Zoe Sugg: Analysing Communication Through Her Social Media Journey
The UK-based blogger, Youtuber, author, brand owner and influencer, Zoe Sugg, has built herself a large fanbase on multiple different platforms where she posts content about her love for beauty and lifestyle.
One indicator of her success is the large fanbase that Zoe has built for herself. Her channel Zoella currently has over 10 million subscribers, with her secondary channel Zoe Sugg at close to 5 million subscribers. Her other top platforms which she uses include Twitter at 12 million followers and Instagram at just over 9 million followers, however, is slowly increasing by on average 500 followers every day. These numbers alone are insane and are obvious why she has won multiple awards for her content and is currently ranked 49th in Social Blades ‘Top 100 Youtubers’. Her communication strategies have undoubtedly played a crucial role in her success as an influencer and her growth in followers over the years.
Using VidIQ (VidIQ, 2023) can help display valuable insights into her YouTube channel’s performance, including metrics for subscribers, views, engagement and video performance, however, the depth and accuracy may be limited. A crucial element to look at is the number of views on each video. This can give us a good indicator of user engagement from her followers and can help determine the popularity of each video she posts. Her most recent video, ‘Baby Shopping, Chilled Dat With Mark & GRWM | ad’ is currently at 486.3k views at 17k likes meaning the engagement rate on this video is about 3.5%. As seen on her YouTube stats, her engagement rate is usually around 4.5% so this video is slightly lower than usual, however, this could be due to how recently the video was posted.
Her popularity and success on Youtube are most likely from her content, consistency but also her great engagement with her fans. Since her first (now deleted) ’60 Things In My Bedroom’ video, sharing random things she had lying around in her room (Syed, 2020: online), her videos have seen a significant evolution and a shift in content can be seen. She has gone from beauty and fashion content to more personal vlogs which cater to her audience directly. However, even since this shift, she still showcases her bubbly, true-to-self personality now as she did back in her first video and has remained humble, even with her rising popularity.
She holds strong communication with her fanbase by creating authentic and engaging content which resonates with such a wide audience. Her regular posts of Q&As give a chance for her followers to ask her questions directly which increases communication with her followers. One video which shows talks about personal, yet relatable content is her Zoella ‘Anxiety Q&A’ posted in 2014 which now has over 3.2 million views. In this video, Zoe talks about her personal struggles with anxiety and recommendations on how to cope with it. Sharing such a personal video really shows how she prioritizes open and honest communication and creates a safe space for her fans to open up and engage with her on a deeper level. Additionally, this Q&A format allows her fans to directly engage with her and understand her on a more personal level. In this video, she also encourages viewers to leave comments and engage with each other in their ‘community’ as Zoe calls it.
Another way in which Zoe Sugg communicates with her followers on social media is through her interactive engagement. Ever since she started Youtube, she has always made an effort to respond to comments on her videos and posts which allows followers to feel valued. Although she isn’t able to reply to all comments, she always encourages viewers to leave messages and questions. This two-way communication acknowledges her fans and makes sure that they know that their voices are heard by themselves. Zoe additionally, engages with her fan’s content such as liking comments, fan art, and post which further shows that strong sense of connection between herself and her followers online. As seen on VidIQ, her engagement rate is graded B, which is an overall score based on video view consistency, subscriber/views ratio, upload frequency, engagement rates, and channel growth (VidIQ, 2023).
