Blog #4

Throughout various social media platforms today, there are many people who have gained popularity and earn a living just from having a social media presence. Today, these people are known as influencers. Influencers can be anyone who has a mass following on social media within a distinct niche. These niches include a following based on content, such as YouTubers, bloggers, etc. For this blog assignment, I decided to observe the social media presence of someone I know of, but I don’t regularly watch them, and I don’t follow them on any social media platform. 

I decided to look at David Dobrik’s social media presence. David Dobrik is a YouTuber who posts vlog style videos of him and his friends doing ridiculous things. (Think of them being like the modern version of Jackass, but not as reckless). Dobrik is only 23 years old and has a net worth of around $7 million. He has over 16 million subscribers on YouTube, so you could imagine the kind of following that he has on other social media platforms. Most of his subscribers on YouTube are within the 18-24 age demographic, with the 13-17 age demographic following close behind. 

I was interested in assessing his social media presence not only because of his popularity among people who are close to my age, but because he does a sponsorship with a specific company for almost every video and it’s kind of become a running joke (in the best way possible) at this point. This company is called SeatGeek, which allows you to buy and sell tickets for concerts, sporting events, and theater events. Most of the time, if an influencer wants to promote SeatGeek, they’re given a discount/promotion code for their followers to use to get $20 off of their first purchase on the app. Since he talks about his partnership with SeatGeek in almost every video, the popularity and use of the app has grown tremendously. 

He’s also become famous for buying his friends various cars and surprising fans by showing up at their door. For example, he surprised his friend, Jason, with a Tesla, another friend Heath, with a Lamborghini, and his dad with a BMW. This allows him to build his brand by just showing that he’s a nice guy and wants to give back to his friends and family who have helped him get to where he is now. He’s built a reputation for himself by being the nice guy and always caring about those around him, including his fans. 

In terms of his social media presence, David Dobrik has just about every social media account you can think of. He has a Facebook account, but he’s not as active on it and only posts clips of new videos that he posted on YouTube. His Facebook page has just under 780,000 likes. While this may seem like a lot, this is nowhere near the number of followers he has on more popular social media platforms. 

He’s pretty active on Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat. He even has a Tik Tok account, which I didn’t even know about until I started researching him for this blog assignment. The overall tone of almost all of his posts across social media is positive and funny. He doesn’t really post as much on Twitter as one might think, but he uses it more to promote his brand. He often interacts with fans by quoting their tweets with a witty response or tweeting about one of his friends.

The social media platform that has the lowest number of followers is Twitter, with 4.5 million followers. His Instagram and Tik Tok accounts are very similar in terms of a following, with Instagram having 11.7 million followers and Tik Tok have 11 million followers. Other than his YouTube channel, it doesn’t surprise me that his Instagram account has the highest number of followers, considering that’s the social media platform that he probably uses the most. 

In order to see a more “personal” side of him, you would have to check out his Instagram. Here, you see him with other celebrities around his age and posting photoshoots. He normally posts Instagram stories almost every day, so this also gives followers more of an insight to what his life is like and to promote his brand. For example, back in December, he partnered with SeatGeek to give one of his fans a Tesla by sharing his post and tagging a friend in the comments. For three days straight, this is all I could see across my Instagram feed. So many of my friends were sharing his post to their stories so they could try and win a Tesla. I think that this was another way to build his brand and strengthen his sponsor with SeatGeek by getting his following to share his post with the company’s name in it. This also became free advertising for SeatGeek in a way, because people were probably more interested in winning a Tesla from David Dobrik than his partnership with a ticket sales company, so their name definitely got out there. 

Personally, I don’t think he really needs to do anything to improve his social media presence. He uses social media platforms enough to stay relevant and to promote his brand, but he also doesn’t “overuse” it. When I say “overusing,” I’m referring to the fact that he doesn’t have to post every minute of every day in order to stay relevant. He keeps his followers interested by posting content that they want to see and by posting not as often as one might think. This allows him to continuously grow his following, making him more popular along with posting vlogs on his YouTube channel.