Tool Kit: Internet Stars Find an Audience in Social Media - Tool Kit

Today, a teenager posting webcam videos to YouTube can get a movie deal (“Fred: The Movie”). A 30-something posting one-liners on Twitter can land a TV show on CBS (“$#*! My Dad Says”). Bloggers creating Internet memes are being offered book deals at a dizzying pace.

However, alongside breakout Web celebs — not to mention actual celebrities with huge online followings like Rihanna and Katy Perry — there’s a new class of microstars who are highly popular and viral, but have no aspirations of going Hollywood.

How they became Internet-famous — and made comfortable incomes — offers insights to those who are unsure of how to use Twitter, Instagram or Tumblr to promote themselves or their projects.

THE CELLPHONE QUIPSTER Like many teenagers, Joey Mueller, 19, spends much of his time texting on his iPhone. But when he taps out a 140-character message and presses send, he’s talking to nearly 400,000 people.

Mr. Mueller created his Twitter account, @itisjoey, in 2010. as he was traveling to compete at the World Horseshoe Tournament in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. He figured using Twitter to comment from a big event might help him draw an audience.

“I didn’t get any followers or anything,” he recalls, “I guess it wasn’t interesting.”

Now a sophomore majoring in graphic design at the University of Minnesota, he decided to avoid personal messages and focus on observational humor. A sample @itisjoey post: “Nancy Grace is the human equivalent of caps lock.”

Mr. Mueller said his personal Tumblr Web site already had 75,000 followers. He added a link to his Twitter account. Immediately, his follower count jumped. Then a curious thing happened: the numbers kept climbing. In 2012, he hit 440,000.

“I’m not sure why,” he said. “Sometimes I think I got lucky.”

Mr. Mueller said he had never purchased followers. He said that posting from noon to 6 p.m., when people typically spend more time online, helps. He also routinely adopts popular hashtags, especially political ones, which he said helped get him retweeted by organizations including Move On. The fame hasn’t gone to his head, he said, or at least his parents keep him down to earth. “They’re like, ‘You know, you’re not really famous. Stay in school.’ ”

THE TATTOO CHRONICLES Kimber Turner was bored. In the spring of 2008, when she was a 22-year-old journalism major at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro, Ms. Turner completed all of her courses online. Which is to say, she spent a lot of time on her laptop.

Ms. Turner started killing time online by collecting found images of tattoos borrowed mostly from body modification Web sites. She decided to post the photos on a Tumblr account she hastily titled with an obscenity common among youthful creators of Tumblrs, personalized Web pages where ephemera is deposited. In a few months, Ms. Turner had 300 followers. Other Tumblr users began e-mailing pictures and explanations of their own tattoos to her.

“Everybody wanted their story out there,” Ms. Turner says, “People just really liked how interactive it was.”

In 2008, she said, she received 200 submissions a day. Four years later, she gets 350 a day, she said. Images are contributed by fans all over the globe.

Today, Ms. Turner has more than 695,000 followers. For comparison, when Texts from Hillary went viral on Tumblr earlier this year, it attracted 45,000 followers in a week.

Her secret? Volume. She publishes about 50 photos a day, one every 30 minutes, to keep fans coming back. She also follows Tumblr’s other popular users.

“There’s so many people on Tumblr who post all sorts of random things,” Ms. Turner says, “Having a focus really lets people connect, and it’s a great way to stand out.”

Although she took various odd jobs after graduating in 2011, including one as a receptionist for a seamstress, ads on the site earn her $60,000 annually, she said.

“When I realized it could very well just be a full-time job, I nearly had a heart attack,” she says, “Now I make more than my parents.”