Social media has propelled the careers of numerous amounts of people and have given them entryway to new avenues of revenue and success. So why is it so important to branch out to other platforms even before reaching a megalithic proportion of followers? Well it all comes down to diversification and reaching the right audience.

Many social media and instagrammers are finding an insane amount of success sharing their personal journeys via photos, 15-second videos and a dozen hashtags. However many of them are missing out on a segment of the market that can bring all of their success into a entrepreneurial portal.

Just being popular through social media and having your 15 seconds of fame is not as important as it was oh let’s say 10 years ago. Now the name of the game is marketing, sales, advertisement placement, sponsorship and merchandising. Not all successful internet moguls has garnished success using the same strategy. However, it is pretty much safe to assume that they all got there by doing something that they love.

Here are a few notable folks that we think understand.
Pewdiepie

Genre: Gaming
Main Platform: YouTube
Subscribers: 42,654,713
Website: Pewdiepie.com

Description: Pewdiepie plays games and takes you through his gameplay with his distinctive voice and comments. He is also diversifying his content with YouTube skits, interviews and convention videos.

Marketing opportunities: Outside of his YouTube success, Pewdiepie is branding himself through merchandising product with his namesake and design. All of his videos and links are uploaded to the site as well allowing new viewers who may not know about him to watch videos and subscribe.

Joy Cho

Genre: Fashion
Main Platform: Pinterest
Followers: 12.8 million
Website: www.ohjoy.com

Description: Joy Cho created OhJoy as a blog site for fashion and style tips in 2005 and it quickly grew into a marketing and branding empire. The site helped to propel all of her social media accounts from YouTube to Instagram and allowed here to create the company not only as a source of information but a product-shopping cart.

Marketing Opportunities: Outside of branding, Joy Cho has created a business out of what she loves. Selling items, affiliate sales, online ads and much more.

Brittany Renner (Bundleofbrittany)

Genre: Fitness
Main Platform: Instagram
Follows: 1.3m

Description: Probably the most popular genre to hit the scene in the past 5 years are self-defined fitness gurus who share their success stories online to inspire others to workout and achieve greatness. Brittany Renner is no exception. Her upbeat personality and fitness model has allowed her to get sponsors as big as Microsoft and continues to grow followers daily.

Marketing Opportunities: Brittany is the youngest of the bunch and has a lot of potential. Currently she launched a mobile fitness app in the iTunes app store and hosts fitness bootcamps at Microsoft stores. But with the following that she has she can be bringing so much more to the table.

Here are some of the benefits for creating a stable online presence in the form of a website with good digital marketing.

• 1. People still visit websites: Many Internet users are not on Social media at all and would rarely visit a social media site if they did not have a reason to. Websites are still the number 1 searched platform on the Internet. With the power that is garnished from a well-followed social media page you have the ability to reach more viewers interested in what you have to say.
• 2. Search engines would rather have official websites in the top ten rather than a social media profile. Yes social media is awesome but how does Google see it? Well until Google weighs social media as heavily as websites, you have a better chance of ranking with a website than an Instagram account.
• 3. Brand yourself: you are the master of your own ship! Design how you want your website to look, your personality is so much more than 3 squares of images on a boring platform. This is your chance to showcase everything you are about.
• 4. Better opportunity to get follows: People may not be typing in [your name] into their search engines, looking specifically for you. But they may be typing in “Young fit models”, “up and coming musicians”, “game reviews” or “vape models”. Wouldn’t it be great if you had a site that was at the top of their search, all of your information in one place and the ability to get follows with one click?
• 5. Merchandising – Have an idea to sale clothing, your newest EP or a mobile app? Then this is where you would do it. People seem to take you a bit more serious when you have a storefront, and it is much easier to purchase your dream products from a simple shopping cart. Basically this gives you the opportunity to sale anything you want.
• 6. Affiliates and Ads – This is where the 25k follows come into play. If you can get a fraction of your social follows to click on your site, then you are in good standings to make extra revenue selling other peoples products as well as setting up ads on your site for PPC. That’s where companies give you money just for placing their ads on your site. Most companies ask that you have a certain amount of visits to the site. But hey! You have 25 thousand followers you can easily direct a few of them to your site.
• 7. Compete with your haters, I’m sorry, competitors. Ask yourself, does my competitor have a website? If not then maybe I can do better than them. If yes, then maybe I can do better than them.
• 8. Having your own personal live site is where you can find hyper target audiences using SEO, keyword marketing and AdWords. This is how you get qualified clicks to buy things from you or what is called funnel marketing
• 9. Just remember there is always room for improvement and if you are looking to the next level then make sure you are doing everything you can to maximize yourself and your earning potential.

If you are already at 25 thousand follows then people want to hear what you want to say. And it is time for you to think about yourself as a product. It sounds bad, but market yourself, create your site and sell yourself. Even Star Wars started their merchandising way before the movie came out. Onward forward!