If you’re considering starting a YouTube channel, you may discover the allure of a beauty channel. The industry as a whole has always been full of creative opportunities and endless revenue streams, not to mention a massive audience craving new content. There are beauty channels hosted by experts and amateurs. It’s teeming with niches that run the gamut from useful science to silly experiments.
The big blemish on the face of the online beauty community is the drama that often comes along with it. In a highly competitive industry run by designer divas, it’s not much of a surprise. Fortunately, it’s still possible to have a successful beauty channel while staying out of the drama. We’ll show you how others are putting out consistent videos and growing their audience without getting tangled up in the trash-talking.
Consistent variety
As with any successful channel, it’s important to post new videos consistently so that your viewers know when to tune in. Whether you add posts weekly or monthly, be sure that the timing is predictable and covers a variety of types of content. This is an important key. It helps you avoid getting too casual or slipping into talking about the latest trainwrecks in the beauty channel world.
Safiya Nygaard’s channel is a perfect example of long-term variety while staying in the beauty and out of the fire. Her channel boasts over 9 million subscribers on YouTube. She creates videos with obvious content like tutorials, unboxings and product reviews. However, she’s taken it a step further and created her own fun, weird niche: Franken-things. With a trip out to her local shopping center, Safiya has purchased every shade of lipstick and taken them home to melt them all together to form a Franken-lipstick in a whole new shade. She’s created Franken-candles, Franken-eyeshadow, Franken-foundations, even a Franken-cake for her own wedding. Find your own fun oddity to incorporate into your video rotation.
Grow your audience
Finding ways to be inclusive with your content will help your channel appeal to a wider audience. It begins with an awareness of what causes people to feel excluded and then finding ways to make those people feel welcome and seen. Be sure to educate yourself on the beauty needs of people with different body types and skin colors. Hold awareness for viewers in multiple socioeconomic backgrounds and people with disabilities, as well as gender diversity. Here are some ways that your channel can honor a diverse audience:
- Take extra steps for accessibility with options like captions or transcripts.
- Do product reviews and comparisons to find the best options in each price range.
- Promote brands that reflect inclusive values in their hiring and marketing.
- Choose guests who represent the diversity of your audience.
- Always defer to their personal experience over your own ideas or learnings.
- Avoid language that alienates or discriminates.
Collaboration videos with other creators can help grow your audience, too. Choose creators who have interesting content while avoiding the beauty scene drama, too. Consider whether they are hosting a channel that promotes diversity and inclusiveness so that you’re associated with like-minded people.
Cultivate community
Once you’ve committed to a diverse audience, embrace that philosophy to turn your audience into a community. Treat your viewers and subscribers like your friends. Talk directly to the camera so that they can feel as if you’re talking directly to them, personally. You can share tidbits from your life and laugh at yourself whenever possible as Simply Nailogical’s Cristine Rotenburg often does for nearly 8 million subscribers. Her fans sent a lot of messages because they had trouble with her Canadian accent. Every time said “topcoat” they thought she was saying “taco”. She started her own nail polish line including a topcoat called Glossy Taco. It’s an inside joke for her fan base and they love it.
A major difference between an “audience” and a “community” is often participation. Invent contests or challenges so fans can make their own videos with and tag you on social media. Find ways to ask for their input and create videos based on suggestions or ideas that they send you. You can give a fun identifying name to your fan base to create a sense of community—think of Taylor Swift’s “Swifties”. Then, spin that into your channel’s merch and swag. This allows your followers to have tangible reminders that they are, indeed, part of the club.
Stay focused
Running a channel on YouTube can be fun and rewarding but there are some drawbacks to entering the world of beauty channels. It’s a competitive market full of big personalities and big egos. You don’t have to be part of the drama to be successful, though. Be selective about which other beauty channel creators you befriend. Keep your channel’s content positive and avoid gossip and divisive topics like politics and religion. Be respectful, kind and inclusive with your language in your videos and social media posts—and everywhere, for that matter.