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YouTube has been, and will continue to be, a handy platform for launching media careers. Most people on the video sharing service don’t turn their channels into a career, much less a multi-million dollar empire, but there are certainly those who do.
For many successful YouTubers, staying relevant and engaging with viewers is core, and it can be difficult. That’s why some of the most successful YouTube stars are diversifying the platforms they use to deliver their content, if not the content itself.
Chief among their new platforms has been Instagram, which allows creators to share individual images, and eventually “Instagram Stories,” which are curated sets of those images. Instagram has become something of an industry darling for many brands, who use it to reach out to their customers, and either partner with creators on the service, or pay for advertising that benefits those creators.
Other social media services such as Facebook and Twitter serve their purposes, too. Twitter doesn’t seem to be as core to many up-and-coming YouTube stars’ plans, but it may already be losing the younger audiences who tend to make up a lot of YouTube’s viewers.
Since anyone can post just about anything on these services, trying to make blanket statements about the audiences that go to YouTube is a waste of time. There is no YouTube audience per se, there are audiences for YouTube stars, many of whom happen to be pretty young and happen to target a younger audience.
For stars who produce a few short videos a week, there isn’t much keeping their audience on YouTube, while creators like the Game Grumps, who put out multiple videos of at least 12 to 15 minutes every week, have a much better chance of keeping their audience there, with the original content.
Platform diversity is key for many YouTube stars, but it’s not an absolute, and it depends on the kind of content being delivered.
