With many followers across platforms like Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok, popular YouTube creators like Emma Chamberlain (8.5 million subscribers) aren’t just creating content for YouTube anymore.
“When you begin it’s you, a camera, and your computer,” said Reza Izad, cofounder and global CEO of Studio71. But as you expand, you’ve got to evolve. “The audience on TikTok, YouTube, Snap, Instagram, are all radically different. If you’ll , it’s ideal to get on all of them,” he said.
Digital networks like Studio71 work with influencer clients in expanding their brands beyond YouTube, through content production and distribution, and in building more stable revenue opportunities through advertising.
Recently, Studio71 worked with Chamberlain to launch a Snapchat series, “Adulting With Emma Chamberlain,” which may be a a part of Snapchat’s new “Creator Show.” But Snapchat is simply one platform Studio71 works with.
In an interview with Business Insider, Izad broke down the various ways Studio71 works with creators to expand their brands, and therefore the trends he’s seen within the industry at large.
Off YouTube, Studio71 produces and distributes content for clients on platforms like Snapchat, Facebook, Roku, and Pluto, Izad said. this is often differently for a creator to earn revenue rather than counting on YouTube.
Generally, being active on all (or most) major platforms is about relevance also as revenue, he said. Once a creator puts within the work to pass difficult milestones (like gaining their first 1,000 subscribers on YouTube) then they ought to specialise in content for growth on other platforms like TikTok, which are not as crowded as YouTube or Instagram.
That sentiment has been echoed by other industry insiders.
In a previous interview with Business Insider, 16-year-old Parker Pannell detailed how he grew up with the dream of becoming an entertainer in Hollywood, but instead got his big break on TikTok. After attending acting classes, auditions, and dealing to grow his YouTube channel, nothing was helping Pannell get noticed within the industry – until he joined TikTok, where he now has 779,000 followers, he said.
Finding new platforms that are not as saturated are often beneficial for growth, but your content also has got to be compelling, have a transparent storyline, and suit your personality, Izad said.
What’s shifted within the last 18 months, is you’re seeing an entire bunch of short-form platforms emerging,” he said. “Some of them are there for a short time , but are opening up opportunities for this native talent, in order that you’ll monetize.”
irect-to-consumer products are a hot trend within the influencer industry. When a YouTube influencer creates a product with their brand in mind, their content then becomes a tool to drive product sales, instead of to draw in advertising dollars.
“The business is greater than anything that’s ad supported,” Izad said.
Influencers like Jeffree Star, with 16.5 million subscribers on YouTube, earn a bulk of their revenue by selling products associated with their digital brands. Star’s beauty and makeup related content racks up many views online, and after developing a reputation for himself within the industry, he built a DTC cosmetics and merchandise company.
Clearly Jeffree Star is one among the leaders in doing things like that,” Izad said. “Building a cosmetics brand, an ancillary merch company that’s doing alright , and works with tons of other talent. He’s really diversified himself during a lot of the way , and therefore the ad revenue that he gets is perhaps immaterial to the broader business he’s been ready to build off of his social following.”
Studio71 works with around 800 YouTube channels, and since of its volume of clients, advertising and content distribution is at the core of the business, instead of development , Izad said.
But DTC brands are important to the advertising business also . Izad said that because influencer campaigns are outcome and data driven, DTC brands are ready to see a lift in sales from an influencer campaign better than massive corporations can.