Birchbox & YouTube

Birchbox is a cosmetic and beauty sample subscription service. Every month, subscribers pay $10 a month in order to receive 4 to 5 premium cosmetic samples. When women particularly like one of the samples, they can go to Birchbox's online store to buy the full size product.

Genius, right?

What's more genius is how they used social media to get over 50,000 subscribers just 6 months after their launch. With this extremely rapid growth, Birchbox claims that they purposely did not exert much marketing effort in an attempt to limit their growth. Still, Birchbox's presence on social media platforms exploded.

Now a year after their launch, they have amassed over 80,000 likes on Facebook and 18,000 followers on Twitter. These followings on Facebook and Twitter are great, but their largest gains have come from YouTube.

Birchbox has of course created its own videos that provide beauty tips and tutorials like this one:

However, it is the videos that are created by people not related to Birchbox at all that have helped this company boom. Video bloggers ("vloggers") across the web have created videos to show off their Birchbox loads. This blogger MissGlamorazzi has regularly seen over 100,000 views on her videos like this one:

In identifying successful social media strategies, it is important to deconstruct the strategy and pull out the parts that can be applied elsewhere. What is it about Birchbox that prompts the average person to post and view videos about the company?

1. Birchbox connects with on a high emotional level with its users.

2. Users want to feel part of a larger community

3. Users want to be experts in a given field

4. Users are young and internet oriented

5. Birchbox gives video bloggers ideas for topics which they can "vlog" about

Birchbox has done an amazing job at maximizing its reach on YouTube not only developing its own YouTube channel but also having a presence through vloggers across the web.

Entrepreneurship: The Topic. The Passion.

I have an incredible passion for entrepreneurship. In 2010, I started an internet marketing company for dentists called Dental Presence, and I am currently in the midst of launching a coffee sample subscription company called MistoBox. Given my background, you can see why I am fascinated by everything that entrepreneurs can do to successfully launch companies.

In recent years, the development of online social networks has granted startups an amazing opportunity. Finally, startups can promote themselves and reach a national audience without the massive capital requirements for marketing budgets.

In this blog, I will be covering the ways that entrepreneurs are leveraging the internet and social media for entrepreneurial activities ranging from testing a concept to acquiring customers. This topic is particularly interesting because it is continually changing: entrepreneurs are finding new ways to use social networks, social networks change over time, and new social networks are emerging.