What YouTube Celebrities Can Teach You About Marketing Your Startup
At the time of writing, Felix Kjellberg – alias PewDiePie – is the most popular YouTube celebrity in the world. The 27-year-old content creator has tens of of millions of fans, and though he remains modest (and rather quiet) about his income, it’s likely somewhere in the millions.
And somehow, he got this far simply by playing video games. Amazing, right? Not exactly.
If you pay attention to his channel, he does a whole lot more than game. Kjellberg is a performer. A charismatic master of marketing. His onscreen persona blunders through games with a goofy, frantic charm, and his candor helps him connect with his audience in a very real way.
You can – and should – learn a lot from people like Kjellberg. Even if he works in a different industry, he is like you. An entrepreneur – a man who blazed a new trail into a previously-unexplored industry.
So…what lessons can you take from his videos, exactly?
- Personality is important. Kjellberg’s personality is larger than life – just like most YouTube celebrities. And that may be the most important lesson of all. If the brand image you convey for your startup online is bland and boring, people are going to ignore it. You need to have personality – you need to have pizzazz.
- Offer value. Kjellberg is an entertainer – but not all top YouTubers are like him. There are informational channels. Educational ones. How-tos. Guides. News outlets. Each and every one of them offers something to keep their visitors coming back – some form of value that keeps people interested.
- Always stay on-brand. Recently, Kjellberg incited a great deal of rage when he made a questionable racist joke in one of his videos. Though Wired Magazine did note that off-color jokes were a staple of his channel almost from the beginning, this was something that was evidently news to his fans – and they reacted with ire. While it hasn’t really destroyed him (he’s in ‘too big to fail’ territory), it’s definitely damaged his reputation – just as going off-brand and failing to admit your mistakes could damage yours.
- Be professional, polished, and consistent. Kjellberg may often portray himself as a blundering idiot on-screen, but in reality, he’s anything but. Every single one of his uploads is carefully and professionally edited, and he has a rigorous update schedule that he sticks to like clockwork. That consistency and polish is something you need to imitate in all your marketing experts – especially those done via social networks.
YouTube is the largest content creation network on the web. It’s no surprise, then, that the people who dominate it can teach you a thing or two about marketing. Go and watch a few videos yourself if you still don’t believe me. You might learn something.