With the holiday season fast approaching, which will see more people turning to their devices for entertainment, Meta’s looking to help creators capitalize on the opportunity, by providing new incentives within its creator offerings, including an expansion of digital gifts, new ways to promote your account, a holiday bonus program, and more.

First off, on in-stream gifts, Meta’s making digital gifts on IG available in a heap more regions, providing more opportunities for creators to generate income from in-stream stickers.

As per Meta:

“We recently expanded access to gifts to creators in Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Chile, Colombia, Croatia, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malaysia, the Netherlands, Peru, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand and Turkey.”

In addition to this, Meta’s also rolling out some new, seasonal-themed virtual gifts on Facebook from now until the end of the year.

Gifts can be a good way to drive additional revenue for creators, with a percentage of every gift allocated going back to the creator. So it’s essentially virtual donations, but instead of tips, it’s in the form of stickers.

Creators need to have over 5,000 followers to be eligible for gifts, and also be operating a professional account.

You can find out more about digital gifts here.

Meta’s also implementing a new, invite-only “Holiday Bonus” program for creative talent, that will reward top stars based on the number of Reels plays and photo views they receive during the bonus period.

That’ll give these users an extra push to keep posting, which will help Meta maximize its content flow in the period.

On another front, Meta’s also looking to make it easier for creators to grow their following, with a new “Subscribe” button that will appear when a creators’ followers see their content in Feed.

Meta’s also adding more ways to drive creator subscriptions on Facebook, including giving creators the ability to offer free 30-day subscription trials to their fans.

Finally, Meta’s also adding some new guidance for creators to help them optimize their content for potential ad partnerships.

As you can see in this example, Instagram will now show eligibility pointers when a creator selects “Allow brand partner to boost” when creating a story.

That’ll help creators ensure that they’re maximizing their advertising potential, by avoiding potential issues that could restrict monetization.

Creators remain a key focus for Meta, because Meta knows that it needs creative talent, now and in future, to keep users coming back, especially given the emphasis on Reels and how it’s now driving traffic on both Facebook and IG.

I mean, clips from old TV shows are also doing pretty good, but creators are the ones that maximize retention, while they’ll also play a critical role in guiding the next generation of users into the metaverse as it continues to evolve.

As such, this is a critical push from the company, in strengthening its ties with top creative voices.