Meta Adds New, Exclusive Content Options for Paying Subscribers to Help Creators Build their Audiences

Meta’s looking to improve its monetization and community-building tools for creators, with new subscriber-only features that will better incentivize users to sign-up and support creators via subscriptions.

First off, Meta’s launching new Subscriber Chats, which will enable creators to host exclusive chat sessions with up to 30 people at a time, providing a more intimate and enclosed space to help build community.

As you can see in these images, Subscriber Chats will be activated via a new “join chat” sticker from your Facebook or Instagram story, which will invite users into an exclusive session to glean more insight, and maintain connection.

As explained by Meta:

“Subscriber chats, powered by Messenger, can be created directly from your inbox or story and end automatically after 24 hours, so you can maintain balance and decide when and how you engage with your subscribers.”

It could be a good way to help build your subscriber community, and provide more value for those following your profile. Worth noting, too, that Subscriber Chats will be enabled for both subscriber and regular stories, which will expand the potential use cases for the tool.

On another front, creators will also now be able to create exclusive posts and reels for their subscribers only, which will live on their profiles.

As you can see in these images, subscriber posts will now live in a separate tab on creator profiles, while they’ll also be displayed with a purple crown badge to signify that they can only be seen by subscribers.

Meta added exclusive Stories and Live broadcasts back in January, with these new additions providing another means to share unique content with your paying audience.

“While exclusive stories and live allow you to connect with subscribers in the moment, we know that content that lives on your profile is an important way to attract new subscribers and retain your community. Now you can create a world of exclusive content, from saving your subscriber lives, to sharing feed posts and reels, knowing that your community can easily find it as soon as they subscribe.”

The new options will provide more ways to add value to your subscription offerings, which could help to generate more interest in your paid content.

As with all platforms, Meta is now working to provide better monetization potential for creators, in a bid to get more of them spending more time in its apps, and relying on Instagram, in particular, as a key platform for connecting with their audience.

The longer term view for Meta is that it will need creators to fuel its metaverse shift, by building new digital worlds to attract more users. But right now, the key focus is on building monetization potential in order to win creators away from TikTok and YouTube.

TikTok is still developing its monetization tools, and could be vulnerable in this respect, and both Meta and YouTube are working to exploit this where they can by sweetening their deals, and adding new functionality, to better incentivize paying subscribers.

These new options provide more considerations on this front, and they could be valuable additions in winning over more paying members.