Matt Steffanina breaks down why creators require an online community
From the basic top 8 from Myspace to Facebook Groups that you can only join privately, we've all been a part of a community on social media. Through the years the platforms for social media let creators create flourishing communities in both private and in public comments.
But, as it gets more difficult to solve a number of issues, social media is slacking as the community builder and administrator it was once. As a result, the business and media owners everywhere are starting to notice its shortcomings for what they are.
The 2021 Facebook outage could be the reason behind 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. There have been reports of losses up to $5,000 dollars.
To better understand the significance of hosting a community off of social media, we spoke with the master of online communities himself--Matt Steffanina, world-renowned choreographer and owner and founder of the DNCR Academy.
Since starting his YouTube channel in 2009, Matt has grown a modest following of over 30 million people across different platforms. The popular dancer is known to be a part of stars like Taylor Swift, Jason Derulo, and Meghan Trainer. Not to mention his appearances on shows like So You Think You Can Dance.
Through his YouTube dancing tutorials as well as in-person classes, Matt formed a tight-knit community of passionate dancers, however, when the pandemic hit and #IRL classes were halted, YouTube simply wasn't cutting it as a way for him to engage with his fans or earn an income. That's when he turned to online courses as well as an online community to bring lasting value to his followers and to create an income stream that was sustainable.
Dive into our Q&A with Matt to learn how he's grown his business to be wildly successful and also an online community. He also explains why that it is the most important factor to creators controlling their future.
Note: The responses have been lightly edited for clarity.
Send us an introduction to your identity and the things you're up to.
My name is Matt Steffanina, and I'm an artist and choreographer in L.A. However, the past 12 years of my life are largely dance and choreography. I started in the industry working with artists, but at every turn I started my own YouTube channel, posting video clips about my classes, my personal life, and my tours. It was basically, watching with a vlog format. One of the most difficult challenges of being a professional dancer, particularly ten years ago, was that you depended on your agent or performers to give you opportunities. It was impossible to make yourself a better candidate as a dancer. So in my early years, I found myself waiting at the end of the line for the chance to audition. At first, YouTube was a way for me to be productive, and continue working on my skills, as well as to promote my dance career. I had no idea that it could do the things it did. It was a time when I grew about a million users, which seemed like a lot. In the end, I wound having opportunities to work with Ja' Rule and Taylor Swift, and Meghan Trainer.
Another thing I was really passionate about was the teaching aspect. At the start, I created a second [YouTube] channel known as dance Tutorials Live, where people could learn how to dance, and I have built up a community of dancers from all over the world. What has been the most enjoyable part of everything that I've done is the hearing of the stories of my students' successes. These stories are truly amazing since, back then I was making tutorials in my local studio on my tripod. I didn't realize that I would make an impact at all and it's been an incredibly challenging journey to say the least.
Have you ever thought about the YouTube channel becoming what it is? Did you plan to take your channel to where it is today?
No, there's no way anybody could have imagined it to do what it did. When I first posted my videos, it was back in Virginia before my move to L.A., and I wanted to find methods to be inspired and make connections with fellow dancers. When I first started, which was 14 years ago, I was one of the first dancers who joined the platform. I could never have imagined the changes that would occur. Now the channel has like 13 million subscribers and three billion views. When my first video became viral, I was able to remember people commenting from other countries, and the concept of someone viewing my video from a different country was unfathomable. I was apprehensive, but now we're here with me performing tours all over the world, because of social media and being able to get my music out on the internet.
Take us on a little piece of your timeline. Let us know what went up the first time? Was it YouTube? Did you make it your profession?
People always think that getting success within the mainstream and Hollywood industry will lead to success online, but it actually converts less than you would think. I was doing The Tonight Show, So You Think You're a Dancer, The Amazing Race, and more--I received a variety of opportunities on television that were traditional, however, they didn't translate to long-term results. These were also short-term possibilities, but nevertheless, amazing.
What gave me the endurance that I am still doing it over a decade later is the development of a community.
The group really grew out of my dancing tutorials. It was not my intention, but it turned out to be the best thing I did; being a great teacher and great instructor in this space, as well as pushing the group forward is much more challenging than being a good dancer. It was my efforts in the form of tutorials and teaching others on the internet that helped me be a part of a community that's still going strong to this day.
Do you want to share with us the journey of launching DNCR Academy? What was the moment it became an actual company for you?
I launched DNCR Academy right at the beginning of the pandemic. This was something I'd wanted to do for several years due to a number of reasons. It's a subscription platform, which allows dancers to learn lessons. This is a different experience from my YouTube content. On YouTube I post [contentsomewhat inconsistently however, the quality isn't always the highest. It's not possible to bring in lots of guests or instructors. But a lot of dancers we're loving the YouTube tutorials and want to get to get more instruction. This is why I started DNCR Academy for the people who want to be a bit more committed. With it, I'm able to recruit great instructors, such as Bollywood shuffling, shuffling and dance fitness teachers; styles which I would never do on my own YouTube channel. But on the platform of [DNCR Academy] is completely normal and truly amazing to present a wide range of diverse styles to our students. When COVID first started I realized that I could not travel and had enough time to dedicate the project, and so we set aside a couple of months and developed the platform . It was the month of June in 2020. It's been three amazing three years. I was thinking we were a strong community on YouTube However, it took the best of the large community and placed them in an environment of bubbles. We have everyone supporting one another. Not only do they have this support group that's learning with each other across the globe, but they also have an emotional network of friends that are pushing one another. It's a really positive thing in my life, and, I believe, for all dancers at DNCR too.
Could you provide more information about the nature of the community as well as what drove you to start DNCR? The community existed prior to the DNCR Academy, or did it come in conjunction with the Academy? Did you foresee that being an important factor in the success of the academy?
I really felt it over COVID. I believe a lot individuals did. It was difficult to get excited. Difficult to get into an exercise routine since you're inside the home and don't have access to anything. Particularly, dance is an activity that is a part of the community. People do dance on their on their own, however the main thing I like about dance is working in a studio with my friends and the excitement that comes with it. When all that is taken off, it's hard to get motivated, even for myself as a choreographer. It was hard for me to find motivation to keep going, therefore I thought, If I'm experiencing the same thing, it's likely that someone else who is struggling in the same way and may gain from a community that is tight-knit. The community already existed through the YouTube tutorials, but as I said, there was not a consistent approach, and in order to achieve anything it is my opinion that the number most important thing in dancing] is consistency in your training. The community let us have each month challenges. This I think is the best feature we had in the course of DNCR. It's not just uploading tutorials and videos, it's about focusing on a single thing we'll all tackle with each other. Everyone is working to perfect this technique and plan to upload our videos within an end date. We found the enthusiasm; it was the joy when you see all your friends posting their videos as well as the interesting or constructive comments received from them. It's about taking part in the community and truly helping each other grow and grow. I believe this is the most difficult to do just on YouTube because it seemed more like everybody was doing these the tutorials independently. The community allowed everyone to be part of this together. It was a game changer in my own way as a choreographer, and also for students to be capable of learning consistently.
Do you have any customer experiences from your community that stand out to you? What individual in the community have you found memorable?
One of my favorite customers is a guy known as Ray. He's located in Washington D. C. He's a lawyer, and began to dance in his 40's. He would come home every morning from work wearing his suit of lawyer and move the kitchen table away to allow him to practice his hip-hop dance routines, and then he'd end up dancing with his children. They made a ton of videos, especially on COVID, learning the routines together. The result was him appearing to a Disney Channel show and won it. The guy here aged 40 had never taken a dance class in his entire life and found his love in this community, and became an inspiration for our members. This kind of success is really important to spotlight because I was a complete stranger to the world. It wasn't until the age of 18, however, the majority of people do not see it the way they do today. Most people are seeing me performing with celebrities and in music videos. It's more difficult to understand my struggles I went through early on. Whereas, if you watch those who are currently going through it [the journeyalong with you, and witness them come out to the other side of an amazing experience-- it's incredibly powerful. And, it really inspired everybody in our group. There are plenty of stories like that, but Ray was a really special one.
Are you using your social media and community audience to test out new concepts or products you've got for your company?
One thing that we're constantly working on is how we help more people. How do we reach the most people? The dancers who would like to master the skill is pretty small. We want to provide the kind of classes on our platform that will take someone to an elite level. We also aim in making it easier for those who wants to just learn some routines here and there, someone who wants to join a club and feel confident. We're also doing a lot of stuff with dance fitness. I was a personal trainer and I am convinced that dancing is one of the best means to keep in shape physically and mentally. The wedding class because I receive many requests to create wedding choreographies but , alas, lack the time to do it to do it, which is why the course takes the bride through all you have to be aware of. We're working to open it up more to requests I've had over the years, where I've always stated that if I had the time and energy to accomplish this that it would be wonderful and help a lot of people. We're now trying to find time for those courses.
Could you provide us with the most basic overview of what your strategy for social media looks at present? What has changed since the first time you started using YouTube?
The platform has seen a significant change over the past ten years, just like the various generations of YouTube and social media as a whole. In the beginning, there was no competition, so I was simply uploading my classes. It was that simple. Then I started to see the power of video and the connection with creators. I decided to start vlogging behind the scenes, and that was really successful between 2016 to the year 2019. After that, we began with more challenging tasks, such as mastering a routine within 10 minutes. They did very well.
As COVID was announced in 2020, we began see success with TikTok and short-form content. Things changed a lot then. It is my opinion that a lot of dancers' viewers was shifted to shorter form, TikTok in particular, because dancing was so popular there. I was still posting on YouTube however, a large portion of my content was focused on short-form videos like fifteen-second dances rather than forty-five seconds or minute-long dances.
The problem with social media that most people don't understand unless you've been around for several generations of it, is that there's going to never to be an answer that works for all time--because regardless of the field you're in, if you discover something that works and is successful, then everyone other people will follow it. And this is what happened to dances. Dance class videos started exploding and the social media became saturated with dance teachers sharing their dance classes. Then, I needed to figure out what's my next move. This also got copied. It's a constant game similar to any other profession that requires you to constantly reinvent yourself as well as develop new and innovative concepts. And, the only method to discover those ideas that work is to play darts on the board. A majority of the ideas won't work, but that's how you discover the idea is loved by the majority of people. It's hard to predict and therefore we take the approach of, If I've got some idea I run with it. Let's try this, and if the idea fails then great. Then we'll look at something else. It's probably the most effective advice I can give anyone who is trying to create content. Be patient and don't assume because something didn't work the first time it will not be successful the next or even third time around. Sometimes, you need to modify an idea, mold it, and then suddenly it happens.
This leads to the one aspect we did not cover, social media algorithms. How have algorithmic factors played into your strategy? Did they affect the ability of your strategy to reach an target audience?
Anyone that's used Instagram will know that it's one of the best known. I recall a moment in 2019 where I could create a tour flyer which could get 100,000, more than 200,000 views, and thousands of responses since it was shown to my entire 3.9 million followers. If I had posted the flyer tomorrow, it would probably get 10% of that [engagementas the algorithm has shifted. Therefore, you must be creative.
Instead of a brochure now the video is a dance in which the dance takes place cities are popping on the screen and viewers can click to the captions to find out more. You just have come up with different strategies to work within the algorithm, because at the end of the day, there is no way to influence it. So we watch various things [metricsrelated to time retention. YouTube has shifted from being more of a search engine to an ad-hoc click-through platform. Do your title and thumbnail powerful enough to draw people's attention? You could put out one of the best videos in the world and if the title and thumbnail aren't appealing to people, the video is going to flop. If people watch the first ten seconds of an video but then click away from it, YouTube is going to say 'Hey, everybody loves your thumbnail, however the video is not performing effectively, therefore we won't present it to your subscribers. This is just the way the algorithms work nowadays. In the end, it's clear that strategies have become more about notions. I feel pretty confident that we'll be able to make interesting video content, even if they are getting used to a routine There are millions of different ways to package the title and thumbnail plus the duration of the video as well as its style. All of this can affect the success of your content. I was averaging 30 million viewers on a video for about two years, which is absurd. For those of you that know about monetization due to the copyright issue with music, I wasn't capable of monetizing all those videos, but as far as increasing my audience I was able to do it, the results were insane. Things have certainly changed since then in particular with TikTok as well as Instagram dominating so much of the market portion.
Since you bring up monetization, did that at all affect your plans to start DNCR Academy, or was it just strictly to move offline from the internet?
When people's attention was diverted from YouTube to split into TikTok and Instagram data all over YouTube decreased, which was my main method paid for the videos, and that's all through and monetization...
In COVID, users wanted an increase in content However, there wasn't any monetization occurring on the channel--it just wasn't feasible to scale it, and so that was one of the aspects that made DNCR. Now, we have members who are paying a monthly membership fee so we are able to collect these cash and put it back to produce new content and courses. Basically, into all of my goals to achieve that YouTube was not able to provide enough of a stream of income to be able to achieve. This was an effective way financially to be able to expand the content of my tutorials as well as the platform and to give students what they wanted for.
How do you deal burning out that is a part of all of social media's producing content?
Although I'm not sure if I'm really old, but on social platforms, I've existed since the dawn of time. It's amazing how many generations have gone to an end, and the reason I think people get exhausted is because of several things. It seems like they had their expectations and schedule a little too high and heavy early on. As an example I can recall a period from 2016 until 2017 when all of my friends decided to do every day vlogs. And for anyone who has tried daily vlogging, it's torture. The workload of editing, filming, and concepting daily is almost impossible. My channel has always been to a minimum of two uploads per week. A level that I was able to maintain. I was sure I traveled. I made sure that I took the time off. If there wasn't an amazing tune that was released one week or I didn't feel inspired to dance, I cancelled my class. I was certain that it [content creation] was something I was able to do consistently, and that's allowed me to maintain longevity.
One thing I've implemented to avoid burnout is setting realistic expectations for myself. I think that at the beginning, when you're getting started, it's best to stick to just one at a time or on two different platforms. Keep it simple. On YouTube, upload twice a week, and then you can edit that content the content to make it shorter to put the content on Instagram and TikTok. Make it easy to manage. It's better to work slowly however, if you still feel the spark of enthusiasm and the desire to keep making content 5-10 years down the road, after which you can really push yourself for a year, then you'll burn out and eventually, you'll fall off. It's about being consistent. It's a game that will last for a long time, even though it feels as if things are moving so fast.
Do you have additional suggestions for creators who want to make use of social media to increase visitors to their site or products, or maybe setting up their own communities?
The most important thing is to figure out if you were in your viewers, or your client's position, what could inspire you to leave a platform and join the subscription model or course. I think a lot of instances we think "I'll just do this or the other' and think about it through our own perspective. Therefore, I conduct a number of polls--I ask my readers very often what course do you want to see the next time around or what you would be the most excited about. There are times when I'm thinking that they'd love to choreograph this awesome dance that is difficult and complicated, and they're like "Look, my bro, all I want is some moves that I could show off at a gathering. It's like 'Okay, cool this week, we'll master moves that we can perform out at parties. It's great to just get in the shoes of others.
The other thing too is providing worth. If you are able to provide value with no expectation of anything in return, without asking for anything in return to build relationship, trust and feel part of a community, even if you decide to offer something that's a paid offer or a course it already has that trust. It's already been a great value and have made someone's lives so much better through your offerings which they're happy to be an integral part of the process. It's true that sometimes we make the mistake 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 can be present with your followers all day long regardless of whether you're giving videos on dance or simply sharing your daily life to them and through it building rapport as well as establishing a community. after that, you'll be like, "Oh I forgot to mention that you've enjoyed your work then here's the next step where we go a step further.' That's a really easy transition for people to make instead of meeting them at the start and trying to put them into a group right in the middle of nowhere.
Many creators in the field think that the only method to earn cash is to make affiliate-style deals on social media, which you've obviously proven wrong. What advice would you give the newcomers in terms of increasing their earnings?
Brands and affiliate marketing are a part of the puzzle. Monetization is another piece to the piece. But ideally, you want to have an element from social media platforms that are also providing an incomesince, at the end of the day, you never know what algorithm or rules will change. And that's something that I've learned through the years, as there were times when I was making most of my earnings through YouTube as well as getting the bulk of my earnings via live events and tour as well as times where I earned the majority of my earnings from TikTok and Instagram, and now, it's . Through different times in my career, that factor changed numerous times. even if I put all my eggs in one basket and I was just in the waiting room for brand deals or YouTube to change their algorithms to allow me to make more money then I'd have ended up stuck. was stuck.
Build a community and start to move your fans from social networks towards a subscription-based service such as, which you can control the content as well as the your community. It's no longer necessary to rely on an algorithm that serves the community with your content. The content is available in DNCR and they can access it at any time they'd like. This gives power back to the original creators. Things are rapidly changing and it's more difficult than ever to rely on brand deals and monetization in the absence of knowing where the social media platforms are going next.
Could you explain to us what role HTML0 has been in helping you take control and ownership of your own destiny as an artist?
It [] allowed us a place to put videos where the rules remain the same. This is my opinion as the top thing. In the same way I said earlier it was the time when I was getting 30 million viewers per video on YouTube. Now, with the exception of maybe MrBeast as well as a few other instances, it's virtually impossible with just 13 million subscribers. Only a small percentage of them are getting my contents. It is really important tobuild an online community, get them to somewhere you can access them and they can access you consistently. On a basic level such as the email lists and text-based list are excellent however, making them part of a larger community that is not on social media is the most powerful way to stay in touch and to also earn an income stream that is passive as an artist, particularly if you're doing something like subscriptions. It's an excellent method to ensure that you've got your contacts together in one location that you can talk to themand for them to connect with you, but also for the consistent income stream.
What's one tip you'd offer to entrepreneurs who is just starting out in the space?
I would say to do a lot of research on your subject. Before you ever upload a single piece of content on TikTok take a look at a month's worth of content on Tiktok. You could plod along and begin creating content, however, I've seen many hours wasted since people don't do their research prior to. If you love fitness and would like to start an online fitness company, go find the top ten individuals who are in the fitness industry via social media. You can watch 10 hours of their content, learn how it functions and create your own content strategy by analyzing their content.
Now, there's greater information than you've had, especially via YouTube and TikTok The answers can be found right now. There's no need to reinvent the wheel completely and perform an exercise routine that nobody has done before, surely? However, you must find a way to do it that's unique, in your own style, and with your unique voice. And, you can do it by looking up people whom you like, pulling what they've done well as well as adding some of your own stuff as well as forming a content strategy around that. It's important to realize that you have to accept the fact what you're not aware of. It's exactly what I'm doing currently. At least once a year I have a couple of days where I act like I'm a complete novice and then I sit back and watch. What are the kids on TikTok who are 14 and blowing up doing differently than us OGs of the industry aren't understanding? It's easy to think that a dance is silly or whatever it is, however there's a purpose why people are identifying with it. I need to understand why that is so I can improve myself not just creatively, but also for my business. Putting a lot of time in the study is essential when you're developing your strategy for content, and when you've finally got your strategy, you just have to go hard.
Make your own destiny digital products
The creator economy is poised to experience a massive growth of online communities by 2023. Social networks are also aware and are responding with developing the community feature of their own.
As Matt pointed out, in order for creators to connect with their target audience in a meaningful manner and earn an income that is passive, they must to move their audience off of social media.
"Brands as well as affiliate marketing comprise only one part of the puzzle. The other piece is monetization. However, it is best to make use of the social media platforms that is also providing an income, since, at the end of the day, you never have any idea when the algorithms or rules may change. This is something I've learned over the years, as there were times when I was making most of my money through YouTube or TikTok however, now it's ."
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