Indie Content Creators: Safiya Nygaard
When one visits the YouTube channel of Safiya Nygaard, there are some remarkable elements they will immediately notice. The first of these is an astonishing subscriber count nearing 9.5 million. Next, nearly every one of her videos easily ranges from around 5 million to 20 million views. Lastly, and perhaps most interestingly, the genre of nearly all of these videos is related to beauty and fashion. Explaining Nygaard’s high subscriber count will not only mean taking a closer look at her content but also a look into some outside influences that served to increase her visibility.
The Nygaard content story begins at BuzzFeed. While the company may be well-established and normalized now, in the mid-2010s BuzzFeed was booming. In 2014 alone, the number of views of posts and videos from the organization was about 21 billion. The company was massively successful during this time and has content branches that reach from politics to motion pictures, to lifestyle content. During this time of massive success, Safiya Nygaard was a member of the Ladylike team, a subset of content creators who make lifestyle videos under the BuzzFeed banner. These videos range from about five to ten minutes long and often involved some kind of quirky challenge for the members to participate in. Being BuzzFeed videos, these videos have high production values and crisp editing, qualities that will carry over into Nygaard’s solo content.
Speaking of solo content, the entire BuzzFeed landscape would change in 2017, when Safiya Nygaard joined a host of other influential BuzzFeed creators in leaving the platform. The reasoning behind this decision was largely the same for all of them: a change in company culture. As BuzzFeed became more successful, there was increased pressure from within the organization to maintain that success, and this pressure trickled down to the creators. Recognizing the value of her personal brand, and unsure if that brand would remain personal with the way BuzzFeed was leaning content-wise, she left the company.
As a solo creator, Nygaard places more emphasis on the kinds of content she’s passionate about. In this case, that is make-up and fashion. While there is more of this style of content on her personal channel, she also still participates in many quirky challenges and scenarios. Additionally, this content seems to be longer-form and can range from fifteen to thirty minutes. One can imagine there is a great deal of crossover between the subscribers of As/Is, BuzzFeed’s rebranded lifestyle YouTube channel, and Nygaard’s personal page. Both channels use the same kind of unusual scenarios to entice the audience to their content. The major difference is the level of control, and there for the level of personalization.
As an independent creator, Safiya Nygaard personalizes the content she’s interested in making, while also using her experience at BuzzFeed to tailor it to the massive audience that has remained captivated for 5+ years. However, her ambitions have not stopped there. As recently as this year, Nygaard has signed to be represented by Night, a management company with a specific focus on working with content creators who also have the goal of branching out and starting their own business. With a successful story behind her and a long career ahead, one can only imagine what the future holds for Safiya Nygaard.
