators are realizing I need to take more ownership of how I put out my content and how I connect with my community. That's nothing new. I think it's just become more and more important. So at this stage, creators are looking at OK, where can I own my content, where can I own that relationship with my audience? And so that's why I think we're going to see a return to blogs.

Lia Haberman: 10:56

I think we're seeing something of a return to newsletters. I put out a newsletter. Obviously I'm very pro newsletter. There's data out there that suggests Gen Z doesn't love email. So I'm always kind of watching that, trying to understand like, does Gen Z like email, do they not? Will they open newsletters, will they not? The thing with Gen Z is that, like half of them are still in high school and college, they haven't joined the workforce. Once they join the workforce, you know, part of working is having emails, interoffice email, email with partners and vendors and whatever. So there's a very good chance that once Gen Z enters the workforce and becomes part of the workforce, that they, you know, start to embrace more and more email. So, like, newsletters could end up being fine.

Lia Haberman: 11:41

So, you know, blogs, newsletters, you know maybe a little bit more into YouTube and the idea of kind of long-form video. We've gone kind of full circle, where it started with bloggers and the idea of, like you know, my own journal and whatever, it moved over into social media. I think people are now pulling back a little bit from social media or kind of reevaluating their relationship with social media and looking at alternatives. It doesn't mean that they're leaving. I don't think that this is, you know, is social media dead? Is this like doom and gloom? Not necessarily. I just think people are going to be much more choosy and are going to really evaluate you know, what am I posting? Where am I posting it?

Lia Haberman: 12:23

I'm seeing a lot of repurposing and I think previously, whenever I was advising whether it was brands or creators, it would be like do not repurpose. You should really be respecting each platform individually. We are seeing people repurpose because they're spread so thin, because they're, you know, posting on all these platforms, plus they want a blog, plus they want a newsletter. It's a lot for one person to do so at this point. When I'm talking to people, I'm saying if you have to repost just to show up on a platform, repost If you know. As you start to look at the data coming in and understand what platforms are you performing on and what are you not, you can decide do you want to be on that platform if your content is not resonating on that platform, or do you think it's worth? Maybe do you need to tweak the content and try and start optimizing for that platform, like, is it worth it for you? So I think people are just going to get a lot more selective about where they show up.

Aliza Freud: 13:17

You know we started with the blogs. You have a much more direct relationship, whereas social platforms were considered more like rented you know you're renting that or leasing that space. And the second, that the platform started messing around with the algorithm. I remember when a lot of the algorithm stuff especially on Instagram people lost a third of their audience from seeing content. I think that's why you also have people starting substacks and you have started people doing podcasts. You're finding ways to have more of those direct relationships. If you're a creator, an influencer, that platforms can't just turn you off, which theoretically now, like TikTok, could decide you have a million followers, I'm only going to show your content to 10% of them, right, which is? Which is what happens.

Lia Haberman: 14:03

Yeah, I also think when you're a creator, so for anybody in the audience that's a creator and is listening, you do have to think about like five to 10 years down the road and creators tend to follow like a path. I mean, we've only influencers and creators have it's like a relatively new industry, so it's like it's not like that we have that much historical data, but traditionally it tends to be. They become like you said. You know they have blogs, podcasts. They become almost like many media companies themselves. Or you've got like Addison Rae.

Lia Haberman: 14:37

There's a couple of people that have managed to break into the entertainment industry. They become hosts on shows, they become reality TV stars. You know they managed to go into the entertainment industry. Or they become entrepreneurs. They the D'Amelio sisters, they launched their own brands Mr Beast, alex Cooper. Alex Cooper, I would say, is kind of a mix of entrepreneur, media company, like she's maybe all things in one, but I think it's just you know.

Lia Haberman: 15:04

So you're like entrepreneur, you're an entertainer or you're a media company, and that is typically, you know, the three paths most often that an influencer will take, unless I would say the alternate is they go in house at a brand based on all of the skills, the knowledge, the market knowledge, the audience knowledge that they've accumulated. They go in house and start acting as a marketer for, you know, one of their favorite brands or brand you know that they're comfortable with, familiar with, that they love. So they get hired and they kind of go to the go to the other side, go behind the camera, essentially, and start working as a marketer. So I think, as a creator, I think it's a really good idea to think about okay, like this is fun, creating content is great.

Lia Haberman: 15:50

One year, two year, three years, you know, getting brand deals. But like five, 10 years down the road, where do I see myself going? And I don't think you want to rely on just brand deals and creator funds for you know, 10, 20 years, Like that's just not sustainable. So I think it's worth thinking about what does the future hold and like what would I most like to do? Who can I look at and admittedly it's a pretty small pool at the top of these people at the very top but like whose career path looks most interesting to me?

Aliza Freud: 16:26

Right, yeah, and I do think one of the things, though, that I have seen in terms of this space of people building a social media presence, it has I feel like it has permeated into almost every single profession, if you think about it. There are people who are doctors, let's say. I have information that I want to share with. I'm a gynecologist. I have information I want to share with women about things that they should be thinking about. I can't reach everybody in my private practice, but if I go on social media, I can create this presence there, and then they do that and they build momentum and they have success, and so then they create these brands and they build a business out from it. That's just an example of doctors. I cannot think of an industry that people in the industry could not benefit instead in some way from a social media presence. How do people think about this in terms of permeating into what they do day?

Lia Haberman: 17:33

to day. Personal brand is just becoming more and more important. I think it was last year the study came out that Gen Z now looks information up on social media more than they do search engines. You look at whether it's your LinkedIn page, your Instagram profile, your TikTok profile. Is there enough information there that it could be comparable to a Google or a Bing search result You've got to think about. I think it depends on your audience. You want to make sure that you're showing up where you think your audience, or your potential customer or consumer or whatever is going to be looking, but can they find the information about you? I think it really helps. It helps vouch for you if you have something out there that people can find the information that you want to intentionally craft and put out there.

Lia Haberman: 18:23

I think what's really important is a lot of times people think a personal brand is based on the information that you're sharing. But I would say it's the information you're sharing. It's what other people are saying about you, but it's also the information you're not putting out there. If you're not on social media, that's also contributing to your personal brand. Why are you not on social media?

Lia Haberman: 18:45

It might be a totally benign reason, but it might be because people think you hate social media, when you don't. You don't understand social media, you're out of touch. You don't understand technology you might. It's just you're creating an impression or a void of information that people are going to fill in in their own minds. I think the most important thing that you can do even if it's fine, you don't have to be an influencer, you don't have to have 10, 20, 30,000 followers, but I think you have to be intentional about how you build your profile or how you build the perception of yourself, online Information out that you want to have out there, so that you are creating that personal brand that you have control over, versus letting somebody else say something or versus letting somebody else Create a perception of you based on lack of information online.

Aliza Freud: 19:38

We just finished a study that we released where we kind of found that social media and in a lot of ways, especially as it relates to women and work is a great equalizer. Right, it's women were using it to across generations, we found that women were using it to look for new jobs, to build their personal brands, which would help them in their careers, to network. They were using it for all of these reasons and it's a tool that can be really valuable. But, to your point, there's also the downside of social media. Now, we obviously are focused a lot in the women's space and one of the things that we hear from many female influencers, creators, is that they deal with an enormous amount of criticism. No matter what content they create, no matter who they are, they get comments. They get comments about their appearance, they get comments about how maybe they parents, they get comments about everything. What do you think the downside of all of this is on our culture? I mean, that's a huge question.

Lia Haberman: 20:49

The optimist in me is that the platforms are forever trying to increase moderation, tools, increase, you know, empowering creators to help them, whether it's like block people, mute people, help provide tools for people's mental health, but then every time we see them do that, we see a new study come out about, you know, teenagers and their mental health being harmed and you know predators, and it's it feels like one step forward, two steps back. I feel like we're at a little bit of an impasse and I think that that's Contributing to this sense where everybody's waiting to see what happens and I think, yes, like it also contributes to people's kind of ambiguous feelings about social media. Now, I think, like the first half of you know, 2010 to like 2015-16, everybody loves social media. We can connect, we can talk to our friends, we can, you know, find new things, learn new things, meet new people, and I think the past, you know, few years, have just been like we've seen the dark side of it and, yeah, we're at a little bit of a tipping point right now, I think, in people's attitudes. But also like AI, what is it gonna do to social media? Is it gonna improve social media or is it gonna be, you know, is it gonna be the thing that kind of turns us off where it's? It's gonna be less about you know, toxic or predatory content and it's gonna be more about an influx of generic, ai Generated content that we cannot sift through fast enough, because obviously AI is gonna be able to generate content faster than we can read it. Oh yeah, we're kind of at a. We had like part one, part two. We are now on the precipice of part three and nobody really knows yet what that's gonna look like. So it it going any direction? It's very hard to predict at this stage.

Lia Haberman: 22:45

I love social media. I love, I love the internet. I love social media. I love all of the good elements and aspects and the connectivity and opportunities for communication that it creates. So I'm rooting for it. It's just we don't know. We don't know where it goes.

Aliza Freud: 23:01

I think that that is a Incredibly thoughtful response. I agree with you. I'm a big believer that there's some unbelievably positive elements of social media. I mean the connection connecting to people. But I also think, if you think about the pandemic as a little bit of a sort of small Almost, like it was a lifeline for so many people during the pandemic. But on the other hand, we know that there's and there's so much research that shows that it had it had also a really negative On our psychology, especially on younger, younger people. So I think you're right, this is an industry that has grown significantly. I think we're still in this place when it's gonna continue to evolve and and evolve quickly. So, okay, well, we are kind of at the the, the very end here. But I would ask you one last question, which is Do you have any big, bold prediction that you think we should be or something we should be looking at next, like, what is the next thing we should be expecting or looking at in this space?

Lia Haberman: 24:11

I put out a newsletter recently, so I was gonna put out my own predictions and I thought I'll pull my audience and get their predictions just to kind of like Interest first. People gave so many interesting answers that I decided people hear from me every week. Nobody needs my predictions. I'm just gonna incorporate what people said and I decided to kind of like touch on some of the big things. One was a lot of people were very into short form video. I'm actually gonna kind of add a twist to that.

Lia Haberman: 24:39

So a lot of the marketers who responded to my poll about predictions for 2024, short form video I think is gonna have a hard time in 2024. Creators can't necessarily monetize short form video and now that tiktok's you know creativity program is Paying you for videos that are longer than 60 seconds, I actually think that video is gonna start to get longer. So I would say for a brand marketer or a creator, I think we're gonna start to see an increase In the length of video. I think YouTube has been the gold standard in terms of long-form video and this creator seem to be the best paid. So I have always said from the very beginning always look to the YouTube creators. Those seem to have been the people that have been kind of like sitting up there happiest, most well-paid, like look to those guys. I think we're gonna see a lot more people kind of aim towards that. Not necessarily and when I say long-form video, that does not mean like an hour, certainly an increase from over you know, a 10, 20 second video, maybe a couple of minutes, maybe a nine minute video.

Lia Haberman: 25:47

Everybody pointed towards audio and I think that that is absolutely valid. I think audio is gonna be huge. There was somebody who pointed out and I thought this was a really good observation that Adam Misery and his team on threads really nailed it with. Threads gives you the option to upload Audio caption describes the audio caption plus has an audio version. So the idea of like audio podcasts, video podcasts, linkedin live events or audio events, anything audio, trending audio I definitely agree. I think audio is gonna be huge, but I think it's always gonna have a Kind of a mixed media or multimedia component, so it's not necessarily just audio on its own, but it's video podcast. It's the Reds captions that are both written and audio, so it's kind of like mixing audio with something else.

Lia Haberman: 26:41

We're on LinkedIn right now. I think LinkedIn is having a renaissance and I think more and more creators are getting on LinkedIn. We saw models this year that were like teens love LinkedIn. Sorry, but LinkedIn is cool again. Gen Z is LinkedIn's fastest growing segment and, like I said, a lot of Gen Z is still in high school, in college. They're gonna be putting the workforce. I think they're gonna be joining LinkedIn.

Lia Haberman: 27:10

I think what that's gonna do not only for creators, what I encourage them to join LinkedIn and there's a great creator called Taz Zammit Z-A-M-I-T who's a tick tocker, a very successful tick tocker, but who also publishes on LinkedIn. She's a really good model to watch of like how do you as a tick tocker creator, for example, onboard on LinkedIn? But I also think it's gonna change the nature of LinkedIn. I think LinkedIn is gonna get funnier, slightly shorter. You know we're not gonna see these like essays. I think we're. It's gonna start to kind of adapt to Incorporate content models that we've seen on Instagram captions, tick tock captions, tweets. You know, I think we're gonna see the nature of LinkedIn shift slightly as it gets more Gen Z and more Creators on the platform really insightful.

Aliza Freud: 28:01

Thank you, leah Haberman, for spending this time with us today. I am so grateful. People want to follow you. What is the best way for them to?

Lia Haberman: 28:08

do that Probably. I mean, I would say either on LinkedIn, twitter or X if you're still on there, instagram or threads, or if you want to subscribe to my newsletter. It's called. I see, why am I, in case you missed it, on sub-stack and it's Leah Haberman dot sub stack comm. Thank you so much.

Aliza Freud: 28:26

Thank you.