How Top Influencers Succeed With The Help From Us

When you watch your favorite youtuber’s videos or see a picture posted by them, what’s the first thing that grabs your attention or what causes you to follow along? For example, in a how-to tutorial, what is the meaning of learning how to make or do something? Or what is the picture you want to recreate for your own content to post and share with others? Well, whether you’ve done one or the other, this is called the “circulation” of that video or post. Circulation is concerned with making audience members into receptacles for mass-produced and mass-distributed content: as eyeballs in front of a screen (like watching videos), butts in seats (in film or sports term), or whatever other body parts media companies and brands hope to grab next. That means that the video wants you to physically get up and learn how to do something new which will most likely have you clicking through their other videos to learn more and more things and so on which most companies, like the how-to videos, are trying to see what they can have the viewer doing next that will have them seeking and wanting more content from them which in the end, makes the company successful and produce more of their product.

Now, when talking about these influencers, do you ever think about how your favorite youtubers or influencers comes up with such new and different content for every video they post? Most likely we are all thinking, “Who or what is giving them these different ideas that not one person can come up with on their own?” Well my friends, those people are basically US. WE are the people who they listen to grab new ideas from and continue making this “original” content they claim to come up with by themselves. This is what Henry Jenkins calls the “participatory culture” which describes the cultural production and social interactions of fan communities, initially seeking a way to differentiate the activities of fans from other forms of spectatorship. For example, when Jenkins mentions the cultural production and social interactions of fan communities, he is referring that an influencer would be nothing without its own fan base or support system which is what they live off of and what basically keeps the money rolling in. Influencers also engage with their fans whether it be replying to social media comments/posts, doing in person meet and greets, hosting giveaways, collabing with other well known influencers and so much more to create some sort of a connection that will benefit both the fan base and the influencer at the end of the day. This means that the people who are in charge of seeking new ideas for the influencer’s future videos are listening to us because it’s a way to hear what WE want to see next which is basically putting us in control and just telling the person what to do and they’ll do it to make us happy and keep us coming back for more because we have that position in getting what we want to see. In other words, we as the audience are making our presence felt by actively shaping media flows, and producers, brand managers, customer service professionals, and corporate communicators are waking up to the commercial need to actively listen and respond to us.

For example, the Youtuber, Alx James, is one of the many Youtubers that I watch on the daily, but I realized he always tweets a poll asking we the audience what we want to see in his next video that makes me feel he’s not so confident in the content he puts out because he feels the need to ask for our opinions and he ends up deciding what his video is going to be about over the answers from the poll.

 I know it is not just him who posts polls or something similar because other influencers as well do the same thing by asking the audience what they want to see, but I think that if he weren’t to do that and just posted what he thought was good enough to post that some viewers would throw hate at him for not listening to what they wanted to see him do next or would simply stop watching his videos because they are not made for their liking and so on which would result in less views and less money which is what majority of these youtubers are obtaining their daily income by. So, in other words, that is how these influencers obtain new content everyday from millions of comments and trends that help them, so they do not run out of videos to make which can result in running out of money and fame.

Another thing that influencers do a lot to grab our attention is click bait. Click bait is when the video has such an interesting title that comes along with an even more interesting thumbnail. This is what influencers also use to obtain many views and subscribers which means more money and more opportunities to make money like paid partnerships and collabs with other well-known influencers as well. For example, in the screenshot below, a famous Beauty Guru named Daisy Marquez has her video titled about being haunted in her apartment with the thumbnail of pictures of spirits in her house that makes the audience want to click on it because who doesn’t want to hear a ghost story? 

But, when looking at the reviews of her video, majority of people commented that it was pretty much fake and not that believable which ended up looking bad on her. When connecting this to social media practices, click bait is like “stickiness” which broadly refers to the need to create content that attracts audience attention and engagement and is it content that people want to spread. This is what influencers want to achieve by creating content that attracts an audience that will share it and will spread to other people that will result in giving the video viral attention and more views just as the influencer is planning for.

In conclusion, influencers are pretty much successful because of us, the audience, because we give new ideas for videos as well as imputing our opinion on what type of vides the influencer should post or not post. Influencers would not be where they are at if we did not give in to the click bait that gives them views or seeing them do what we ask them to do which makes us subscribe to them that gives them more money and just by interacting with us and being open is how we feel somewhat connected with them. So, next time you watch a video by your favorite influencer, where or who do you think they got their content from and how do you as the viewer make this person more successful by supporting them? Think about it.