YouTube star iJustine on the secrets of getting attention — and 500M views

Justine “iJustine” Ezarik is a social media star, with frequent TV appearances, 500 million YouTube views, 3.3 million subscribers across three channels, 1.7 million Twitter followers, and a core audience among gamers and nerds.

Game companies want to get attention for their games in a crowded, $95 billion dollar industry, and iJustine is one of the conduits to make that happen. With a chirpy personality, she makes it look easy to get all over the place. She has a book coming from Simon & Schuster this summer. She has worked with brands like Mattel, Microsoft, Ford, Intel, GE, Taco Bell, eBay, Samsung, and others.

She’s a true star of the Internet. But online fans can also become Internet crazies, and the attention can be a double-edged sword. That means that Ezarik has to tread carefully.

We talked to her in advance of the Game Marketing Summit, which will take place in San Francisco on April 22.

Here’s an edited transcript of our interview.

Above: Justine “iJustine” Ezarik has a book coming out.

Image Credit: iJustine

GamesBeat: I see you all over the place. It’s interesting, how you can get yourself out there and get noticed. What’s your thinking or your approach as far as how to get noticed on the Internet. 

Ezarik: I’ve been doing this for a long time. I’ve been on a lot of these websites since they were first created. A lot of times, it’s just being an early adopter, trying out a lot of new things. People say, “This site is going to be terrible. Why are you there?” And it ends up being Twitter. I like to experiment with different things and find different uses for them. New things pop up every day – Snapchat, Vine, Parasail.

It’s finding ways to use these things, but also, you have to enjoy doing it as well. It’s something you have to do every single day. I edit and shoot all of my own videos, so if I’m not enjoying that, you’ll probably be able to feel it. It’s a lot of work, but if I’m having fun, it’s worth it.

GamesBeat: When you started out in this career, how did you view yourself? Were you a tech enthusiast? An actress?

Ezarik: I originally studied graphic design and video production. I had wanted to be a programmer — I loved development and coding — but it turned out that I really enjoyed doing the frontend more than backend development. I created websites for people and did graphic design and video projects.

I started posting videos on YouTube mostly because I wanted to teach myself how to use Final Cut. I’d been using Avid and Premiere and I wanted to move on to Final Cut. I started putting myself in these videos, just creating fun little things and putting them on MySpace and early YouTube, and it suddenly got all these hits. But I’d just wanted to show that I could edit, so I could get hired to edit other people’s projects. Now it’s come full circle and I’m editing my own projects, but for other brands and companies as well. It’s interesting, the turn that took.

GamesBeat: I started noticing your work when you were working with Geoff Keighley at Spike TV. Was that one of your big turning points?

Ezarik: Yeah. GameTrailers had this great show and they wanted to do a tech segment. I hosted their GTech segment, which was mostly focusing on things from outside gaming. There was obviously a gaming element to it, but it was more tech-focused. That was a lot of fun, working with Geoff], and I got to cover a lot of events like CES and E3 and Comic-Con.

Above: Justine “iJustine” Ezarik shows off the Apple Watch — she digs tech, too.

Image Credit: iJustine

GamesBeat: When did that start?

Ezarik: It might have been 2011 when I joined. The first thing I did with them was covering a CES.

GamesBeat: How should game companies market their games to get a wider audience? What kind of advice would you have based on what you’ve learned?

Ezarik: It’s finding people who already like your game, or who like things similar to it. With Call of Duty they found me because I posted a video driving one of the RC cars from Black Ops down the promenade or something. It’s being aware of people who are creating content around your game, or your brand in general.

It’s amazing, getting to work with these brands, because you get to take your projects to another level. Being supported by something to create content you’d make anyway makes it that much easier to create better things for your audience. Most of the time, creating stuff for YouTube, you have to do everything on no budget. It’s great to have a budget to work with and do cooler projects.

GamesBeat: Is YouTube still where you find your largest audience?

Ezarik: It’s spread out a lot, actually. I post different content in different places. I feel like YouTube is where I post longer-form content, or if I need to explain something in detail. Facebook is a whole different platform. I’ll post different types of videos there. I’ll put smaller, shorter videos on Instagram. Snapchat is just a daily thing that doesn’t necessarily matter. You can post anything there and it’ll disappear in 24 hours.

Periscope is really interesting, how they’ve taken over the live streaming. Obviously Meerkat was first, and now Periscope. My sister and I had dinner last night while 500 to 1000 people watched us eat. They’re like, “Cool, what are we going to have for dessert?” It’s just interesting having that reaction and being able to have immediate access to people. That’s going to be a problem for YouTube. How does it compete with the immediacy of Snapchat and Vine and all these other services? Mobile is already here and it’s only going to become more important.