What Is The Secret Of Zoella’s Popularity?
Zoella Sugg is currently the most popular non gaming* UK vlogger with 4,477,833 subscribers to date. She is personable, fairly open about her life, she’s nice looking and she can be funny – but so are hundreds and hundreds of other vloggers. None of those characteristics explain her incredible popularity.
So why is she the number one vlogger?
The answer possibly lies in the nature of her audience. The vast majority of the vloggers’ audience are children and teenagers between the ages of about 10 and 16. Generally it is boys that watch the gaming vlogging channels and it is girls that watch the other vlogging channels.
This demographic of girls between 10 and 16 seem to be especially interested in two things. The first is obvious – many of the most popular vloggers are attractive young men with especially lovely hair, but it is the second reason that is key to Zoella’s popularity. Fans of Zoella are also fans of her real world social network.
Zoella’s boyfriend also vlogs. His name is Alfie Deyes and he vlogs under the name Pointlessblog. He is also incredibly popular – he currently has 2,121,297 subscribers to his YouTube channel. Zoella’s brother is another vlogger. His name is Joe Sugg and he vlogs at the ThatcherJoe channel – he is cute as a button (and has especially lovely hair) and he currently has 1,847,431 subscribers. Her best friend is Louise (SprinkleofGlitter). She currently has 1,280,011 subscribers. Zoella is also friends with fellow Brightonian Marcus Butler (2,271,000 subscribers), Tanya Burr (2,011,690 subscribers), Tanya’s boyfriend Jim Chapman (1,382,688 subscribers) and the globe trotting daily vlogger Louis Cole (FunForLouis – 649,844 subscribers). As well as this core audience of UK vloggers Zoella is also friends with many of the leading American, Australian and South African vloggers.
All of these vloggers regularly appear in Zoella’s vlogs. They all hang out together, they go on holidays together, they have days out in London together and they all vlog their lives together in hundreds of collaboration videos.
It is this aspect of Zoella’s YouTube channel that is probably the key to why she is so incredibly popular because it is to be imagined Zoella’s subscribers see themselves as part of this network. They love being part of this young adult world of boyfriends, and shopping and holidays and BFFs mucking about.
Zoella is brilliant at producing content that appeals to this desire amongst girls and teenagers to be included in Zoella’s lovely, friendly world.
There are hundreds of examples of films that do this on her channel but this one makes the point as good as any:
This film was filmed at the recent Playlist event in Florida which is a gathering of YouTube content creators and their fans. Most of the leading YouTube vloggers were there and most of them appeared in Zoella’s videos. In this film we meet Joe, Louise. Marcus, Niomi, Connor, Shay, Alfie, Troye, Tyler, Caspar, Louis, Tanya and Jim – all of whom are incredibly popular vloggers.
This is what the fans love – they love being part of this interconnected social network of young, happy, well off, attractive people who lead lovely lives and who are all friends – and you can see these fans in the video queueing up to hug Zoella, Louise and Tanya and to be part of their world.
*As the name suggests gaming vloggers talk about computer and video games. The popularity of the most popular gaming vloggers rivals that of Lady Gaga and One Direction.
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