Monday, 13 August 2012

How to be a YouTube Celebrity (Ryan Higa)




Ryan Higa aka Nigahiga is one of the most popular and subscribed YouTube user of all time (Over 5 million subscribers). Most of his videos are wacky comedy skits that he makes at home out of what he calls ‘pure boredom’. Brands like Carl’s Junior are now coming to this YouTube star to seek his advice and pay him to shoot videos featuring him. I wanted to discuss few concepts from Ryan Higa that are crucial to grow viewership on YouTube and just how it can be a great way to generate profit for any online company. 


1. Get connected with viewers
Viewers feel a connection to strong personalities. They feel like YouTube stars are online friends who they can respond to and enter a conversation with. People are more likely to return to a particular user’s channel if that user is present with their videos and has strong personality. That's how Ryan Higa could get so many viewers and subscribers because he is engaging, funny and leaves you wanting more. Here is one example of his video.


                                     

2. Quality over quantity
There are some YouTube users that trying to create 20 videos in a week and hoping that it will guarantee success. That is a misconception because it is difficult to make one video that is unique, well-thought out and entertaining yet some people want to make 20. It would be better to figure out a way to make the video unique and entertaining. No one wants to waste their time for a boring and poorly edited video. 

3. Create a brand for channel link
You need to get connected with all your viewers and subscribers. If we use NigaHiga as an example, simply type NigaHiga into Google search engine and everything shown on the first page will relate to his YouTube channels, website, Facebook page and more. It is really important to create a brand name that unique than others. 

4. Be consistent!
The next important thing that needs to keep in mind is consistency in uploading the videos to keep viewers and subscribers entertained and build up the channel with great content. It is totally up to the users to decide the time gap where it could be daily, weekly, or even monthly. Make sure that viewers are fully aware of your uploading schedule so they can be updated with your latest video.

Do you guys think that these concepts are applicable to any social media marketing? Are these concepts enough to build a good social media marketing? Please comment and share what you guys think ;)


                                                           

                                                              TEEHEE


9 comments:

  1. Some excellent advice - well done.

    A YouTube celebrity that I've been following for a few years now is Natalie Tran (communitychannel). She needs to learn from your advice, in particular your fourth point - be consistent. Lately she has neglected her audience, and it's been a long time between video updates. This creates a lot of discussion amongst her fans, who are hungry for more. But I wonder, is this just a strategy to build more demand?

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    1. Thanks Wags! the main purpose of being consistent is like what u said, to build more demand and more people would subscribe the channels and become popular. Being popular is really important because they can spread their message easily but again they need to be consistent =)

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  2. Good tips Irwan. I think you're right that people are brands if they want to promote themselves in this space. This means you can apply many of the rules we use for 'product' brands onto 'people' brands.

    It's really interesting how popular some of these YouTube stars are compared to traditional tv stars. 5 million subscribers for Ryan Higa vs 387k viewers of 'Being Lara Bingle'. I know what I'd rather watch!

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  3. I totally agree with your concepts. Without those concepts i don't think anyone would want to stay as subscriber long enough.

    However, the number of Youtube celebrity is rising as anyone can post videos. These has made a virtual competition for viewers rate is happening. some of the ways to fight this are by doing promotion and offering physical product. Many online celebrities are giving free give away and other benefits such as discount to specific companies or open their own clothing line/accessories.

    So, i think this can be considered as the next step that Youtube celebrities are advised to do. Even in Youtube you have to stay competitive, right?

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  4. I think many famous youtube celebrity didn't aware of what you have written. Some of them just do it for fun and they just finally become the superstar online then offline. But if we look back at what their footprint are, they are in the same track as what you said.
    Here is one Youtube celebrity in Thailand. He is very famous and he is only in grade 5.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjahvmPrbQo

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  5. @Amourinee suggests that celebrities can increase their appeal by "partnering" with brands and offering free products. Whilst this may seem like a way to increase value for their audience, this approach needs to be taken with care. If it appears that they have "sold out" to a brand, and the videos begin to become promotions (advertising via product placement), then the audience may potentially be annoyed. Is free/discounted product the real reason people become fans? I think not.

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  6. Hi John.

    What a nice topic you have raised. I do agree with all those concepts that you have stated above but, could I make one suggestion to add up your concepts? How about being innovative? I suppose being innovative is quite important to retain or enhance more viewers.

    Cheers,
    Ivan

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  7. Well, i am not a big fan of ryan but i did watch few of his videos which some of them is literally boring and lame.

    Like product, even a person / celebrity as what we called here has their own life cycle (let's not eliminate this).

    You'll need to post a controversial video (probably), a video that hit the nail of each viewers, what they want or longing for. This is the basic thing (i guess) for each either product or person whom wants to be known.

    What i want to emphasize here is as long as the video meets the desires of the viewer, it will definetely become well known either through social media or word of mouth the most traditional way of marketing.

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  8. Hey John, great blog entry first of all. However, I disagree with one of your point. While consistency is a good thing, it is not the important point to be a successful youtube artist compared to being creative or emphasizing quality. Some youtube artists would post videos weekly with boring contents, but since he/she has many subscribers, the video would still get a lot of views. Well, if the video is funny or interesting, viewers would still watch and love it although the the artist has been gone for quite a long time. This applies not only for artists like nigahiga or kevjumba but also for singers or dancers who posts videos in youtube. If you only sing a song and post it weekly,viewers would think the video is "okay", that's why some singers or dancers add sound effects or do collaboration, etc.

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