Top 25 Resources You Need for Your Online Brand in 2025

Here Are the First 5

I’m at the tail-end of an 8 day business retreat. Yes, 8 days! I’ve rested, worked and batched a lot and I mean A LOT of content. I'll share more about the retreat in the next week or so.

It’s 2025 and it’s wild to me to say that out loud. I have a lot planned for this year and I thought it would be helpful to share the top 25 resources that I believe every online entrepreneur will need in 2025.

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Your Top 5 Resources in 2025

I’m sharing the top 5 resources with everyone in the Creators Getting Paid community. Think of these resources areas of focus as key components to building a solid foundation to a healthy and thriving business.

#1-Build Your List

Start building your list(s)!!! This is non-negotiable. I watched as creators freaked out during the holidays because of the potential TikTok ban. They were scrambling to figure out what to do next with audiences that they’ve likely been curating for years. A list wether it’s an email list/newsletter or a mix of both is the number one asset you should be focusing on in your business. One thing that’s important to note is that list building can happen in a number of different ways in 2025 and beyond:

• Growing a newsletter

  • Check out my “Lessons Learned from 2 Years on Substack”

• Building an email list

• Utilizing ManyChat

• SMS Text To Opt-In

• Building an app

Or, you could use a mix of these different approaches. No matter what, you must be moving people to a list that you own. That list ideally is also a way to protect yourself from algorithm changes, changes in media consumption by audiences, etc.

#2-Accountability Partner

Over the years I’ve had the good fortune to be a member of several Mastermind Groups (free). These spaces have been a wonderful way to stay focused, be heard and be in community with other creators. Being a content creator is a creative business, but if you’re a content creator looking to also monetize your work…you have to focus on the work too. Having accountability partners has helped keep me focused, energized and in the loop when there are new developments in the content creation space.

I have some accountability partners that I connect with quarterly, others every month or so and I also currently belong to a Mastermind that I was invited into. We communicated daily. I want to shout out a few of my favorite accountability partners who are also friends! Danielle Desir-Creator of Grants for Creators, Rahkim Sabree-Creator of Overcoming Financial Trauma, Miranda Marquit, Elle Martinez of Simplify and Enjoy, Tonya Stumphauzer, Michelle Summerfield and Lee Huffman of We Travel There.

By the way, this is an incomplete list. You can also start your own mastermind too.

#3-Media Kit

At the end of 2024, I interviewed a guest who I will be sharing with the Creators Getting Paid community soon. In that conversation my guest said something that I thought about for days.

“Their media kit was the number one tool that made them money.”

I have a media kit, but I didn’t have a one pager and I made a point of getting one done and revamping my current media kit.

Your media kit functions as a resume, a portfolio of your work and a starting point for any partnerships, collaborations or conversations with an organization or person trying to pay you.

If you do not have a media kit or one pager, please get it done ASAP. Immediately. But, it’s not enough to have a media kit.

You need to set up systems to bring in opportunities. That leads me to the next must have resource.

#4-A General Marketing Plan

There are so many people out there building brands online. How are we supposed to find you? And I’m going to challenge you and ask “How is your audience supposed to find you without social media?”

Set some time aside to think about how your ideal audience and community members find you and double-down on getting in front of them. Here are some general ideas below:

• Create a simple editorial calendar for your must have content. Think about the different times of year, holidays, etc. and what your content would address/answer/help with during those moments.

• Understand simple SEO-What is that? Search Engine Optimization. How are people finding your content.

  • Searchable titles in your YouTube/Website Posts/Podcast Content

  • Think about when people will begin searching for your content. I have a Colorado website and I’m heavily focused on SUMMER/FALL/WINTER search NOW. It is January and I’m writing posts for May right NOW.

  • Remember that there are different types of search engines

    • Browsers such as: Google, Bing, Firefox

    • AI-ChatGPT Search, Google AI (Gemini)

    • Social Media-Search using keywords

    • Pinterest-Great for topics such as travel, food and fashion

    • YouTube-That’s a whole search engine

    • Podcast Players-Spotify, Apple Podcasts, etc.

#5-A Social Media Lite Marketing Plan

In the list building segment of this newsletter I touched on the fact that TikTok might shut down in the US this January. Whether it does or doesn’t is irrelevant. Content Creators MUST begin thinking about how to grow their brands when social media does the following:

• Changes its algorithm

• Has technical problems-In fact, ChatGPT was down the week that I’m working on this post.

• Has bias built into its algorithm. If you know, you know.

Luckily, there’s more than one way to market your work

• Design the work that you want to be hired for

• Attend and speak at conferences

• Collaborate with other content creators

• Get in front of other creator’s audiences

• Focus on local media-I am actually a paying member of the Colorado Association for Black Journalist. It’s the local chapter of the National Association of Black Journalists.

• Design work for clients that builds your brand via word of mouth. I’m currently producing a podcast for a client and you better believe I’m included “Produced by Michelle Jackson” in the credits.

Don’t be afraid to share your work.

What are The Next 20 Resources ?

Here’s the link to that list.

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