Creators have taken center stage at several marketing conferences recently, from United Talent Agency’s ZCon—which included a speaker lineup of Gen Z marketers and influencers last month—to the inaugural Creator Upfronts, hosted by Walmart and Forbes last week. 

At both conferences, dozens of creators took the stage to discuss social media trends shaping their content strategies, upcoming projects including podcasts and product launches, as well as predictions for the creator economy. Ad Age caught up with several creators at both events to dive further into the biggest trends they expect to define the creator space in 2025. 

Below are four topics that surfaced repeatedly across both onstage and offstage discussions, including the rise of new social media series inspired by “Chicken Shop Date” and “Recess Therapy,” along with creators increasingly exploring other lines of business, from newsletters and podcasts to launching brands of their own.

Differentiate ... or else

More than 50 million people around the globe are creators, according to Goldman Sachs, which anticipates that number to grow by upwards of 20% annually over the next four years. More creators means more competition for the coveted brand partnerships that continue to account for roughly 70% of creators’ income, per Goldman Sachs data. 

Many creators who spoke at the Creator Upfronts and ZCon—the majority of whom have been in the influencer industry for years—said they’re sharpening their focus on standing out from the surging number of new creator competitors going into 2025. They’re expanding their content to new channels, launching products or entire brands, and showcasing their dual perspective as both creators and marketers to attract potential brand partners.

Also read: Inside the Creator Upfronts

During her upfront presentation, comedian Grace Amaku said she plans on “being a lot more strategic in branding [herself] as a multi-hyphenate” over the next year as she prepares to launch her first podcast and help her mother grow her skincare brand Alocoshé. “Before, I was really scared of branching out, but I feel there is power in the multi-hyphenate,” Amaku added. 

Creators Amanda Li-Page and Robin Barrett also highlighted their business acumen when pitching themselves to marketers at the Creator Upfronts. Li-Page said that launching her iced tea brand Kirra and running the business as a two-person team with her husband, Jerrod Clancy, has given her “insights and experience, as a founder, to execute [partnerships] with the brands’ goals in mind,” rather than just blindly creating sponsored social content. 

Barrett pointed out that starting an activewear brand, Rephuel, has helped her produce effective ads for brand partners such as Nike and Fabletics. And that’s on top of her doctorate in pharmacy, which already distinguishes her from other health and wellness creators. 

“Having my own brand, I use creators myself. I use marketing tools myself,” Barrett said. That dual perspective allows her to brand herself as an “influential” business, rather than solely an influencer, she added. 

TikTok creators who differentiate themselves by demonstrating “some sort of subject matter expertise” will have their content boosted by the platform’s algorithm, thus giving them a greater chance of appearing in front of potential brand partners, said Marisa Hammonds, TikTok’s global head of creator marketing & community, in a sponsored session at the Creator Upfronts. 

TikTok is increasingly prioritizing so-called “high-quality content”—that is, posts that are “well-crafted,” offer “valuable takeaways” to viewers and have a “specialized” or unique point of view, Hammonds said. “So, if you want those followers, high-quality content is a good way to grow your following,” she told creators in the audience.

The TikTok advice comes as the app’s future in the U.S. remains unclear. Earlier this year, President Biden signed a bill into law that would ban TikTok in January unless its Chinese-based owner, ByteDance, sells the app. But President-elect Donald Trump has said he would not ban TikTok, despite previously attempting to do so. 

Stretching beyond social media

At the Creator Upfronts, many presenters and panelists spoke about how they’re expanding beyond short-form videos to new channels such as newsletters or in-person events. Kendall Toole, a former Peloton instructor who left the company in June after five years, said that collecting emails from her fans and launching a newsletter was “the first thing [she] did” after announcing her departure from Peloton. 

The newsletter, which has a 71% open rate, has amassed over 50,000 subscribers since its launch two months ago, she said. During the panel, Toole also revealed she’s gearing up to create a new community platform next month where she’ll host weekly livestreams that will effectively be “a talk show just for the community.” She also aims to explore in-person events as another community touchpoint, inspired by a recent pop-up she attended as part of a collaboration with Lululemon for World Mental Health Day last month.

“The more that we can create moments and activations that root us back down in our own humanity and distance us from just product or too much narrative and too much messaging, I think, is really powerful,” Toole said. 

Also read: How influencers are launching newsletters

Savanah Moss, a creator and filmmaker whose “fever dream” videos have helped her reach nearly 12 million TikTok followers, also discussed her newsletter, “The Fever Dream Team,” during a panel at the Creator Upfronts. The newsletter, which she launched during the conference last week, is intended to help Moss transfer some of her large TikTok audience to other social platforms she plans to focus on in the coming year, specifically YouTube. It will also serve as “one place where you can see everything [she’s] working on across all platforms,” as well as other upcoming projects such as films, she said. 

Having income streams beyond social media—whether through an entire brand or a subscription-based medium such as a newsletter—can relieve some pressure on creators by providing a revenue source that doesn’t require constant on-camera appearances, said Dani Austin Ramirez, influencer and founder of the haircare brand Divi, during a panel at the Upfronts

“Mental health, I feel like, is the biggest struggle for probably a lot of creators,” she said. “You just feel like the longevity is hard because it’s so much and the grind is so hard, and so launching Divi was this huge relief because I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, we can build this thing outside of me, where I don’t have to be showing up every single day.’”

Logging into LinkedIn

As more creators embrace an entrepreneurial mindset, a number of them are preparing to make LinkedIn (and the platform’s newly launched video feature) a larger part of their content strategies in the coming year. 

“I’m focusing on LinkedIn right now, honestly, because I would like to diversify my income and do less brand partnerships and more speaking engagements and Gen Z marketing consultations,”  travel and lifestyle creator Gabby Beckford told Ad Age at ZCon. “And LinkedIn is where the decision-makers are hanging out.”

Also read: LinkedIn becomes a hot spot for influencer marketing

Three Gen Z creators—Nadya Okamoto, founder of period care brand August; Tejas Hullur, who produces educational content about economics and psychology; and Piper Phillips, a brand marketer- turned-full-time creator—discussed their evolving strategies on the platform during a LinkedIn-sponsored panel at ZCon. 

All three pointed to LinkedIn videos as a key focus area for 2025, with Hullur calling them a “gold mine of opportunity” for creators due to the high demand for video content on the platform and the “high-quality viewership” those videos can receive from brand and influencer marketing executives who regularly peruse LinkedIn.

Being an early adopter of new features or content formats on social platforms is generally a good practice for creators, Okamoto added, as platforms typically amplify those early posts to encourage more users to leverage those features or formats. Okamoto predicts the amount of video content on LinkedIn to surge over the next year.

Indeed, a growing number of brands have begun incorporating LinkedIn into their influencer marketing strategies this year—and more creators extending their content to the platform will likely accelerate that trend in 2025.

Brands sponsor social media series

Several creators across both events also predicted that serialized social content will play a larger role in influencer content and brand partnerships in 2025. At ZCon, Deja Foxx, a political activist and influencer, told Ad Age she anticipates more brands will look to sponsor “man on the street”-style social content, similar to TikTok series such as “What’s Poppin? With Davis” or “Street Hearts.” Foxx has collaborated with brands and nonprofits on videos in that style, including telehealth clinic Hey Jane and Amnesty International USA. 

Some brands may create episodic content for their social channels in partnership with creators through longer-term collaborations or strategies such as brand trips or content houses, she added.

Barrett, the creator who founded Rephuel, agrees that brands in the coming year will increasingly work with creators on multiple pieces of social content that tell an overarching story. “Brands understand now that you can’t just pay for one post,” she told Ad Age at the Creator Upfronts. “It’s not going to do the numbers anymore.” She urged brands to pitch a serialized campaign to potential creator partners, as “some creators don’t know that if they put [a series] out to their audience, everyone will probably want to listen to that story and follow along.”

Mylene Mae, a content creator who has built an online audience of nearly 440,000 in just over a year, said in her upfront presentation that her 23-part Instagram series documenting lessons she learned in 2023 was what helped her account take off at the end of last year. She plans to lean further into highly produced and “cinematic” social content series next year, she told Ad Age.