Zoella: Bedroom Blogger to Global Superstar
Social Media has been leveraged by many celebrities and companies as a huge marketing tool for their brands, launching campaigns and building an online image that has increased their followers and revenue. However, through social media a new status has been born, influencer, and one of the most successful ones born from that is that of Zoella, and her empire.
The UK based blogger, YouTuber, author, brand owner and influencer has used her love for beauty and lifestyle to launch a personal brand that over the last 9 years would amount to a following many celebrities and brands could only dream of. Her clean cut image, openness about mental health, and girl-boss attitude has lead her having insane success on and off the web.
Her main three platforms are the following:
Twitter: 13.5 Million Followers
YouTube: 12 Million Subscribers
Instagram: 11 Million Subscribers
Website: https://www.zoella.co.uk/
Her platform numbers alone are insane. Her ability to engage such a large audience through the making of lifestyle and beauty videos is beyond that of her competitors, or fellow lifestyle bloggers. Her YouTube videos regularly top over a million views, and top out at 22 millions views on a single video. Through a combination of vlogs, reviews, and close insights, she lets her viewers see into her life, Zoe Sugg (Zoella) has create a brand and lifestyle that her followers are invested in both emotionally, and financially.
Her first big proof of her influence came with the debut of her first novel Girl Online, where she broke records across the world, having the fastest selling novel since records began. She beat out J.K. Rowling and EL James for this title, selling 78, 000 copies in a week. This is undoubtedly because of her online influence, having around 6 million YouTube subscribers at the time. The success of the book lead to it having 2 sequels. With the first book debuting in 2014, this proved to be a big year for the blogger, entering into the beauty market that same year with Zoella Beauty.
The line, since it’s debut has grown, with an added lifestyle section including notebooks, candles and travel mugs all centered around Zoe’s taste so that her young fans can purchase a part of her life, to mimik in their own. The products appear world wide in drugstores, with new ranges being released regularly. More recently Zoe has even been letting viewers in on the long and frequent meetings she has in developing the brand, showing the public she is more than the face of the brand, but a heavily involved developer of the products her viewers love.
It is clear she is making money from this, but what about Zoella made her so successful? What sets her apart from her thousands of beauty blogger counterparts? Let’s break it down, platform by platform.
Zoella’s Instagram is filled with aesthetically pleasing photos that leave viewers thinking “I want that kind of life”. It has colorful trendy fashions, cute pictures of her perfectly decorated house, adorable photos of her and her fellow YouTuber boyfriend Alfie Deyes and the occasional pic of her pug. It is a carefully curated collection of snapshots that build up the Zoella brand. They give followers an insight of her day to day life while also promoting the projects she is up to, as she is the self-proclaimed queen of “link is in the bio”. Her Instagram is perhaps her most jealous-worthy platform, leaving viewers wanting to achieve the happy, trendy and appealing snapshots they see, and let’s remember that 11 million people! With her audiences being primarily female millennial’s, and Gen Z’s it is clear that her audience is impressionable and willing to buy into what they are seeing. This platform, along with her blog, is the main place she is able to show “The Zoella Lifestyle” where viewers can invest themselves into her aesthetic and happy times with friends and family. Through this branding she is able to further sell her lifestyle brand of candles, hand-lotions and house decor.
YOUTUBE
YouTube is Zoella’s main platform, and hub for where she really gained her following. Hauls, hauls, hauls, look books and baking videos fill the channel for her young fans, and millennial's alike. A huge part of her success is her ability to be genuine and honest on a platform filled with people trying to gain fame. Her videos, although most of the time are her just doing her hair or makeup or talking about her favourite candles, are relatable for her fans as she never claims to be an expert. She talks to the camera like she’s talking to a good friend, giving her viewers genuine advice. She reminds people in her occasional make-up tutorials that she in no expert, never claiming to be something she’s not. She has shared her problems with troubled skin and hasn’t been afraid to show a bare face in light of it, allowing her followers to see a real life person, instead of a perfect person with a perfect life that many people try to portray online. Staying with this trend she has also been very open with her mental health issues of anxiety and panic-attacks, and has even shared vlogs of her crying after having a hard time with it. She regularly updates her viewers on the state of her mental health, and works closely with UK mental health charities to further her passion for helping those with problems like her own. Her relatable, bubbly and genuine persona is what I credit her YouTube success towards.
Zoella’s twitter, where she has more than 13 million followers, is a combination of promotion for her Instagram, her YouTube and her Blog, it’s essentially a platform where she promotes everything! She uses Twitter less as a place to dump useless thoughts and more as a place to share links to direct her fans to the content she is creating. I find it surprising that this is the platform she has the most followers on, as she is primarily known as a YouTuber. However, it is understandable in the sense that a lot of people who watch her videos may not be subscribed, and a lot of her twitter followers may be people who want to follow her whole career opposed to just her YouTube.
Zoe “Zoella” Sugg’s clean, girl next door image is one of the clear factors of her success. With many young fans watching her channel, parents approval goes a long way. Her G-Rated YouTube content of her life, and her ability to be a good role model in the eyes of parents has certainly helped her gain popularity. This however has not made her less “cool” or relatable in the eyes of slightly older viewers. The 28 year-old is fond of staying in, doesn’t drink and has expressed her distaste for going out, although never slandering it. For many young people who are arguably less than the majority, that share this same distaste, it is refreshing to watch, and it produces content that younger audiences also enjoy.
In Sugg’s most recent social media campaign she asked her followers who were sending her birthday wishes, to also send money to Mind Charity as her birthday wish. Mind Charity is a UK based charity focused on helping people with mental health issues. Sugg expressed her personal story, in a recent vlog posted on her birthday, saying how the charity helped her in her youth to understand her anxiety issues. This is a classic example of Zoella’s genuineness on social media, not only does she pull in her viewers through the use of a personal story that many struggle to talk about, but she calls for action. Zoe has a great ability to do this with her viewers, without doing things like giveaways, which often lead to temporary followers who are greedy for a MacBook. Her way of getting her followers invested in her story, her lifestyle and her content gives her the ability to have great influence over them. It’s why her beauty and life style lines are so successful, along with her trilogy of novels.
The most recent development in the Zoella team is her opening of an office in her home of Brighton, UK. No longer working out her home, it is now more visually clear how big of a success Sugg has become. She has shared every step of the offices process with her viewers, and even called on them for hiring new help within her team to help run her blog. Despite having a team to run her company accounts, in recent controversy over whether or not Zoe was still running her own personal accounts she made it clear that she and she only would be the voice of those personal platforms. This is essential to her brand and success, as her genuineness is what her followers crave.
With viewers so invested in Zoe’s story, it is clear that her success is not ending anytime soon. With her life being the story, and her expressing her want for kids and marriage with now live in boyfriend Alfie Deyes, it will be no surprise that viewers will follow as they grow with her and perhaps have similar things happening in their lives. The potential for her online and offline career is endless. With another book soon to be released, this time about hosting for every occasion, holiday and season, Sugg is bound to find success in the book market again. With opportunity for businesses that sell the “lifestyle” Sugg has potential for products that mirror anything that is happening in her life. Perhaps in future she will have a wedding book, or even a line of baby-clothes, who knows! It is however clear that whatever endeavor she embarks on she has a highly invested audience, that is more than happy to follower her journey to the very end.
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