Matt Steffanina breaks down why creators require an online community
From your basic top eight of Myspace to Facebook groups that are private and private Facebook Groups, we've all been member of a group on social media. Over the years the platforms for social media have allowed creators to foster vibrant communities, both in private and in public comments.
With a growing number of issues, social media is slacking in the role of a community-building tool and manager it once was. As a result, creators and business owners across the globe are starting to see the shortcomings for what they are.
The 2021 Facebook outage may be to blame for the shift in mindset that began. A short six-hour period when the platform was down led small businesses and creators alike to lose access to their audience and website traffic, causing widespread revenue loss. Some reported losses of up as $5,000 in dollars.
To better understand the significance of hosting a community off on social networks, we spoke with the online community master himself--Matt Steffanina, world-renowned choreographer and the founder and owner of the DNCR Academy.
Since the launch of his YouTube channel in 2009, Matt has grown a modest following of over 30 million people across different platforms. He's known for dancing with stars like Taylor Swift, Jason Derulo and Meghan Trainer. Not to mention appearances on television shows like So You Think You Can Dance.
Through his YouTube dance videos and live classes, Matt formed a tight-knit community of passionate dancers, but when the pandemic struck and the #IRL classes stopped, YouTube simply wasn't cutting it as a means to reach out to his followers and earn a living. This is when he turned towards online training and an online community to bring lasting value to his audience and create an income stream that was sustainable.
Dive into our Q&A with Matt to learn how he's grown a wildly successful business and online community. He also explains why it's the key to creators owning their destiny.
Note: The responses were lightly edited to improve clarity.
Send us an elevator pitch of your identity and the things you're doing.
Hello, my name's Matt Steffanina, and I'm a choreographer and music producer located in L.A. But the last twelve years of my life are largely performing and dancing. When I first started out in the business, I was in collaboration with musicians, however, throughout the process I started my own YouTube channel, posting video clips of my life, classes and tours. It was basically, watching, vlog style. One of the hard challenges of being a professional dancer, particularly ten years ago is that you had to rely on your agent as well as the dancers to offer opportunities. It was impossible to create opportunities for yourself as an artist. Therefore, in my early years I was always waiting by the phone for a chance to audition. At first, YouTube was an opportunity for me to keep my job and working on my skills, as well as to promote my dance career. I had no idea that it would do what it has done. I had a year where I grew about a million users, which at the time was very impressive. Through it, I ended having opportunities to work with Ja' Rule and Taylor Swift, and Meghan Trainer.
Another thing I was passionate about was teaching. Early on I started a second [YouTube] channel known as dance Tutorials Live, where viewers could be taught how to dance. I built a following of dancers across the world. The most satisfying aspect of all that I've accomplished is listening to the tales of the students' accomplishments. These stories are truly amazing because, at the time, I was just filming tutorials in the local studio on my tripod. I had no idea that I could make an impact at all It's been quite an incredibly challenging journey to say the least.
Did you foresee your YouTube channel evolving into what it is? Have you planned to grow the channel to the level you have currently?
No, there's no way one could have predicted that it would do what it did. When I first posted my video, it was from Virginia before I moved to L.A., and I was looking for methods to be inspired and make connections with fellow dancers. When I first started, which was 14 years ago I was among the very first dancers to join the platform. I couldn't imagine what would happen. Now the channel has like thirteen million users and 3 billion views. When my first video became viral, I was able to remember that people were commenting from all over the world but the notion that someone could be watching my videos from a different country seemed unimaginable. I couldn't comprehend it and yet here we are today with me performing tours all over the world, due to the internet and being able to get my music out on the internet.
Let us go on a piece of your timeline. Tell us, what blew up first? Was it YouTube? Did you make it your profession?
People always think that getting success within the mainstream and Hollywood industry can lead to the success of online advertising, however the reality is that it doesn't convert as well as you would think. The shows I participated in were the Tonight Show, So You Think You're Good at Dance, The Amazing Race along with many others. I was getting a lot of traditional television opportunities, however, they didn't translate to long-term results. They were short-term opportunities, nevertheless, amazing.
What gave me the longevity in my career and the ability to continue this over a decade later is establishing a network.
The group really grew out of my dancing tutorials. It wasn't intentional, but that ended up being the smartest option I could have made; being an outstanding teacher and instructor in this space, as well as pushing the community to the next level is harder as a dancer. It was my efforts through tutorials, and by teaching students on the web that made me be a part of a community, which is still strong until today.
Are you able to take us through the journey of launching DNCR Academy? How did you turn it into an actual company for you?
I started DNCR Academy right at the beginning of the pandemic. It was something I wanted to create for many years for number of reasons. It's a platform for subscriptions, where people can learn dance tutorials. This is a different experience from my YouTube videos. When I upload content on YouTube the content I upload isin a somewhat irregular manner, and the quality isn't necessarily top-quality. With it, we can't invite lots of guests or instructors. However, a large portion of dancers are enjoying the YouTube tutorials and want to get additional training. So I created DNCR Academy for the people who want to be a bit more focused. It allows me to bring in great instructors, such as Bollywood, shuffling, and instructors in dance fitness; things that I'd never normally perform on my YouTube channel. However, on the [DNCR Academy] platform, it's completely acceptable and exciting to provide a variety of styles for our students. When COVID first started, I knew I couldn't travel and had the time to finally dedicate the project, which is why we waited a couple of months and built out the platform on . This was in June of 2020. Now it's been three incredible years. I was thinking we were a large community on YouTube, but this took the most powerful of this large community and placed them in the middle of a bubble. We have everyone supporting one another. They not only have this support group that's sharing knowledge with one another around the globe They also have an emotional support network with members who push one another. This has become an extremely positive aspect of my life and for the dancers of DNCR also.
Can you tell us more about the community , and what was what drove you to start DNCR? The community existed before the DNCR Academy, or did it come in conjunction with the Academy? Do you have any idea of it being an important factor in the Academy's success?
I was really afflicted by it with COVID. I believe a lot people did. It was hard to stay motivated. Difficult to get into a routine because you're stuck inside the home and aren't able to access anything. Dance in particular is something that's a communal activity. It is possible to dance on your own, but the thing that I enjoy about dancing is the feeling of being in a dance studio with my fellow dancers and the energy that comes with it. When all that is taken off, it's hard to get motivated, even as choreographer. I was unable to find the motivation to continue, and so I thought that should I go through this, there's a good chance that another aspiring dancer is also suffering in the same manner and may benefit from a tight-knit community. The community already existed as a result of the YouTube tutorials, but it was not consistent. wasn't consistency, and to get great at anything there is one thing you need [in dance is consistency in your training. The [community] allowed us to have each month challenges. This I consider to be the greatest thing we did in the course of DNCR. It's not just uploading tutorials, but it's a focus on a single thing we're all going to work on together. Everyone is working at this task and we'll upload our videos within an end date. This is where we got our motivation; the excitement when you see all your fellow members uploading their videos as well as the interesting or constructive comments that came from that. It's all about being an active participant in the community, and actually encouraging each other to grow, which I think was the part that was hard to accomplish via YouTube because it seemed that everybody was doing these the tutorials by themselves. The community allowed us to do it together, which made a difference and I believe for me as a choreographer and for students to be proficient in their learning.
Do you have any customer experiences from your neighborhood that stand out to you? What individual in the community have you found memorable?
One of my most loyal customers is a guy known as Ray. He's located in Washington D. C. He's a lawyer and he began to dance in his 40's. He'd come home each working day with his lawyer suit on and move the kitchen table away in order to work on the hip-hop routines and then he'd end up dancing with his children. They produced a variety of videos, especially on COVID as they learned the dance routines together. He was able to appear on an Disney Channel show, and winning the show. Here's this guy who at 40 years old was the only person who had never attended a dance class in his entire life, found his passion in this community, and ended up being one of the biggest inspirations to our members. I think this type of accomplishment is crucial to celebrate because I too started from nothing. It wasn't until the age of 18, however, the majority of people do not see it and most of the time, they have seen me on stage alongside famous people and in music videos. It's more difficult to understand the difficulties I faced early in my career. If you see those who are currently going through it [the journey] with you and see them come out to the other side of this amazing journey-- it's so powerful. This really touched everyone in our community. There are many stories similar to those, but Ray was a really special one.
Are you using your community and social media audience to test out new ideas or innovative products you've got for your company?
One of the issues we're constantly working on is helping to reach more people. What can we do to reach out to many more users? The dancers who would like to master this skill is quite small, so we want to offer the type of classes on our platform that will take someone up to the professional standard. However, we are also focused on making it more and easier for those who wants to just learn some routines every now and then, or someone who wants to go to the gym and feel comfortable. Additionally, we're working on a wide range of activities related to dance fitness. I was an instructor for personal training and really believe that dance is one of the most effective methods to stay healthy both mentally and physically. There's even a wedding dance course since I get a lot of requests to create wedding choreographies but , alas, do not have time for it and so this course will take the bride through all you have to be aware of. We're working to make it more accessible to the requests that I've been getting throughout the years. I've always said if I had time to do this I'd be awestruck and would help many people. Now we're trying to make more time for these classes.
Can you give us the most basic overview of what your strategy on social media is in the present? What has changed since you first started on YouTube?
The platform has seen a significant change over the past ten years, just like the various generations of YouTube and social media generally. Early on it was not a competitive platform, so I was simply uploading my school. That was literally it. Then I started to see the potential of vlogging as a way to create a the connection with creators. I began vlogging behind-the scenes content, and that was really successful between 2016 to the year 2019. After that, we began to implement more challenges like mastering a routine within only ten minutes. These were really successful.
As COVID hit in 2020, we started to be successful with TikTok and other short-form media. It was a huge change since then. I would say that tons of the dance viewership changed to shorter forms, TikTok in particular, due to the fact that dancing was very popular in the area. My videos were still posted on YouTube however a significant portion of my strategy focused more on short-form videos like fifteen-second dances instead of forty-five-second to minute-long dances.
The thing about social media, which people do not understand unless you've been around for a couple of generations it, is that there's not going to be an answer that just works forever--because regardless of what industry your expertise is, if you come across something that is effective, eventually everyone else will copy it and that's what happened with dances. The popularity of videos from dance classes exploded and it [social media] got flooded by dance instructors uploading their class videos. Then, I needed to figure out what's my next step, and it also got replicated. It's a constant game like in any other industry where you have to keep reinventing as well as develop new and innovative concepts. The only way to find the ideas that are successful is to play darts on the board. Most of them will fail and that's why you come up with the concept that people really like. It's not easy to forecast that's why we take the approach of, when I come up with an idea, I simply go for it. We can try it, and if it doesn't work, great. We'll try something else. It's probably the most effective advice I could give anybody who's trying to make content. Be patient and don't assume because something didn't perform the first time that it's not going to work the second or third time. Sometimes you have to tweak your idea or mold it and the idea suddenly happens.
This leads to one thing we didn't cover that is social media algorithms. How have algorithmic factors played into your strategy? Have they affected your ability to connect with your audience?
If you've ever had the pleasure of using Instagram is likely to find it one of the easiest to find. I recall a moment that I had the opportunity to create a tour flyer which might receive 100,000, more than 200,000 views, and thousands of comments since it was shown to my 3.9 million followers. However, if I shared that flyer in the next day, it'd probably get 10percent of the engagementdue to the fact that the algorithm has changed. So you have to get creative.
Instead of a flyer the video is a dance where the dance is happening cities are popping on the screen and viewers can click to the caption for more. The trick is to find different ways to use the algorithm, because at the end of the day, it's impossible to influence the algorithm. So we watch many things (metricsregarding time retention. YouTube has changed from being primarily the search engine and has become being more of a click-through-rate-based platform. Do your title and thumbnail sufficient to grab people's attention? You could put out the most impressive video ever made and if the titles and thumbnails aren't engaging individuals, then the film is likely to fail. If people watch for the first 10 seconds of a video and then they click away from it, YouTube is going to say 'Hey, everybody loves your thumbnail but your video's not working well, and we're not going to show it to your followers.' And, that's just the way the algorithms operate in the present. The the strategy of a video has become more focused on ideas. I'm pretty certain that we'll be able to make interesting video content, however, if the content is rapidly learning to perform a certain routine, there are a million different ways to package the title and thumbnail as well as the duration of the video as well as the design of the video. This can all affect content success. My channel was getting 30 million views per video over the course of two years, which is insane. Unfortunately, for people who are aware about the monetization issue due to the copyright issue with music, I was not in a position to make money from those videos, but as far as expanding my channel was concerned, it was insane. So things have definitely shifted from that time a bit particularly with TikTok as well as Instagram being the main players in terms of the market portion.
Because you mentioned the possibility of monetization, did it at any time affect your decision to start DNCR Academy, or was the sole purpose of moving offline online?
When attention shifted from YouTube to split into TikTok and also Instagram, numbers throughout YouTube fell, and that was my main method funded my tutorials as well as the entire process, was through and monetization...
In COVID, users wanted more and more [content] however there was not as any monetization occurring in the channels--it was enough to make it scaleable in that way, which was one of the things that made DNCR. Now, we have members who are paying a monthly membership fee so we are able to collect these money and invest them into production and new courses. Basically, into all of the activities I wanted to achieve which YouTube did not provide sufficient revenue to accomplish. This was an effective option financially to expand the content of my tutorials as well as the platform and to give students what they wanted for.
What can you do to deal the burnout that comes with every aspect of social media's creation of content?
I don't feel like I'm old enough, however on social platforms, I've existed since the stone age. It's pretty crazy how many generations have come and gone. The reason I think people get exhausted is because of a few things. I think they set the bar and their agenda a little too high and heavy at the start. For instance I recall a time between 2016 and the year 2017 when all my friends decided to do daily Vlogs. If you've attempted vlogging every day is a slog. The workload to keep up with editing, filming and coming up with ideas daily is impossible. My channel has always been with a couple of uploads a week. It was something I could maintain. I made sure that I traveled. I made sure I was taking breaks. If there wasn't an amazing song out one week or I wasn't feeling inspired to choreograph, I canceled the class. I ensured that the content creation was something I could do repeatedly, which helped me maintain my longevity.
One thing I've done to avoid burnout is to set reasonable expectations for myself. It's my opinion that in the beginning, when you're beginning out, it's better to concentrate on only one or two platforms. Be simple. With YouTube you can upload two times a week, and then make edits to the content, and then cut it to a shorter form to put on Instagram as well as TikTok. Be able to handle it. It's much better to build a little bit slower and yet still possess that spark of energy and the determination to keep producing content for five or 10 years later. then go really hard for a year, then burn yourself out, and the next year, it's time to slow down. This is about being consistent. This is a long-term game in spite of the fact that it appears that things are going at a rapid pace.
Have additional suggestions for creators who are trying to use social media in order to bring customers to their websites or product, or setting up their own communities?
The biggest thing is figuring what you would do if you were your viewers, or your client's position, what could motivate you to abandon a platform and join the subscription model or course. It's true that a lot of occasions we are thinking 'I'll just do this and that' and we're thinking about it through our own perspective. This is why I take a lot of polls--I ask my readers very often what course do you wish to follow the next time around or what you would feel the most enthusiastic about. There are times when I'm thinking that they'd love to choreograph this awesome dance that's super difficult and intricate that they're thinking 'Look, bro, I just want to learn a few moves that I could show off at a party.' And I'm thinking 'Oh, great this week we're going to learn moves you can bust out in a dance party.' It's great to just get in the shoes of others.
Another thing is offering value. If you can provide value first with no expectation of anything in return or asking for any kind of compensation, and build that confidence, trust, and community, when you do provide a free deal or course you already have the confidence. You've already offered value, and made your customers' lives so much better through the services you've offered which they're happy to join in and become a part of it. Sometimes, I believe we commit the error of seeking to make a sale before we have established the relationship with our customers. And that's one of the best aspects of social media: you have the opportunity to be present with your followers every day in whatever way, be it videos on dance or simply sharing your life with them, which in turn, helps build rapport, building community, and the next thing you know, 'Oh, by the way that you've enjoyed all the things you've done, here's this thing where we go a step further. It's an effortless transition that people can take instead of getting to know them at the start and trying to put them into a group right immediately.
A lot of creators in the space think that really the only method to earn money is through brand and affiliate-type deals on social networks, which you've obviously proven not to be the case. What advice would you give new creators in terms of expanding their revenue streams?
Yeah, brands and affiliate marketing are a part of the piece. Monetization is another component that makes up the. It is important to want to have an element off of social platforms which also generate incomesince, at the time it is impossible to know which algorithm or rules will change. This is something I've learned throughout my career since there have been times where I made the bulk of my money via YouTube, when I was getting the bulk of my earnings from live events and touring, and times when I made the bulk of my income through TikTok as well as Instagram, and now, it's . In different phases of my career, that factor has changed several times. And If I'd put all my eggs in one pot and I was simply looking forward to brand partnerships or YouTube to modify their algorithms so that I could monetize more heavily then I'd have ended up trapped. were stuck.
Build a community and start to move your fans away from social media towards a subscription-based service like , where you control the content and community. Now, you don't have to rely on an algorithm to provide your audience with your content. It's just, boom, into DNCR and the users are able to access it at any time they want. The power is returned to the creators--things are shifting quickly and it's becoming more difficult to trust the monetization of brands and brand partnerships as you're not sure where the social media platforms will be next.
Can you tell us what role HTML0 has been in helping you take control and ownership of your future as an artist?
It [] allowed us a place to put videos where the rules remain the same. I think that's the biggest aspect. As I mentioned in the past that there was a period where I had 30 million viewers per film on YouTube. And now, other than perhaps MrBeast and a couple of other exceptions, that's almost impossible with just 13 million subscribers. The majority of these subscribers receive my material. It's vital to, as you're building a community, move your subscribers to an area where they can use them as well as be able to access your content regularly. At a fundamental level such as an email list and a text-based list are excellent however, having them within a community that is not on social media is the most effective method to keep in contact, and also build passive income as a creator, especially if you're working with a subscription. It's an excellent way to not only know that you've got your contacts in one place in which you can communicate with them, and they can contact you, but also for the steady stream of income.
What's the best suggestion you'd provide to an entrepreneur who's just beginning on the right track?
I would say to thoroughly research your area. Before you ever post a piece of content on TikTok you should watch a month's worth of content on Tiktok. It is possible to tinker with your ideas and start making stuff, but I've observed many hours wasted due to people not doing the research first. You love fitness and want to create your own fitness-related business online look up the top ten people who are in the fitness industry via social media, watch ten hours of their content learn the reasons why they work and then develop your own content strategy starting there.
Now, there's more data than you've had, especially through YouTube and TikTok, so the answers can be found right now. It's not necessary to completely re-invent the wheel and create a fitness workout nobody's ever had before, is it? However, you must come up with a method to accomplish it in your personal style and your own voice. And, you can do this by studying people that you love, taking the most valuable things they have to say about themselves and incorporating some of your own stuff, and developing an approach to content. It's important to realize that you have to accept the fact that you don't know. It's exactly what I'm doing now. Every year, at least I'll take a few weeks where I pretend like I'm a complete novice while I look. What are the kids on TikTok who are just 14 years old who are doing something different that we OGs in the field don't understand? It's easy to think that a dancing isn't appropriate or something however there is a rationale why people are identifying with it, and I have to know why it is I can improve myself not just in terms of creativity, but also to improve my company. The time you invest in the study is essential in the process of developing your strategy for content, and then once you have that plan, it's time to work hard.
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The creator economy is poised to see an explosion in online communities in 2023. Social networks are also aware and have responded to this by creating their own community features.
But as Matt pointed out, in order for creators to connect with their target audience in a meaningful way and build the income they desire, they have to take their audiences away from social media.
"Brands and affiliate marketing are just one of the pieces of the piece. Monetization is another piece. It is important to make use of platforms on social networks that are offering a source of income because, at the end of your day, it's impossible to be aware of when rules or algorithms will change. And that's something that I've come to realize over time since there was a time when I was making most of my money through YouTube or TikTok however, now it's ."
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