Lena Dunham
IN PHOTO: Creator of the HBO show Girls Lena Dunham arrives for the premiere of the third season of the show in New York January 6, 2014. Reuters/Lucas Jackson
Creator of the HBO show Girls Lena Dunham arrives for the premiere of the third season of the show in New York January 6, 2014. CREDIT: REUTERS/Lucas Jackson

Missed the season premiere of Girls? Not to worry because HBO is releasing the first two episodes of their hit series on Youtube.

HBO announced that it will upload the first two episodes of Girls' season three over its official Youtube channel on Monday, Jan. 13, at 10am, just 12 hours after its TV premiere the day prior.

The move is done to attract the show's online fan base as an alternative to watching the Girls season premiere live on Sunday or to catching up using their HBO GO subscription.

'For us, this is an increasingly challenging demographic to reach with traditional means,' Sabrina Caluori, HBO's vice-president of social media and marketing, told Mashable.

The network decided to 'be social first' in marketing its shows, using social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and other 'emerging platforms' like Tumblr, Vine, Instagram and Snapchat.

Speaking of Snapchat, HBO already had an account dedicated for Girls (handle: girlsHBO), joining the likes of Taco Bell and Seventeen magazine in utilizing the photo messaging app for marketing. The network thought that the new app would be useful, particularly the Stories feature wherein photos or 'snaps' can be seen for only 24 hours.

'I think it was the launch of the Stories feature that really solidified for us that there was a way to use this platform as marketers,' Caluori said in a separate interview. 'Prior to the launch of that, we struggled to come up with creatives that could be impactful.'

HBO also used Instagram to its advantage by posting a video series entitled 'Lena On Hannah On,' featuring show creator Lena Dunham talking about what would her character Hannah Horvath think about certain topics.

The network has done similar things to other social networking sites to promote Girls. On Facebook, they had character emojis posted on their official page. On Twitter, there will be a live tweet during the show's premiere featuring a member of the cast and crew. And on Tumblr, HBO relaunched Girls' official page, which now features GIFs.

Catch (or catch-up) the Girls season three premiere on HBO's official Youtube channel. And for Aussie fans who insists to catch it live, watch it over Showcase on Jan. 13, 7:30pm (AUS time).