When we talked to her nearly three years ago, StyleHaul CEO Stephanie Horbaczewski was banking on a big investment: her own shoppable video role player.

StyleHaul, the digital fashion and beauty platform, got its kickoff in 2011 on YouTube with way how-tos and beauty review videos starring and produced past a growing network of millennial influencers. By early on 2013, StyleHaul was the No. 1 style and beauty channel on Google's video behemothic, with a network of virtually two,000 video bloggers across 41 countries.

"That Kool-Aid I drank with everyone else," Horbaczewski tells Fast Company, looking dorsum at her video platform program. "With this many video players out there, it's just not the direction I'm interested in."

StyleHaul CEO Stephanie Horbaczewski

Shortly later her appearance in our June 2013 issue, Horbaczewski saw the writing on the wall: The network didn't have a catalog of original video massive enough to warrant its ain player. An explosive trend toward social storytelling on platforms similar Snapchat forced her to halt the platform development in its tracks and reconsider her plans. Horbaczewski decided the network would continue publishing its multichannel content on native platforms like Instagram and YouTube.

In tardily 2014, European entertainment company RTL Group bought a controlling pale in StyleHaul for northward of $100 million and has since invested $xx million in improving the platform and its tools for tracking social and video impact.

At present StyleHaul has seven,000 influencers creating videos in 86 countries (half of them exterior the U.S.), a staff of more than 100, and more than than 500 million social fans. This summertime, the company launched its first foray into original scripted content on YouTube with Vanity–a drama starring Denise Richards and model Karrueche Tran, sponsored past Maybelline. An upcoming scripted serial will fifty-fifty feature i of StyleHaul's ain influencers as a producer.

Hither's how Horbaczewski mastered social storytelling and made information technology a tentpole of her business:

Go Back To Customs

The outset step, Horbaczewski says, is to stop thinking of social publishing as a one-sided action.

"I'1000 so sick of hearing the word 'follower' or 'fan.' You lot've got to return to the word 'community.' I think that's actually changing the unabridged trajectory of StyleHaul. The joke around the office is, 'Every advertiser wants to replicate the Ice Bucket Challenge.' And that was entirely based on a community activity," Horbaczewski says. "How do nosotros have the stone, drop it in the water, and make sure that each outstanding circle that comes out from information technology–that we continue to insert in whatever our objective is?"

To proceed interactions authentic, Horbaczewski says publishers demand to call back of the network as a whole, including all creators and users. For StyleHaul, whose staff of life and butter is pairing its influencers with advertisers for branded videos like beauty samples, she says it's not just the "pinnacle" influencers that perform well in converting views into transactions. StyleHaul data has shown that fifty-fifty the smaller-time influencers have an impact, so the platform focuses on supporting its network as a whole rather than putting its efforts backside a few influencers.

"Call back about scrolling through your feed. I knew I liked a post this morn, but I don't remember what information technology was. But if I saw something 15 times–the style you saw the Ice Bucket Challenge 15 times every single day–it has much more than affect," Horbaczewski says. "How exercise we marry that thought of influence, but with scale and individualizing that content? Information technology means you lot have to activate more users."

Don't Lose The Human Touch

StyleHaul used to work to gather influencers–a crucial part of the social video model. But at present the network has reached such a large scale that it's no longer well-nigh 1 influencer. "It's near using fifty or 100 in every campaign," Horbaczewski says of branded content featuring StyleHaul influencers.

StyleHaul uses a mix of proprietary information gathering and data companies like Tubular to track user behavior.

But Horbaczewski remembers a time when the StyleHaul algorithm for matching influencers with brand partners was ultra personal, with the platform doing most of the lifting in the pick process. Then the pendulum swung in the opposite direction–the visitor used its data cocktail for just most every single conclusion it made. Merely now (even given StyleHaul's enormous scale) the model is back to being a mix of high affect and data-based decisions.

The method comprises three steps. Start, Horbaczewski'southward squad consults with the brand on what they're looking for. Then StyleHaul uses its algorithm to weed out those who might non exist a fit (if a make sells only at Ulta, for example, StyleHaul removes all influencers who deal with Sephora). Then the StyleHaul team goes through the candidates with a "loftier-touch" lens, taking into account details similar whether the influencer is going through something personally, or whether she's trying to move away from style and into cosmetics.

"Information technology was and so high touch in the beginning, and and then nosotros tried to shift into everything being data. Again the life bicycle returns to it being a mix," Horbaczewski says.

Model Karrueche Tran stars contrary Denise Richards in StyleHaul's new scripted YouTube series Vanity.

Encounter Your Users Where They Are

"Trying to make someone arrange to something they don't take a need for is an uphill battle," says Horbaczewski of the dormant video histrion StyleHaul built in 2013. She likewise killed a website projection for the platform that would have put StyleHaul in the editorial business with publishing on its site. Horbaczewski realized her brand was the conversation and content effectually products instead of reportage about them, so her strongest bet was to publish on existing social media platforms.

Horbaczewski has to encounter her users where they are. As such, StyleHaul never publishes identical content on two platforms.

"Now we await at video and we think for a core video that'south x minutes on YouTube–there's two minutes that are right for Amazon, there's probably two or three minutes that are right for Facebook, xv seconds that are correct for Instagram, and seven seconds that are right for Twitter. You can look at it, and at present this nugget became six different stories," Horbaczewski says. "I component of information technology is, How do y'all find the right story using the content you accept for each platform? And the second is capturing the creation that they're doing. How exercise we activate people that desire to talk nearly the specific brands?"

While StyleHaul couldn't brand shoppable video work at the fourth dimension, Horbaczewski knows her network does play a big part in fashion and beauty commerce through the process of authentic social discovery.

"We've got to start thinking more about how we use video aspects on social platforms and how we utilise social platforms, non about how to brand people buy things. We do make people buy things, only information technology's through storytelling," she says. "It'south less near the actual transaction and more near the activity."

Upwardly next: Horbaczewski wants to make the StyleHaul tool less directed at traditional networks and advertisers, and more than B2C to help its producers rail their own performances and become paid to make the social content they'd already create.

"What I want is some type of tool where they can cosign and follow upwardly on opportunities. Because they're still going to go to other platforms, too. Nosotros've seen that with aggregators of social platforms–it's similar to shopping in a video. It's just not a behavior people want to do. I like to go to Instagram to do my Instagram thing. So I go to Twitter to exercise my Twitter thing. I don't want to run across them all in one folio. It'south a journey for me," Horbaczewski says. "Our tool is really more about how we connect the advertisers to all of these influencers, every bit part of what is already a very successful partnership nosotros already accept with these people, and the user journey nosotros already have. But it'due south extending into the further community–into the 500 one thousand thousand fans."