u/Primary_Opening_5698

Hey,

I'm building a tool in the creator space, and before I go further with it, I want to understand how creators actually work.

A very quick 10 minute chat is all I'm after - I won't waste a lot of your time. A quick chat, meeting, or call, whatever you feel comfortable with. Just need 10 minutes. I swear I'm not trying to sell anything - this is genuine on-ground research.

If you use AI somewhere in your creative process - scripting, planning, anything on the working side (not the image or video generation part) - I'd especially love to talk.

If you're active on social and have at least 1k followers, drop a comment or DM and I'll reach out.

Thanks in advance.

Hey,

I'm building a tool in the creator space, and before I go further with it, I want to understand how creators actually work.

A very quick 10 minute chat is all I'm after - I won't waste a lot of your time. A quick chat, meeting, or call, whatever you feel comfortable with. Just need 10 minutes. I swear I'm not trying to sell anything - this is genuine on-ground research.

If you use AI somewhere in your creative process - scripting, planning, anything on the working side (not the image or video generation part) - I'd especially love to talk.

If you're active on social and have at least 1k followers, drop a comment or DM and I'll reach out.

Thanks in advance.

Hey,

I'm building a tool in the creator space, and before I go further with it, I want to understand how creators actually work.

A very quick 10 minute chat is all I'm after - I won't waste a lot of your time. A quick chat, meeting, or call, whatever you feel comfortable with. Just need 10 minutes. I swear I'm not trying to sell anything - this is genuine on-ground research.

If you use AI somewhere in your creative process - scripting, planning, anything on the working side (not the image or video generation part) - I'd especially love to talk.

If you're active on social and have at least 1k followers, drop a comment or DM and I'll reach out.

Thanks in advance.

Hey,

I'm building a tool in the creator space, and before I go further with it, I want to understand how creators actually work.

A very quick 10 minute chat is all I'm after - I won't waste a lot of your time. A quick chat, meeting, or call, whatever you feel comfortable with. Just need 10 minutes. I swear I'm not trying to sell anything - this is genuine on-ground research.

If you use AI somewhere in your creative process - scripting, planning, anything on the working side (not the image or video generation part) - I'd especially love to talk.

If you're active on social and have at least 1k followers, drop a comment or DM and I'll reach out.

Thanks in advance.

Hey,

I'm building a tool in the creator space, and before I go further with it, I want to understand how creators actually work.

A very quick 10 minute chat is all I'm after - I won't waste a lot of your time. A quick chat, meeting, or call, whatever you feel comfortable with. Just need 10 minutes. I swear I'm not trying to sell anything - this is genuine on-ground research.

If you use AI somewhere in your creative process - scripting, planning, anything on the working side (not the image or video generation part) - I'd especially love to talk.

If you're active on social and have at least 1k followers, drop a comment or DM and I'll reach out.

Thanks in advance.

Hey,

I'm building a tool in the creator space, and before I go further with it, I want to understand how creators actually work.

A very quick 10 minute chat is all I'm after - I won't waste a lot of your time. A quick chat, meeting, or call, whatever you feel comfortable with. Just need 10 minutes. I swear I'm not trying to sell anything - this is genuine on-ground research.

If you use AI somewhere in your creative process - scripting, planning, anything on the working side (not the image or video generation part) - I'd especially love to talk.

If you're active on social and have at least 1k followers, drop a comment or DM and I'll reach out.

Thanks in advance.

Hey,

I'm building a tool in the creator space, and before I go further with it, I want to understand how creators actually work.

A very quick 10 minute chat is all I'm after - I won't waste a lot of your time. A quick chat, meeting, or call, whatever you feel comfortable with. Just need 10 minutes. I swear I'm not trying to sell anything - this is genuine on-ground research.

If you use AI somewhere in your creative process - scripting, planning, anything on the working side (not the image or video generation part) - I'd especially love to talk.

If you're active on social and have at least 1k followers, drop a comment or DM and I'll reach out.

Thanks in advance.

How do UGC collaborations work generally for a brand?

I'm trying to give a small assignment where I send UGC creators the product and ask them to use it for 2 days and get them the script themselves.

Is this something they would do, or would they prefer to just record a video when given the script, I'm not getting a lot of responses for the last batch of collabs I sent out.

Was working on a research project and stumbled into the whole creator economy rabbit hole, how a lot of companies are monetizing this and turning into multi-million dollar enterprises. Pretty wild once you start looking.

So curious, what are the tools you actually use daily that help you in your content creation journey? Anything and everything that eases out your process, could be link in bio stuff, Stan Store, any subscriptions you pay for, Higgsfield, any AI or software product you swear by.

Just trying to get a real sense of what softwares people are using.

Was working on a research project and stumbled into the whole creator economy rabbit hole, how a lot of companies are monetizing this and turning into multi-million dollar enterprises. Pretty wild once you start looking.

So curious, what are the tools you actually use daily that help you in your content creation journey? Anything and everything that eases out your process, could be link in bio stuff, Stan Store, any subscriptions you pay for, Higgsfield, any AI or software product you swear by.

Just trying to get a real sense of what softwares people are using.

Was working on a research project and stumbled into the whole creator economy rabbit hole, how a lot of companies are monetizing this and turning into multi-million dollar enterprises. Pretty wild once you start looking.

So curious, what are the tools you actually use daily that help you in your content creation journey? Anything and everything that eases out your process, could be link in bio stuff, Stan Store, any subscriptions you pay for, Higgsfield, any AI or software product you swear by.

Just trying to get a real sense of what softwares people are using.

Hey everyone, wanted to get some inputs on email marketing tools.

We have been running campaigns on Brevo with a solid, high-quality contact list, but open rates have been declining consistently week on week. We ran an internal test to check deliverability and roughly 50% of our emails were landing in spam, so the drop in opens is almost certainly a deliverability issue rather than a content or audience problem.

Has anyone here worked with alternatives to Brevo that handle deliverability better at scale? Would appreciate any firsthand experience.

Been down this rabbit hole since Mosseri confirmed sends per reach as the top signal for unconnected reach. My data shows a clear correlation between high sends and non-follower reach — but I can't figure out what content characteristics reliably predict whether something gets shared via DM.

My working theory: content gets DM-shared when it's specific enough to remind the viewer of a specific person in their life.

Broad relatability gets likes ("this is so me") Targeted specificity gets DM shares ("I need to send this to [name]")

What that means practically: content that names a very specific situation, frustration, or type of person will get forwarded more than content that tries to appeal to everyone.

But I'm reverse-engineering this from the output — I can see which reels got shares, I can't see why they got shared. I'm inferring the "specific person" theory from the content type, not from user intent data.

Has anyone done actual user research on what triggers a DM share decision? Or run a proper experiment where they changed one variable and measured sends vs a control?

This feels like the most important and least understood part of the current algorithm.

Mosseri's confirmed hierarchy for Reels:

- Watch time (skip rate is the inverse)

- Sends per reach (DM shares) for new audiences / Likes per reach for existing followers

- Likes

Saves and comments are real signals but they're not in the top

Here's the problem: most Instagram content advice — and most creators I observe — is still optimising for likes and comments.

The growth strategies most people follow are built around a metric hierarchy that Instagram quietly shifted away from.

Content designed to get likes: entertaining, relatable, dopamine-hit stuff Content designed to get DM shares: useful enough that you'd forward it to a specific person

Those are genuinely different content strategies. A meme gets likes. A "you need to send this to your friend who keeps doing X" gets shares.

The accounts I've seen growing fastest in my tracking data aren't the most entertaining. They're the most forwardable. There's a specific person the viewer thinks of while watching — and that's when the share happens.

This isn't a revolutionary observation. Mosseri said it outright. But the gap between what he confirmed and what most creators are actually building for is surprisingly wide.

How many people here have actually changed their content strategy based on the sends data? Genuinely curious.

Following up on something I posted about yesterday on skip rate. A few people in the comments brought up sends data and I think it deserves its own post.

Mosseri has been pretty explicit about this: for unconnected reach, meaning people who don't follow you yet, sends per reach (DM shares) is the most powerful signal. More than likes, more than saves, more than comments.

694,000 Reels are shared via DM every minute according to Metricool's 2025 data. The volume is clearly there. The question is whether creators are actually building for it.

I went through my own tracking data and split my reels into two groups:

Top 25% by sends per reach and bottom 25% by sends per reach.

Here's what the non-follower reach looked like:

High sends group averaged 18,400 non-follower accounts reached. Low sends group averaged 3,200.

That is a 5.7x difference in reach from people who don't follow you, just from one metric.

And the content in the high sends group was not what most people would call "viral." No trending audio, no funny videos. It was stuff specific enough to be genuinely useful to one person and shareable to another. The "send this to someone who needs to see this" moment.

Most creators I see are still chasing likes. Mosseri told us over a year ago that likes don't move the needle on unconnected reach the way sends do. I'm not sure why that hasn't changed how people create.

Is anyone here actually building content with DM shares in mind? What's been working?

After Mosseri's update confirming watch time as the dominant ranking signal (skip rate being the flip side of that), I spent the last few weeks looking at what actually causes people to bail in the first 3 seconds.

Pulled data across 40 accounts in different niches. Grouped reels into two buckets: under 30% skip rate in the first 3 seconds and over 60% skip rate in the first 3 seconds.

Here is what the opening frame looked like across both groups.

Reels where people stayed:

• Direct eye contact with camera in first frame: 74% of reels
• On-screen text visible within 1.5 seconds: 68%
• Physical movement in opening shot: 71%

Reels where people left:

• Static opening image: 61%
• No text on screen in first 2 seconds: 73%
• Creator not visible in frame at all: 58%

None of this is conclusive. I cannot control for content quality differences. And Mosseri has been clear that watch time covers both relative (completion %) and absolute (seconds watched), so a 60-second reel and a 15-second reel are weighted differently.

But the pattern in the opening frame was consistent enough across niches that I think it is worth paying attention to.

What are others seeing? Especially curious if the "face in first frame" thing holds in non-lifestyle niches.

Same as title, Just wanted to take my friends for a weekend visit.

Are there any groups or Clubs that host f1 acreenings and watch party in the city?

Heyy, everyone!

I'm building a consumer AI product for creators and looking to collab on promo. Quick qs before we move:

1. Your rate for a UGC video?

2. Can I use the asset to run my own ads, or would you post it on your page?

3. If you post it, flat fee or pay per views?

Trying to move on this asap, so lmk whenever you can!

Please DM

Are you open to affiliate earnings that could give you upto 40 percent lifetime.