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| Bethany Mota – A Motivated Young Entrepreneur with 5 million YouTube Subscribers |
Imagine being bullied by your teen peers. We all remember the taunting and nastiness of middle school and high school. Kids have lots of ways of reacting from hiding, binge drinking, getting wild, retreating inward or fighting back. Bethany Mota decided to use YouTube but in a positive way.
Channeling her Energy
This budding entrepreneur decided to channel her story and anguish into building a community online of people who might like her. She wasn’t motivated to build a fashion empire – just to find friends. She wanted to be real and to be able to share her passions with people who would genuinely like and respect her for who she is without any teenage angst.
Eighteen year old Bethany Motta is the superstar of YouTube fashion, beauty and lifestyle with almost five million followers. Her popularity has created an alliance with JC Penny and Forever 21 retail chains for clothes and promotions.
Fashionista
Her business model is simple. Be genuine and authentic. Share a true and honest voice. Invite the world in to her views of things she loves to talk about in clever and creative video platforms. Her talent was the fuel to energize and charge her business, but she was motivated to find a community of people who were like-minded.
Not everyone who sets up an iPhone camera can build a big audience just by creating a YouTube channel. But Bethany was trying to create a community of young girls with a common interest. And she is generating over $40,000 per month in ad sales from her big and growing audience.
Marketing Lessons
The marketing lesson from Bethany’s success is simple and clear. Don’t over think things and just go out and try. Seth Godin calls it shipping. Go ship something. Get it out the door. Do it.
Put some videos up on YouTube that share your passion. Write that first blog post. Become an Instagram superstar. Write that children’s book and build a small following – one person at a time.
Find an audience – even if its just a few people who like what you are doing. Don’t get too worked up over the business model or how success will come. If you can be unique in your storytelling and attract an audience of like-minded people, you’ll make connections.
Building a Fan Base
Four months ago, I encouraged my daughter Fanny to start doing videos about her cooking passion to complement her catering business and her food writing. You can see some of these great cooking tips of the week on her blog Fanfare Foodie. These videos were great practice for her video submission for a cookbook competition.
As of May 4, 2014 when I am writing this post, she is now one of the final four contestants on the Rachael Ray Great American Cookbook Competition and she is on TV learning how to make omelets from Jacques Pepin! Who knows where that will lead but she just did it and is starting to build her own community online.
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| Fanny Slater on the set with Rachael Ray and Jacques Pepin during the Great American Cookbook Competition |
Some audiences are going to be bigger than others. Size doesn’t matter but depth of interest counts.
Not everyone is interested in your hobby of collecting antique trains. But there is a community of people who are all over the world, who share that same passion and who want to learn more about you. Who knows where it will lead.
Get started. Buy a ticket. All on board.
Just follow the link for some Clarity.
