Liza Koshy: the Queen of Social Media
Influence, according to my social media teacher, Hamza Khan, “describes an individual’s ability to affect other people’s thinking in a social online community.” Social media influencers hold the power to influence their fans to not only buy their merchandise and sponsored products, but also influence their thoughts and perceptions. One “little brown girl” from Houston, Texas (yea that’s right…same city as Beyoncé) has done just this through her effective social media game. YouTuber, actress, and comedian Liza Koshy (real name Elizabeth Shaila Koshy) has been killing it ever since she appeared on Vine, gaining over 5 million fans on that platform alone through her hilarious 6 second videos.
After capturing immense attention as a result of her wacky personality and sense of humor, she decided to launch a YouTube channel alongside her Vine account. So, on July 15, 2015, Koshy posted her first ever video (longer than 6 seconds) titled “SUP, I’M LIZA THE LITTLE BROWN GIRL.”
After receiving massive popularity and positive feedback from her videos, Liza decided to make the full transition onto YouTube, and dedicated her time and effort building up her overall personal brand. Subsequently, Vine officially shut down on January 17, 2017 (#RIPVINE) and many viners followed in Liza’s footsteps by making the switch over to YouTube. During this year, Koshy quickly climbed up the ranks and became the fastest YouTuber to reach 10 million subscribers. Her secret: I guess you’ll just have to find out at the end of this article.
Let’s analyze her content to see what makes her so appealing:
To start off, her Instagram (@lizakoshy) includes a visually pleasing feed with high quality, good lighting, professional photos that show off both her beauty and sense of humour. Along with pictures of herself, Liza likes to post photos of nature, buildings, her merchandise, and of course, her boyfriend, David Dobrik, who is also a famous Youtuber. Her black-and-white themed account has more than 15.5M followers and 1,701 posts, which each have around 1.5M likes.
Liza strives to stay active by posting photos that keep her fans updated on her life, as well as promoting of her merchandise and aesthetically pleasing views. Her clever captions tend to work perfectly with every picture while still maintaining her quirky personality.
Here’s are a few examples:
Now onto her Youtube channels: Liza Koshy and Liza Koshy Too. The second channel has around 6M subscribers and is where she tends to posts bloopers, hauls and challenges with her friends (videos that require less work and thought). The main channel, on the other hand, has over 14M subscribers and showcases her more well-edited skits which include her impersonation characters (Helga and Jet), as well as her ongoing series where she goes to the dollar store to find random objects and compares those prices with Target.
Here is one of her videos:
Her content is hilariously random yet effective, making sure the length of her videos are 7 minutes or less to avoid boring her viewers. This technique/trend is now used by many Youtubers as this generation cannot watch videos longer than 10 minutes without getting bored. Therefore, video creators must keep this in mind and make sure that every second is captivating enough for the viewers to put down their phones and commit to watching. Her boyfriend, David, has mastered this technique by making all of his vlogs on his Youtube channel end at exactly 4.21 minutes. If you don’t believe me, just check out his channel.
And as you can notice from both David and Liza’s videos, they seem to use their titles as a way to intrigue viewers to their videos. This approach is called ‘clickbait’ and is most commonly used for online articles to attract readers to their particular articles. This same tactic is used on Youtube as videos are posted daily on this platform, therefore YouTubers must create captivating titles in order to get the views. Liza and David both strive to create enticing headings, and it eventually started becoming their ‘brand’. They are now known from their fans as creating short, hilarious videos with the funniest titles as ‘clickbait’. In fact, David Dobrik even released merchandise that has the word ‘clickbait’ on it, and is worn by many of his YouTuber friends, including his girlfriend Liza Koshy. Through his YouTube videos and Instagram pictures of him promoting and wearing the merch, he has had an influence on his fans.
Liza has effectively utilized a few content strategies such as aligning her content to fit her consumers’ needs and wants, along with defining her channel mix clearly. Koshy makes sure she receives plenty of feedback from her fans which she incorporates into the creation of her YouTube videos in order to relate to and entertain her viewers. Equally important, Liza knows exactly which social media platforms to highlight in order to attract the most people. In conjunction with her social media, she has set up a visually pleasing website that features her merchandise available to purchase. Koshy has ensured that all her platforms link to each other to make it easier for her new and current fans to access her social media profiles. Feel free to go check out her website (and if you scroll down on her home page, you can easily connect to her Instagram page).
Now that we have seen how Liza has applied her tactics to attract to her fans, let’s check out her analytics to see if it worked:
According to Wizdeo Analytics, Liza Koshy’s average views from January to April were in the 1 millions, being ranked 68th in views worldwide, right below one of her close friends and mentors, Lilly Singh (aka iisuperwomanii).
If you look at her Instagram metrics, her popularity spiked dramatically between 2017 and 2018, gaining over 1.5 million more followers on her Instagram profile alone. This shows that her marketing strategies have been successful and will continue to attract more people in the future.
Rewind to 2015: Liza studied business marketing at the University of Houston (which might explain how she gained the success she has now). However, after a year in school, she decided to take a leap of faith and move to LA where she met David and began her full-time career as a Youtuber. The very next year, she won her first award at the Streamy’s as the 2016 Breakout Creator. After that exposure, she got a chance to interview Barack Obama, just before the 2016 elections, to encourage her viewers to go out and vote. Ever since then, she continues to gain new fans as her contagious personality is hard to ignore.
With so many accounts and content, how does Liza manage all of them? Experts call it a social media command center which can range from a full team in a dedicated location with multiple monitors to a single individual at a coffee shop with their laptop. Liza’s command center falls somewhere between those two extremes; an office in her house devoted to filming, editing, and managing her social medias.
Along with that, we all have quick access to social media through our phones nowadays, therefore making it efficient for online stars such as Liza to respond to situations anytime, anywhere. With her active Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook accounts, she’s able to stay connected and informed with anything happening with her fans and fellow YouTubers. Koshy has also taken advantage of stories on Instagram and Snapchat, constantly posting short messages to her fans to stay relevant in the mass media.
Not only does Liza have a killer online existence, she has slowly penetrated into the TV world. One of her biggest accomplishments is her role on Freakish, a horror fiction TV show on the Hulu network. The show first aired on October 10, 2016 and has released 20 episodes so far. Another milestone Liza has reached is her multiple commercial partnership with Beats by Dre.
Here’s one of them featuring one of her most famous characters, Jet:
A brand is the relationship between the consumer and the company or individual. A brand also tells a timeless story of what your product/service is and its promise to fulfill that story. A personal brand is an important aspect to the online community as how you appear on your accounts is the deciding factor on whether or not people will follow you. It’s crucial for online personas to maintain consistent, attractive social media content in order to retain and attract their viewers on a daily basis. Liza Koshy has done just that by utilizing her social media presences effectively. Her brand has developed immensely since the start of her career on Vine. Just like everyone else, she is constantly learning and evolving as time goes by and you can really see it! Just a “little brown girl” from Houston, Texas, Liza has built up her online career from the ground-up and is dedicated to making her viewers happy and satisfied. And as she always says: “I make content to make people feel content.”
