Grace Helbig has been on YouTube for almost eight years of its 10-year existence, racking up nearly 2.3 million subscribers and making a name for herself with fun videos, fan engagement and an authentic style.

Her YouTube page, tagged “What a charming idiot,” has made her incredibly popular within her millennial and teen audience, who she not only relates to through her funny and personal videos, but who she also understands very well – from their behavior to their apparent disdain for change.

Her recent YouTube videos include an interview with James Corden about terrible Internet commenters and a “Spring Fashion Tutorial” in which she makes an iron-on T-shirt that says “eat sh*t.”

But then, some of her videos show a firm grasp on content marketing from which our industry could take a lesson or two. Watch her 50-step guide “How To Make A Viral Video,” for example:

Now, the actress/comedian/YouTube star (she’s not a big fan of labels) is also on TV, with a new talk show on E! called The Grace Helbig Show.

Below, Brief speaks to Helbig about her new show, the digital audience and how marketing herself is different online and on television.

BRIEF: From the perspective of a content creator, how similar do you find your E! show to your YouTube origins?

GRACE HELBIG: I find it to be really similar, actually. E! has been really open-minded about giving me creative freedom and making sure that the tone and the point of view is all very similar to what I do on YouTube, because what you do online is such a reflection of your brand – it is your brand. You’re trying to be as true and authentic to your audience as possible, and the whole goal of this TV show was to bring those qualities to traditional media platform. And E! has been game to try and do it, and it’s been a wonderful experiment ever since.

BRIEF: Do you think that brand you’re talking about has melded well with E!’s brand so far?

HELBIG: It has, they have really been an open door – they have really been so great at giving me creative control, which is, from what I’ve heard, not traditional at all.

I’ve spent years building my brand online and it’s a brand built off of myself, so to now not be myself is hard to do, so I think everyone on board has that understanding. They always say “be yourself” in so many auditions, but what they’re looking for is the opposite of who you are. This is the first time a company has told me to be myself and really mean it, which has been so encouraging – it’s been really cool.

BRIEF: What about the marketing aspect of your new show? Have you found that promoting the show is very different from promoting your videos online or your podcast?

[In one of her videos, “MY WORST IDEAS,” Grace ends the bit by promoting her show by asking viewers to tune in, then “promotional jargon, promotional jargon, promotional jargon!”]

“This is the first time a company has told me to be myself and really mean it.”

HELBIG: Yeah, it is a little different because the Internet is so saturated, and it’s so immediate and so personal, and television is timely and it tries to speak to its viewer, but I think it really lacks that intimacy that the Internet has. This is an attempt to try and bring that to television, but to still let it feel like a television show.

I didn’t want it to feel like a Web series that’s now on TV, I wanted it to feel like it’s big enough for television. It’s transparent, you see the crew in every episode, there’s no hiding the fact that there are now people helping me and I’m not in my own house.

I’ve gotten really great feedback about it – I think after the first episode the best piece of feedback I got was “This felt like I was watching your YouTube videos, I feel like this is the same person I watch online on my television.”

BRIEF: What kinds of things have you learned so far about the TV world?

HELBIG: Well, ratings are a new thing!

I’m always trying to live in a blissful ignorance of them – I’m trying not to qualify myself by the numbers. I try to reward myself internally by creating content I’m proud of that I think is funny and if I weren’t a part of it I would be jealous of myself for being a part of it.

It’s interesting, I don’t understand Nielsen ratings and I hope to never understand them. I’d rather focus my energy on thinking of more words for farts that I can use in an episode.

BRIEF: Have you found that your online audience is willing to follow you to the TV screen?

HELBIG: When I transitioned from “The Daily Grace” to “It’s Grace,” my hope was that people would follow me, but you never know. When I started this show, it was the same arc. I hoped that people would come with me but I can’t predict that.

If they do, I wanted to have the same qualities about what I do online that I think are most important to my audience. And that is to make them feel included, to give them a community to be part of and to have a great time, and value that time.

My audience are my friends but they’re also my boss at the end of the day. So we really try hard to make the show interactive. We take their comments and put them into consideration, changing parts of the show accordingly. We’re not prisoners to their comments, but we really value constructive criticism. I think by making it a fun sense of interactivity, it keeps the audience engaged and hopefully makes them feel the way they feel when they watch the Internet videos.

“I don’t understand Nielsen ratings and I hope to never understand them. I’d rather focus my energy on thinking of more words for farts that I can use in an episode.”

BRIEF: You’ve spoken about how your audience is a very non-traditional TV group – that they’re not used to the messaging like “tune in Friday at 8,” they just want to watch things on their own schedule. Coming from your demographic, I can remember tracking down a VHS tape to record Gilmore Girls, but a large part of your audience doesn’t remember not being able to DVR things or watch later online – why would they tune in to a TV show at 8 when they don’t have to? How do you see this realization taking shape in TV?

HELBIG: Yeah, exactly. It’s interesting, and this has kind of been the part that I’ve been really trying to observe, is how do you create that watching experience? How do you create something where the primary entertainment part of it happens the moment that it comes out? You can watch it whenever you want, but it’s more fun to watch it live.

With me, I live-tweet every episode so that it feels like this is destination television. And that’s the hard thing, I really have to get creative, because I know for myself, I watch things when I can, and that’s the convenience of the Internet world is that you can share things and watch things on your own time. So it’s figuring out what about things that aren’t athletic events makes you want to watch them live. That’s been our uphill battle.

BRIEF: Do you see it as a bigger challenge for your audience specifically?

HELBIG: Yeah, it is. However, I know for myself, when I was on “Daily Grace,” I was on a very strict schedule of posting my videos. I posted them Monday-Friday every day at 10 a.m., and I knew when I veered from that, it upset them.

So as much as this generation likes convenience, they equally hate change. I think a television show is as consistent as it gets in terms of scheduling, so then it’s about creating the convenience in the time that it’s on. How do you package it so it’s the convenient time for them to watch?

Whenever I create content in any way shape or form, I have to put myself in the shoes of the viewer – would I want to watch this and why? And then start to go from there to figure out creative ways of incorporating things in the show that allow people to want to watch it in the time that it airs.

BRIEF: How do you think that idea of just watching vs. watching live is changing shows like yours, whether on YouTube or on TV?

HELBIG: I mean, I think the whole landscape of media in general is changing – I think the idea of a television show by definition is becoming diluted. So at the end of the day, all you can do is strive to create content that people like and want to show others in whatever way, shape or form it happens.

And I think the show for E! is a great first step in valuing content and valuing relationships with an audience, and then from there figuring out how do we continue this, grow this, expand on this? Or in industry terms, “amplify the conversation.”

“As much as this generation likes convenience, they equally hate change.”

BRIEF: I was recently listening to your Nerdist podcast, where you and Chris Hardwick talked about the inherent weirdness of calling people Viners or Snapchatters or YouTubers, when people are just creating things wherever they happen to be. In the TV world, executives often worry about translating online talent to television – do you think it’s a mistake to categorize people like that, or do you think there is a separate talent base for each of those platforms?

HELBIG: This is a conversation I’ve been having a lot, and it’s really interesting with what Jerry Seinfeld just said about YouTube being a garbage can… It really comes down to what your definition of talent is. You might not think something is interesting, but a lot of people do.

So what is talent? Is talent being able to sing? Or is talent being able to cultivate an audience and move them in ways that create a message? It’s kind of all over the place, so I don’t think it’s fair to categorize people as certain types.

There are 16- and 17-year-old Viners and YouTubers with millions of people hanging on their every word, and it’s not fair to call them not talented because they move merchandise, they sell tickets, they speak to a lot of people, and so does Jerry Seinfeld. So who is more important in the entertainment industry? At this point, the line is very blurred.

BRIEF: So what are you seeing as the biggest difference for a content creator like yourself from when you started in that digital space to now?

HELBIG: I think the biggest difference is that it’s a viable job option that people are actively pursuing. When I first started doing it, it was a hobby that allowed me to express myself creatively, and hopefully got some sort of eyeballs on something about me that might be interesting in the entertainment and comedy world. But now people have built brands, they’ve created businesses and they’re self-sustained because of this digital platform.

It’s going to be really interesting – now there are Vine stars, there are Snapchat stars, there are still traditional actors and actresses. There are social media supermodels building their brands.

It’s a very brand-oriented world right now and it’s pretty obvious when we start making profiles of ourselves, we’re essentially creating a page that is our brand by definition – this is me, this is what I am, this is what I stand for, these are who I appeal for.

I have no idea what’s actually going to happen – I consider myself more an observer than an interpreter of what’s coming next, so we’ll see.

Watch Helbig on The Grace Helbig Show every Friday at 10:30 p.m. on E!

Helbig also has a book called Grace’s Guide: The Art of Pretending to be a Grown-Up, a podcast called Not Too Deep with Grace, she has toured with fellow Web stars Mamrie Hart and Hannah Hart in a show called #NoFilter and she has a Web series Hey USA with Mamrie Hart for The Scene.

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