5 Things Thought Leaders Should Learn From YouTube Celebrities

The Audience is in control

Remember when television networks and movie studios were the gatekeepers of fame?

Neither do your customers.

The rise of YouTube celebrities was an early warning that audiences didn’t need Hollywood, television executives, or traditional media companies to tell them who to pay attention to and to like. Anyone with a phone, something interesting to say, the ability to say it in interesting ways, and the know-how to connect with an audience could match or surpass someone with a million-dollar publicity machine behind them.

That wasn’t a fad. That shift has cemented.

Now, brand podcasters, entrepreneurs, and executives can build audiences around their ideas and personalities without begging media entities to “choose” them. That’s huge for brands investing in executive thought leadership. But “if you build it, they will come” is NOT true.

Here are five things you should learn from the humans who became stars, on their own.  

1. nobody owes you anything

Are you in a legendary company? Are your products phenomenal? Are your executives revered internally? Do you really, really love yourself?

Your thought leadership audience couldn’t care less. They’re waging their own wars in their own trenches. You think about yourself 99% of every day. They think about you .00005% of their day because guess what, they’re also thinking about themselves 99% of every day.  

Now throw in the 8 billion other messages they get, clawing for their attention. Everyone from other solution vendors to criminals. Then here you come with your “I’m proud to announce our company was chosen as a ‘company that exists’ by ‘you-never-heard-of-it’ magazine!”

We hear about “building” an audience. Every time you publish, you’re asking someone new to like your content. Act like it.

The creator economy figured this out fast. YouTube personalities (who, make no mistake, do love themselves) didn’t ask audiences to care because they’re God’s gift to video. They earned attention by obsessing over what the audience wanted from them. Mr. Beast made it a downright science.

Put what we as a brand want to promote aside and ask, “What does our desired audience find interesting? What are they looking for? What could they use? What’s irresistible to them? How can we relate to them? What can we do that will make watching our stuff habit-forming?”

We hear a lot about “building an audience,” but every time you publish, you’re asking someone brand new to like your content. Act like it.

2. personality will make or break you

Here’s where traditional corporate communication gets weird. We bend over backward and spend a lot of money trying to sound polished and professional, then wonder why we blend in with every other piece of corporate communications content out there. “Why isn’t our engagement going up? People should love that we’re so safe and careful!”

Nope, audiences find people with recognizable personalities compelling. Honestly, they don’t even have to like you. You just have to be distinct and interesting.

Creators develop a voice, a vibe. They have opinions. They tell stories. They’re shockingly honest and vulnerable. They establish running jokes, recurring themes, signature expressions, and other things the audience can grab onto that make them memorable.

You want them to say, “I want to spend more time with this person.”

There’s no law that says executive thought leaders can’t do that too. And in their case, a combination of expertise and memorable personality can be powerful. Unleash them to sound like themselves.

3. inconsistency: the thought leadership killer

Actors get bigger when they’re in a hit movie or TV show. Musicians get bigger when they have a hit. But if part of your thought leadership strategy is to get lucky with one video that gets lots of engagement and shares…you’re at risk of making yourself a one-hit wonder.

Don’t get me wrong. If you get it, that’s incredible, and it is going to help you with discovery.

But a good thought leadership digital media series is a social contract. It’s not so much about getting that big ego-stroking hit, it’s about meeting up with viewers again and again, and delivering on expectations again and again.

How many branded podcasts have you seen that spend a lot of time asking people to subscribe, but who then don’t publish episodes at any regular or consistent cadence? 

Just as in the real world, that’s how relationships are built. You want to be that really interesting friend you get coffee with once a week, not the guy who was hilarious at a wedding years ago then never saw again.

You get many, many points just for showing up. How many branded podcasts have you seen that spend a lot of time asking people to subscribe, but who then don’t publish episodes at any regular or consistent cadence? Subscribe to what?  

I ask prospects all the time, “What’s your show?” You can see it in their eyes…they have no idea what I mean. They want to talk to me about “pushes” and campaigns. I want to talk about an ongoing content asset that publishes like clockwork and brings dividends like clockwork.

I also warn prospects, “Shows are fairly easy to start, but keeping them going is where the real work is and where the ultimate success or failure will come from.” The audience really isn’t being too demanding…they just want you to show up. How long do you keep dating someone who stands you up?

4. even in our aI dystopia, being human is what works

Corporate communications spent decades teaching companies how to avoid saying anything that could possibly create unease. We make very sure we don’t challenge anyone or get them thinking in different ways. We make sure no boats get rocked and avoid criticism like it was “Covid: The Sequel.”

Well…it worked. Nobody’s noticing you.

The best creators understand something many corporate communicators still struggle with: authenticity isn’t a tactic. It just is. Audiences are beautifully organic. They can tell when someone cares about something. They can tell when someone’s reading a script. They can tell when a speaker wants to say something…but isn’t.  

Even across screens, humans connect to humans, and they can sniff out when someone is behaving in odd, non-human ways. Now along comes AI-generated content. Awesome. Use it in all the ways you want to use it. Brag to your friends. But if you’re using it in your thought leadership content, which should be run and treated very differently from your other content, STOP.

When the whole point is to make a trusted, human connection with people you want to communicate with, and build that relationship over time, and deliver content that only you with your background and life lessons can deliver, there is no place for shortcuts and faking it. The more AI grinds out, the more value humanity has.

AI summarizes consensus – uninteresting. Thought leadership diverts from the consensus – interesting.

5. Build Fans of your thinking

My favorite lesson. 

Let’s say a TikTok user loves videos of dads getting accidentally hit in the groin by kids. They’ll watch some videos like that from various creators, the algorithm will pick up on that and feed them more videos like it. But amid all those videos, why would they get attached to and subscribe to one of those creators?

Maybe it’s the funny music they add to it. Maybe it’s funny pop-up text or graphics they add to it. Maybe they add and use funny sound effects. Maybe they repeat the clip in slow motion. The point is…people don’t follow creators because they like one piece of content. They follow because they develop an ongoing interest in that person, style, or presentation. They gravitate toward their stuff.

Now, amid all those executive thought leadership videos or podcasts out there, why would someone gravitate toward yours? It’s not one piece of content. It’s the perspective, the personality, the presentation, and ideally the community that forms around them.

You want fans of your thinking. And you want to be associated with ideas they aren’t getting anywhere else. That’s the foundation of executive visibility and, increasingly, AI search visibility.

that hard to get audience is actually looking for you

It may seem like it when you look at the YouTube celebrities, but not just anyone can break out, get famous, and get paid hundreds of thousands to be a YouTube influencer. It’s the ones who give their audience a video friend and access that build inexplicably large audiences.

They do it by employing personality, deep and studied knowledge of their audience, consistency & reliability, humanity, and connection.

As hard as it may seem right now to build a thought leadership audience, that audience is actually out there right now actively looking for content worth watching and worth coming back to. They want to discover you. You can be that thought leader who understands why YouTubers are so appealing to viewers.

Your company can provide the platform. Your marketing team can provide the production muscle. AI can help with the heavy lifting. But the engine of thought leadership has to be you. That’s nothing new. From vaudeville to radio to TV to movies to online, it’s always been the personalities that drive success.

It’s time for companies to understand that entertainment truth and stop acting as if faceless, nameless, safe, and self-serving content is going to achieve goals like awareness, traffic, and inquiries. Give them someone worth being a fan of.

Who said this?

I’m an executive presence developer. I work with executives to hone a unique POV for breakthrough thought leadership content, then get their team ready to perpetually execute on it across channels and formats.