How Social Media is Changing the Beauty Industry

The first Beautycon was in 2013, and it garnered 4,000 attendees. This year’s one-day event drew 5,000 people, but the people at the event represented just a fraction of the attention the convention saw this year. Thanks to trending nationally on Instagram and Twitter, Beautycon’s website received more than 320 million impressions, which is a 2,000 percent increase over the impressions the site received in 2013.

Social media’s effect on the beauty industry has shown itself in a number of ways. In the past, beauty trends were established in magazines and makeup was sold at makeup counters and through major ad campaigns. With the rise of the YouTube and Instagram stars, trends are showing up on the Internet, and makeup brands are scrambling to catch up. Additionally, people are increasingly looking to online beauty and makeup gurus for advice and product recommendations instead of magazines and advertorials.

The Rise of the Beauty Guru
Last year, Variety published a survey that showed that YouTube stars were far more influential to teens in the United States than even A-list celebrities like Katy Perry and Jennifer Lawrence. Michelle Phan, in particular, is an example of how YouTube can take an average makeup lover with a camera from obscurity to Internet stardom. Starting with just a MacBook Pro and a YouTube account, Phan built a career that eventually landed her her own makeup brand, a subscription service and a book.

Wayne Goss is another example of a success story, and although Goss is a professional makeup artist, much of his success is due to his YouTube presence. When he launched a line of cruelty-free hand-made brushes, they sold out in just five minutes in spite of a hefty $265 price tag. He points out that prior to social media, becoming a makeup artist involved going to school and learning from books with terrible illustrations. Now, video tutorials are making advanced techniques accessible to everyone, and that in turn is making consumers interested in high-quality makeup palettes that people would not have known or cared about in the past.

Social Media for Shopping
This new interest in beauty products has resulted in stellar sales for the beauty industry. In 2016, the makeup industry raked in more than $62 billion. It’s not just large brand names that benefited. Many smaller and indie cosmetics companies have also been doing well as a result of the ability to promote their products on Instagram and YouTube.

Brands like SugarPill, LA Girl, Morphe and Gerard Cosmetics have all benefited from social media popularity. In fact, social media is so powerful that many brands, both small and large, are now sending products directly to social media beauty mavens in the hopes that a good review or use in a tutorial will result in huge sales numbers. Furthermore, brick and mortar and online stores are also making decisions about what to stock based on what’s popular on social media.