Talking superfans with Tyler Oakley, Grace Helbig and Ze Frank

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/mar/07/grace-helbig-tyler-oakley-ze-frank-sxsw

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The secret of YouTube success? A big part of it is simple likeability.

One reason millions of teenagers relate to YouTubers like Tyler Oakley and Grace Helbig – who between them have more than 5.7m subscribers on Google’s video service – is because they like them.

Both came across well on a panel session at the SXSW conference today, where they shared the stage with Ze Frank – who also made his name on YouTube, but now also works as executive vice president of video at BuzzFeed – and Bravo talk-show host Andy Cohen.

Billed as exploring “Super Fandom in the Digital Age”, the session alternated between exploring how Oakley, Helbig and Frank built their social media followings, and lighter questions about their favourites, drunk tweeting, and which of One Direction to marry, shag or kill (or as Oakley preferred to rephrase it: unfriend).

The trio bounced off one another well – another factor in YouTube popularity is the ability to collaborate – but there were serious tips for young YouTubers hoping to follow in their footsteps too.

“The one-on-one interaction is important,” said Oakley, when asked about his relationship with the fans who subscribe to his channel.

“It’s easy-ish for me because I spend all day online, so I’m constantly responding. And I also do a lot of livestreams, where I have nothing to talk about, just on the livestream for three hours hanging out. I want to hang out with them.”

Celebrities have waxed lyrical about how much they love their fans for decades, but for people like Helbig and Oakley, whose channels are based squarely on their personalities, their views come from daily, constant interaction.

“I care about the quality of the person that watches the content,” said Helbig. “The quality of the audience is astounding to me: they’re so sweet, they’re intelligent, they’re funny, they’re not mean-spirited. And that’s what I care about: keeping that audience going and growing.”

Frank, who settled happily into the role of wisecracking veteran on the panel, took a different view. “I want just the worst people. The most terrible, awful people…”

A question about how best to deal with digital stalkers saw the roles reversed, with Helbig cracking the joke (”Knives!”) and Frank providing a more serious answer: “Ignore it… if they email you 250 times and on the 251st time you say ‘stop’ they’re gonna think ‘so it took 250 emails to get you to respond!’.”

Frank also suggested that “lighter-weight peer-to-peer” apps may be the next big thing in social networking, citing the popularity (and recent by acquisition by Facebook) of messaging app WhatsApp.

“The story of technology seems to go up, and then retract into simplicity again. We’re going back into one of those retractions, where simpler technology seems to be more powerful,” he said.

Oakley said another messaging app, SnapChat, is one of the few social platforms that he restricts to his real friends, rather than his wider audience. “I think it has too many ways that it could go bad quick. I just imagine young people using it in a way that... I don’t wanna have that interaction!” he said.

Helbig was more blunt in her assessment of the ephemeral messaging app: “I actually learned about SnapChat at SXSW last year, used it twice and was like, ‘this sucks!’,” she said.

The trio discussed working with brands, with Helbig citing her recent partnership with St. Ives as the model example, because it was her voice rather than a commercial where she was expected to read the brand’s lines.

“I don’t even consider working with a brand unless they give me as much artistic freedom as I want,” said Oakley, while Frank suggested that YouTube and YouTubers are at the forefront of a new wave of branded content that’s genuinely interesting and appealing to viewers.

“Part of it is because of the fact that they’re reaching out to work with folks like this. I feel like we’ve been through 30 or 40 years where advertising content just kinda got away from itself. It got kinda weird,” he said.

“There’s an amazing opportunity that’s happening right now: it is content. It actually is content. And not only that: we consume brands daily. We talk about them. It’s not such a dissociative thing to love brands and branded content.”

More tips included Helbig encouraging emerging YouTubers to seek out collaborations, but not to shoot too high too soon. “You have to collaborate with the people on your level, and high tides raise all ships,” she said.

Frank advised YouTubers not to get too carried away with their subscriber count, noting that even the most successful channels only get around 40% of their views from subscribers.

“People overvalue the subscribers, and aren’t really thinking in some cases about the impact that their content has from social spread, reaching out into the ecosystems that don’t know about them,” he said – unsurprisingly, given BuzzFeed’s attempts over the last couple of years to refine social sharing into a science.

He also said that his most useful piece of advice for emerging YouTubers is to focus on one specific metric that they’d like to improve, whether it’s subscribers, overall views or social shares, and work hard on optimising that.

“Just have one thing where you’re trying to have a number go up,” he said. “Otherwise you’re just in this big quasi-confused space of making it partially for yourselves, partially for the audience.”

Helbig advised people to focus on finding their voice as quickly as possible. “With that it’s a lot easier to decide for yourself what you don’t want to do,” she said. “Sometimes peeling away the stuff you don’t want to do will help you decide what you do want to do.”

Oakley reiterated the finding-your-voice advice. “I would say be consistent and don’t give up, because I think a lot of people get discouraged early on,” he said. “Nobody has their first video be a hit. Well, very rarely. Plus, during that time when you’re making videos at the start, it’s practice: you’re figuring out your voice.”

And the knockabout stuff? Oakley riffed on whether drunk tweeting is the new drunk texting – “I definitely had a tweet this morning at 3am that I found this morning at 10am...” – and responded to a question about whether he’d ever take a holiday from social media by citing a recent dinner with three fellow YouTubers where none of them took a phone.

Was it good? “I don’t know. I can’t look back and recall it because it wasn’t on social media,” he quipped.

Meanwhile, Frank was asked by an audience member whether BuzzFeed will ever run out of quizzes. “I’m not sure that is possible,” he said, before adding that he’s keen to experiment with video versions of his employer’s famous feature.