It Pays to Be Personable
By Michael Wirth
2021-06-24T04:00:00Z
The first two installments of “Social Media and Celebrity” focused on how luck can influence future success and using social media success to leverage a career in a different industry. However, when coupled with hard work and perseverance, sometimes the best trait to have is a winning personality. Being welcoming and likable, as well as having a good sense of humor, are great ways to build an audience. If you’re the kind of person a stranger would want to spend time with, that person would be more likely to follow your social media feed. Here are two examples of creators who managed to build careers based on their winning personalities.
Nerdy Nummies Makes a Career
Nerdy Nummies is a YouTube channel to features content exactly as it sounds; delicious food items based on popular topics. Rosanna Pansino began Nerdy Nummies back in 2011 to show off her exquisite baking skills, creating mouth-watering treats that appealed to the nerd community. She encompassed a wide variety of pop culture to appeal to every type of fandom, from video games to television to comic books, with treats like a Super Mario cake, Stranger Things cupcakes, and a Batman pizza. Pansino also popular internet trends and targeted her content to capture views from Google searches; one such example is the Tiger King cake she made in the summer of 2020, riding the wave of popularity that came with release of Tiger King on Netflix.
Through Pansino’s hard work and sparkling personality, the Nerdy Nummies channel has amassed almost 13 million follows, and the videos on the channel have been video over 3 billion times. Clearly, this type of content appeals to a wide demographic, allowing Pansino to invite some high-profile guests on her show, such as Neil DeGrasse Tyson, video game creator Shigeru Miyamoto, and even Sesame Street’s Cookie Monster. She presents the information as simply as possible, allowing even newbie bakers to follow along, and she often dresses up to match her themed bake, which gives each of her videos a fun twist.
Pansino has been nominated for multiple awards for her work on Nerdy Nummies and leveraged her success into a book deal. She currently has three books, which are available through major retailers like Amazon and Target. Pansino also has a deal with Wilton, a leader in bakeware, which offers a wide variety of baking utensils designed and branded in the Nerdy Nummies style.
Not bad for someone who just started making cakes on the internet.
Working Hard on Working Out
On the other side of things is Cassey Ho, another YouTube star who focuses on health and Fitness. Ho began her YouTube channel, Blogilates, in 2009 helping people to lose weight and get in shape by offering free training sessions. Her content focuses on health, and she teaches her audiences the proper way to perform exercises, including a wide variety of yoga and pilates moves, as well as showing them how to eat healthier. Through her bubbly personality and welcoming attitude, her YouTube channel grew exponentially through the first few years, gaining her a million followers by 2012. She currently has over 5.5 million followers.
A few years after the launch of her channel, Ho received critical success for the way she engaged her audience and was named in a number of social media “hot to” books, including Social Media Marketing All-in-One For Dummies . Her social media success also attracted critical success; in 2012, Ho was named the number 2 online fitness influencer, and her channel Blogilates was awarded the “Best Healthy Living Blog” by Fitness magazine. Ho’s business savvy and critical acclaim led to a feature interview in Forbes , in which she discussed the challenges as a YouTuber and what she likes about the life.
Similar to Nerdy Nummies, Ho leveraged her social media success into other business ventures. Her first venture was a series of workout gear called Body Pop, which was described by Shape magazine as “the line is a mix between high fashion and practical—think peplum and bold prints.” Most recently, Ho and the Blogilates brand can be found on a variety of workout gear sold in Target stores. The equipment is meant to inspire Ho’s audience to maintain their regular workout activity and comes in stylish colors and patterns.
Being likable tends to be a short cut to success in most industries. It doesn’t matter how smart and talented you are at what you do, if people don’t like you, they won’t want to work with you. So, if you’re looking to build a large social media following, pair your diligence with an inviting attitude and a smile. Though it’s not a guarantee that your social media channels will be catapulted to success, but it’s proven to be a benefit in many cases.