How Casey Neistat used content marketing to sell his Beme app for US$25 million

How Casey Neistat used content marketing to sell his Beme app for US$25 million

How Casey Neistat used content marketing to sell his Beme app for US$25 million. It’s possible that the vlog was a well thought out content marketing strategy to increase the value of the Beme brand – priming it for acquisition. Casey’s story is a great example of how treating content like a product can create new revenue streams. The long-term goal Casey is one of the few YouTubers that chased more than ‘subscribers’ and revenue on the platform. Perhaps his goal was to use those subscribers to build a better brand and to sell an asset. His vlog posts were of an insanely high quality, unmatched by any other YouTuber on the platform. Likewise, his editing was unique, his photography was unique, his story was unique. He wasn’t afraid to create controversial content that his subscribers wouldn’t like because he wasn’t chasing ‘likes’. Selling Beme off the back of his YouTube success was a golden opportunity. But content marketing is different.

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Casey Neistat

This is a sponsored post by King Content.

As far as YouTube celebrities go, Casey Neistat had it made.

Since starting his daily vlog in March 2015, Casey amassed a massive follower base of 5.9 million subscribers and received more than one billion views on his videos. He’s one of the platforms most successful content creators and his profile seemed to be on a perpetual rise.

But he did something pretty extraordinary. He decided to walk away from it all – his vlog, his community and the money.

Why? Because he’d made it. He’d achieved success and was afraid of creatively going stale.

“I think the typical lifespan of most YouTubers is that they find a degree of success, and once they find that success, they stop innovating creatively because there’s a fear that if you change what you’re doing, the audience is going to stop watching,” he said.

According to Casey, success on the platform had become too easy and he wanted a new challenge.

To many in his community, it was a strange, perhaps even crazy, move. He’d found the secret sauce that so many content creators chase and he just walked away from it at the top of his game.

But, is that really the full story?

The fact that he alluded to achieving all he could in terms of success on the platform perhaps highlights another reason why he stopped vlogging.

A couple of days after Casey announced that he was ending the vlog, news broke that CNN had just purchased his app company, Beme, for US$25 million dollars. Word has it that CNN didn’t buy the app for the tech (indeed, they are folding the company); they bought it for the content creation talent – aka Casey and his team.

Coincidence? Or is quitting the vlog related to the Beme acquisition? It’s likely the two are linked. It’s possible that the vlog was a well thought out content marketing strategy to increase the value of the Beme brand – priming it for acquisition.

I’ll admit that evidence is light on the ground to support this theory. There’s no doubt, however, that Casey’s excellent YouTube content played a role in growing the appeal of his brand and profile, making an acquisition of Beme more likely.

Casey’s story is a great example of how treating content like a product can create new revenue streams.

The long-term goal

Casey is one of the few YouTubers that chased more than ‘subscribers’ and revenue on the platform. Perhaps his goal was to use those subscribers to build a better brand and to sell an asset. His execution essentially followed the content marketing funnel (below), including the following three steps:

  1. Acquire an audience.
  2. Research that audience.
  3. Monetise that audience.
1 The content marketing funnel
Acquire an audience

From the beginning, Casey created content that had not been seen on the platform before. In essence, his vlogs are the epitome of the 10x content that content marketers so ritually preach.

2 How to Create IOX content
His videos attracted an audience because they did three things really well:

Quality. His vlog posts were of an insanely high quality, unmatched by any other YouTuber on the platform. The editing was brilliant, the music perfectly suited, the content uplifting and entertaining. This made his vlogs more valuable than anybody else’s content.

Passion. Casey had a reputation for working harder and longer than any other YouTuber. His passion for the medium is what drove him to not let the cadence or quality dip. This meant that every time you clicked on his videos,…

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