Even if you have a video go viral, it doesn’t stop there. There are things you want to do to capitalize on this momentum and keep it going for as long as you can.

Whether you’re still trying to build traction for yourself on social media or you find yourself on the cusp of a viral moment on social media, here are some points to do and consider. It’s always good to keep these points in the back of your mind so you’re ready when it happens.

1. Like and respond to comments to keep engagement up.

 
It may be a chore but try and respond to as many comments as you can. You don’t need to sit there all day but be sure to check in periodically to engage with your fans. Just be warned that there will be negative comments sprinkled in. Also, review any flagged comments on TikTok or Instagram. I often find positive comments get trapped there too. Lastly, consider going live on the platform where your video is going viral to engage with new potential fans in real-time.

2. Put ad money behind videos that are taking off organically.

 
This is the best time to invest money in social media ads since the viral video is shown to be effective in gaining attention and hitting a chord with viewers. You don’t need to spend anything too crazy. If you have the funds, a couple hundred dollars would be more than enough fuel to add the fire.

3. Pin the viral video to the top of your profile.

 
You always want to make sure to keep your top-performing videos on the top of your profiles. Whether it’s Instagram or TikTok, pin the best ones as you go to make sure new potential fans can easily find them so they’re more likely to follow you.

4. Keep posting more videos!

 
Getting the algorithm to consistently push out your video to non-followers is like catching a wave in surfing. Post another video with the same song within a day or two. No need to overdo it and post multiple videos in a day. Try a different verse or the same verse in a different location.

5. Study the viral video and experiment.

 
See if there’s anything about the video that may have triggered something for the viewers. Was it the second verse of your song that was used? Was it something you wore or the location of the video? Get a feel for what viewers are responding to and be willing to switch things up.

6. Mix up the types of content.

 
With this video going viral, it’s going to attract new followers who are just learning about you for the first time. This is a great opportunity to get a bit deeper about who you are, show your personality and introduce other songs and videos. Focus on engagement/nurture type of content or “middle funnel content”.

If you read my campaign breakdown where we had a few viral videos, you can see that we tried different types of content, like an open verse challenge and created videos responding to funny comments. Also, the artist is big into fashion so we tried doing “fit check” videos that did well to entertain and deepen the fan relationships.

7. Need to be nimble and flexible with your plans.

 
Monitor the analytics and act quickly. Because the video for the first song went viral at the beginning of the campaign, I had to change and adapt to what was going on. Our entire marketing and release schedule changed so we could make the most of this new momentum.

8. Encourage UGC (User Generated Content).

 
Getting shares on your video will help spread virality, but the hope is it “infects” someone with a large following who will share it or be inspired to create their own video using your song. This could be things like a meme, dance challenge, remix, open verse challenge, reaction or review. A true sign of a video going full-on mega viral is if other people are creating content from your song and it grows exponentially as if it has a life of its own.

The best example that comes to mind to illustrate this is Lil Nas X’s Old Town Road where his memes eventually led to a dance challenge that exploded on TikTok in 2018. The song became a global hit that reached 15x platinum, won multiple Grammys and holds the record for being #1 the longest on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.

You can potentially manufacture that next level of virality by paying top influencers, but that can be a pricey campaign. It’s also possible to have it happen organically.

9. Optimize your profile for the next step.

 
Getting views and engagement on your viral video is exciting. You’ll likely see a large influx of new followers and your other recent videos will get more love from the algorithm. But what’s next? You want to make sure you have a way for new followers to take the next step in this fan relationship. Your profile link should go to either your website or a “link in bio” site where they can follow you on their favorite streaming platform, sign up for your email list, shop for merch or see your upcoming shows.

When you attract new fans into your marketing funnel with your viral video, you want to have your marketing foundation set so they can easily continue down the fan journey with minimal friction.

Conclusion

 
Even though we have a better understanding of how and why things go viral, it doesn’t make it any easier to do. After all, there is a lot of luck and timing involved too.

However, I’m seeing more and more artists go viral by posting short-form performance videos on Instagram and TikTok. One of the artists I work with had a few videos go viral during an album release campaign I ran. To read about my breakdown on the campaign and see examples of the viral videos, check out this blog here.

The post Going Viral? Here’s How Musicians Can Capitalize on the Momentum appeared first on D4 Music Marketing.

Many independent artists struggle with social media marketing. It’s not easy to know what exactly to post to break through the noise, get your music heard and reach new potential fans.

I put together a case study based on a recent album campaign I did to show you that it’s not as complicated as it seems to gain traction on social media.

This album rollout campaign resulted in 3 videos I created to promote singles for an artist going viral. This led to Snoop Dogg reposting one of these videos to his 80 million Instagram followers and Erykah Badu sharing another video to her Instagram Stories.

The organic reach for these viral videos spread well outside our network where random, high-profile artists, comedians and celebrities even engaged with the videos. This was my first time experiencing something like this so it was quite interesting to see it unfold.

During the 3 month campaign that started with the first single release on 8/8/24:

• We accumulated over 10 million views for the videos promoting the singles across all platforms (Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube Shorts). The videos were shared over 120k times.
• Spotify monthly listeners increased by over 35,000 (25% increase)
• Instagram followers increased by over 4x
• TikTok followers increased by over 17x
• One song from the new album, What Dreams Are Made Of, was added to a Spotify editorial playlist with 241k followers and brought over 80k streams during this period.
• On Spotify, the songs on the new album accumulated over 288k streams, 90k listeners, 28k saves, and 15k playlist adds within these 3 months.

Although we didn’t go mega-viral, these numbers were still impactful for a middle-class, independent artist seeing success on social media for the first time, with numbers exceeding well beyond the norm of what we were used to seeing.

What can other artists learn from this experience to build traction on social media?

In this blog, I will share the full breakdown and timeline of this album campaign, how we tried to capitalize on these viral moments and key takeaways that you can apply to your next campaign.
 

Before The Viral Campaign

 
Before getting into the full details, I want to share some context on how things led up to this album campaign that I feel many musicians can relate to.

However, if you just want to dive into the next section, the key to our viral success was posting short-form performance videos on socials (Spoiler Alert). I wrote an entire blog on this that you can check out.

Like many artists, even those in the music industry for decades, we struggled to find organic success posting on social media and remain a victim to the all-mighty algorithm. We were stuck at around 20k followers on Instagram and 1.4k followers on TikTok.

For previous album rollouts, we kept things relatively traditional with long-form music videos and bits of behind-the-scenes content here and there. When it came to views and reach, our measure of success was reaching views over 10k on Instagram and 800 on TikTok. These are not high standards, but that was the struggle we faced.

As a millennial marketer, I’ll be honest and say I’ve been avoiding TikTok and short-form content for many years despite being aware of its impact. All the artists I work with are already established to some degree, so it took time to figure out a content angle that would make sense for them.

The inherent problem with our marketing efforts has been focusing more on activating/engaging current fans and hoping they would be the ones to lead new potential fans into our marketing funnel through word-of-mouth tactics (i.e. sharing traditional music videos on social media, using songs in their Instagram Stories or playing songs for friends). In other words, not being more intentional with how to market to new fans with how technology and consumer behavior have evolved.

Over the years, I have found this to be an extremely common problem for established and seasoned artists. The discovery potential with the algorithms on these platforms (TikTok, Instagram, YouTube) can be massive, but you have to create and format specific content that they want to push to their user base.

For the past year or so, I began noticing more and more artists finding organic success on social media by posting vertically one-shot performance clips with lyrics on the videos. This was my “ah-ha” or eureka moment.

I realized many musicians were taking elements of a traditional long-form music video and adapting it as short-form vertical videos specifically for social media.

However, even editing short clips from a traditional music video into a vertical format isn’t good enough. I touch more on this later.

For decades, traditional music videos have been the primary marketing tool for artists to reach new potential fans. The problem is no one watches full music videos on social media and the algorithms hate it.

I was able to one artist to buy into the idea so we decided to give it a shot in the summer of 2024 with an acoustic album of many of the artist’s popular songs.

We posted about 20 short-form performance videos and there was a good response on Instagram with a few of them. Overall, we did notice that posting these types of short-form Reels gave us more views and engagement than we typically saw by pushing it to non-followers. The cool thing about Instagram analytics is that you can see how a Reel performs with your followers versus non-followers and how many followers you gain from the video.

This allowed us to experiment further and get more familiar with TikTok, a platform I’ve avoided diving into for so many years. With this experience, we were able to do this campaign again, but with the new studio album.
 

Viral Campaign Timeline

 
Now that we have that covered, here’s a breakdown of all the key moments during the campaign. I have included links to the exact video to give you a better idea of what was posted.

Thursday, August 8, 2024: The album campaign kicked off with the first single release of Take It 2 Far. The first short-form performance video was posted on all platforms on the same day. The video started with the chorus, and then led into the first verse. It performed poorly, initially getting only a couple hundred views the first day.

Tuesday, August 13, 2024: The next video to promote Take It 2 Far, starting on verse two, was posted and went viral on TikTok.

Views for the first 7 days of Take It 2 Far on TikTok

Even though it started to tail off a bit, the algorithm was still pushing the video steadily for over a month and brought in hundreds of new followers a day.

For comparison, this is what we typically would see as best case scenario on TikTok before this album campaign started:

The graph above is for a video promoting an acoustic version of his most popular song with over 10 million streams across all platforms.

After the first couple of days, we were getting noticeable bumps in views and engagement too. Once the algorithm favors your video, it’ll push all your other videos to non-followers.

Tuesday, August 20, 2024: After about a week of the song taking off on TikTok, the momentum carried over to Instagram. Up to this point, we gained about 5k followers on Instagram and 5.6k on TikTok.

To keep the momentum going, we shot another batch of videos for the song in a different location. However, none of the videos for this single would ever reach the same heights as the initial viral video.

Wednesday, August 21, 2024: I got a text from the artist showing that Snoop Dogg reacted to his Reel and followed him.

Shortly after, he reposted our Reel to his 89.2 million followers on Instagram.

The video Snoop Dogg reposted to this Instagram followers.

Side Note: We have no idea how Snoop Dogg came across the video as it seemed very random but we’re glad it came across his radar. Because the video was going viral on TikTok and did not have the same response on Instagram. By the time Snoop Dogg saw the video and reposted it, we had FB and IG ads running for about a week already. It’s possible he saw the ad or maybe someone who follows shared it and was connected with Snoop. Who knows.

Thursday, August 22, 2024: After about 24 hours, Snoops’s video hit about 1.3 million views, 30k likes and 1k comments on his Instagram. We wanted to make sure people knew about this so in the next video post for the song, we wanted to acknowledge that Snoop reposted it. We mentioned it in the caption.

Friday, August 23, 2024: Another type of content we introduced was responding to popular comments with videos. The goal was to engage the new fans and show some personality to build a deeper brand relationship with the artist outside of the music. Although these videos didn’t go viral, some of them performed extremely well because of their entertainment value.

We also used this opportunity to make sure people knew about Snoop Dogg reposting. There were already people commenting that either the song reminds them of Snoop Dogg or that Snoop should be on the remix. This was a great tie-in for one of these types of videos.

Wednesday, September 4, 2024: In order to take this momentum to the next level, I felt like we needed to spark more user-generated content (UGC). The hope was to figure out how to incorporate the song into a dance challenge. Instead, we tried launching an open verse challenge for the first time. It didn’t do too well, but we did have about 20 people participate across all platforms.

Thursday, September 12, 2024: The next single “What Dreams Are Made Of” drops. We shot a batch of videos on a rooftop from a space we rented. None of the 6 short-form videos we posted to promote this song went viral, but it still had a positive response.

Friday, September 13, 2024: The second single was added to a Spotify Editorial playlist with 241k followers.

This song was originally supposed to be the last single before the album dropped but we moved it up in response to the viral success we were having with the first single. Because of this, I submitted the song for Spotify editorial playlist consideration a week before the single release date and thankfully it still got added. However, it is still recommended to submit to Spotify at least 3 to 4 weeks in advance of the release date.

During the 3-month album campaign, this playlist brought in over 80k streams. It was great this happened because we can compare streaming numbers for a song that got playlisted but didn’t have the same social media success as the other singles.

Thursday, October 3, 2024: The third single Can We Still Be Friends officially drops and eventually became our most viral song. However, the first video flopped.

Due to scheduling issues, we had to shoot last minute at night the day before the single release. I was not prepared to shoot, but we just needed to improvise something to get a video out for release day.

Not a strong start, but the beauty of doing these short-form videos is it doesn’t matter. You can keep posting until something hits.

Thursday, October 10, 2024: We shot another batch of videos for the third single. For the second video, I wanted to experiment with posting a video that was still on a tripod and had the artist sitting this time. The camera was handheld in all the previous videos and he was standing.

This video also flopped, but why? Was it because of the still shot? Was it the sitting? Or was it because it started with the chorus and went into the first verse? Although it was easy to say that a sitting shot, especially if there isn’t any camera movement, doesn’t make for an interesting or engaging video, we learned that wasn’t the case.

Tuesday, October 15, 2024: The third video we posted went viral and hit similar numbers as the first viral video in August. I wasn’t ready to rule out that a sitting and still camera shot could work so I tried it again. This time, I started the video with the second verse and that did the trick. Also, the reason this video also did better is because you can see his entire outfit.

I believe this video helped the next one to go viral, reaching the most views we’ve seen on a single video so far.

Thursday, October 17, 2024: We post the fourth video and it goes viral, reaching over 2 million views across all platforms and becoming our most successful one in the campaign.

Monday, October 21, 2024: We introduced “fit check” as a new type of content to experiment with. As a fashionista, this type of content made sense for the artist and it did well hitting 160k views. It even caught the attention of West Coast legend Suga Free, to whom many commenters during this campaign have compared the artist to during the album campaign.

Friday, October 25, 2024: The new album officially drops on all platforms.

Monday, October 28, 2024: I suggested the artist go live on TikTok and Instagram to talk to fans about the new album. As strange as it sounds, this move was more about showing the new followers that this artist is a person.

Tuesday, October 29, 2024: Because of the viral success of the video we posted on 10/17, we wanted to post another one with the same backdrop. Unfortunately, it was the last and only take we did in front of the house before getting kicked off the property so we couldn’t finish recording the second verse.

Since we only had half of the second verse recorded, we shared a 20-second snippet and it went viral, also reaching 2 million views across all platforms.

Thursday, October 31, 2024: We released our only “traditional” music video for “It Might Not Be Love” on YouTube. This was shot the previous year. For how much was spent on this music video, it did not provide a good return on investment for how it performed compared to the short-form videos.

We posted a short snippet of the music video on socials but it didn’t perform well. The mistake the first time was mentioning the full video was on YouTube in the captions and on the video itself, which could have potentially caused algorithms to derank it.

Wednesday, November 13, 2024: Erykah Badu shared the 20-second snippet on her Instagram Story. Although this didn’t really move the needle, we still gained about a thousand new followers and it was cool to see this as big fans of the artist.

Screenshot of the Erkyah Badu repost on Instagram Stories

Thursday, November 14, 2024: We introduced a new type of content called BS Comments where the artist would respond to negative comments. It’s our take on Jimmy Kimmel’s Mean Tweets where artists, athletes and celebrities respond to mean comments about them.

Thursday, December 5, 2024: Since the traditional music video wasn’t effective, we shot a batch of videos for the fourth single at a local bar. We posted the first short-form video, outperforming the clips pulled from the music video.

Wednesday, December 18, 2024: The best video for “It Might Not Be Love” out of the recent bunch was posted and it also started to take off leading up to Christmas.

Instagram graph showing the Reel performance for It Might Not Be Love.

It’s annoying that once you run an ad on an Instagram video, the performance metric graphics for ‘followers versus non-followers’ disappear so I can’t show previous ones unfortunately. But since we didn’t run this video as an ad, I’m able to share what the graph looks like for this video. Of course, it doesn’t take a data scientist to understand that this is the type of performance you want to see – views increasing from non-followers.
 

Social Media Campaign Costs

 
For this campaign, we wanted to keep costs at a minimum by focusing on building organic momentum on social media.

Even though we accomplished this, we made sure to push the album from all angles. In addition to paying for radio promotion and a publicist, we also put ad money behind videos that were gaining traction to add fuel to the fire. All these things did help, but all of the momentum came from organic socials from these short-form videos.

So if we’re just looking at the core costs of creating and posting videos on social media, including ad spend, it was about $1,000. This also includes a $250 rental fee to book a rooftop to shoot videos for one of the singles.

This does not of course include the cost to hire someone like myself to manage the entire campaign and create the video assets, but if you’re doing it yourself, this won’t be a cost for you.
 

Key Viral Video Takeaways

 
1. Going viral is often unexpected. You hear this a lot from people who go viral. In our situation, it was definitely true. We were seeing some success posting short-form performance clips for a previous acoustic album release but did not expect any of our videos to take off like the first one.

Because it is unexpected, it’s good to be aware of the action steps you should take if it were to happen to you to keep the momentum going. I cover this below.

2. Negative comments are “good.” As you become more popular, you will naturally have more haters and attract more negativity your way. Unfortunately, that’s the way our culture and society works now. But people leaving negative comments ultimately help your video in the algorithms. This can be viewed as a good thing as long as you’re not reading these comments or taking them to heart.

As someone who read most of the comments, I would say 90% were positive and 10% were negative. A lot of the “negative” comments were drawing comparisons to what the artist looks or sounds like to be funny or entertaining.

3. Luck and timing still matter a lot. The first time I posted the video for the first single, the numbers were doing what they normally would do. But the next video took off on TikTok only and not the other platforms.

The second video that went viral, promoting the third single, took off on Instagram and not TikTok.

Through experimentation leading up to these viral videos, I found that posting around 9AM PT on either Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday worked the best for us. The analytics on Instagram and TikTok showed that our peak active users was at about 4PM PT.

Sometimes you don’t know what video will catch with the algorithm. You just have to do your best to use the analytics to find the best times to post and keep trying.

4. Comment baiting in the videos helped. It’s one thing to ask a question in the caption as a way to encourage comments from your fans. It’s another thing if elements in the videos naturally encourage people to leave a comment. This could be from how you look, how you dress or any imperfections in the video.

From our end, it was something that was totally unintentional, but it worked in our favor. The artist is very fashion-conscious and can be a bit more… adventurous with his clothing choices so viewers often left comments about it.

5. Experiment with which part of the song to post. Going into this campaign, my hypothesis was starting the video with the chorus or hook was best move. Turns out that starting the video with the second verse performed best. Now, this may vary depending on the genre or style of music you do so it’s important to experiment.

Also, you don’t need to share the entire verse or include the chorus in the video. In fact, I’ve seen plenty of artists just share 15 – 30 seconds of a verse and have it perform well.

With this in mind, we tried sharing a 20-second snippet of a verse and it took off.

6. Social media success does not directly translate to streaming success and vice versa. Despite earning over 7 million views from all of these videos, we saw a slight increase in overall streaming numbers. Once Snoop Dogg reposted our video to his Instagram followers on August 21st, we saw a noticeable bump in streams on Spotify as shown below.

The streaming impact on Spotify after Snoop Dogg reposted the video for “Take It 2 Far” to his 89 million followers.

In general, the numbers and attention you earn usually stay localized within that platform, except when something goes mega-viral. What I noticed is the reverse is true too. If you get a lot of streams from Spotify playlists, this often does not translate to getting followers on social media.

7. You can’t predict which video will go viral. Initially, I thought if certain performance metrics were high enough, the algorithm would more likely push it to non-followers.

On TikTok, you have ‘average watch time’, ‘percentage of full video’ watched and ‘retention rate’. You would think these metrics are important to them since they’re highlighted in the analytics overview.

When I compared these numbers to other videos, I found that there were some that had better metrics but they weren’t getting the same love with the algorithm. There are likely other metrics that are taken into account, like shares and how many videos are created from your original video/sound.

8. High production and higher costs for video don’t mean better marketing performance. As an independent artist, a traditional music video where you’re spending thousands of dollars out of pocket just isn’t a cost-effective marketing tool in today’s digital climate. That’s exactly what we saw play out in this campaign. We got significantly more reach and followers from 20+ short-form performance videos that cost a fraction of what we paid for a traditional music video.

Most of the short-form videos I put together and posted were shot on a $500 camera (Insta360 Ace Pro is now $300, but there’s also a newer model), but you can do better with most modern smartphones, like an iPhone 16 Pro Max.

Because these videos can be inexpensive and simple to shoot, you can create more and have them edited much quicker. Because content is so saturated, it becomes more of a numbers game than having super high-quality production.

In fact, highly produced content can potentially work against you in the newsfeed as people subconsciously prefer more authentic, less unedited videos. This is why the short-form performance videos that usually perform best are often one-shot.
 

Conclusion

 
Typically, songs and videos that go mega viral encourage and incentivize user-generated content (dance challenges, lip syncs, reactions, reviews) and/or attach themselves to memes or events. For us, that was one area we weren’t able to capitalize on to take these viral moments even further.

Despite that, this was a successful campaign as a fully independent effort. Creating the right content to promote your release on social media doesn’t have to be complicated or expensive.

Hopefully, this case study and campaign breakdown was useful for you. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out, leave a comment or set up a call to chat with me.

The post Going Viral On Social Media: Campaign Breakdown For Musicians appeared first on D4 Music Marketing.

As of this writing, the remix of the song has been streamed 400+ million times on Spotify alone and has stayed on Billboard’s Top 100 for 17 weeks straight. This officially beats the Billboard record for the longest a song has been at number 1.

The Atlanta artist ended up signing a record deal with Columbia Records and has released an EP so far through the label. He has become a music star, posting photos on his Instagram hanging out with the biggest names in music and culture.

He also claimed to have intentionally created “Old Town Road” so that it would go viral. Did this rapper, who only started rapping since May 2018, in fact, figure out the secret to going viral?

In case for some strange reason you have not heard the song yet, here is the video for the remix version with Billy Ray Cyrus that took over popular culture:

Stories like this are always interesting to dissect. Even if you’re not trying to go viral, there are definitely things you can learn and apply to your own career.

In this blog, I share his back story and all my thoughts that I think other musicians should learn from his viral success.
 

The Back Story

 
Before the Country Hot 100 controversy, where Billboard decided that the original version of the song didn’t meet the criteria to be categorized as country, “Old Town Road” was actually becoming a viral hit on its own.

The surprising thing about Lil Nas X’s rise to fame is that he started rapping for less than a year before blowing up. Within that span of time, Lil Nas X released about 16 tracks on his SoundCloud (his older songs have been removed by the label), including the original viral hit “Old Town Road” that he posted on December 3, 2018. Most of his songs didn’t get much attention compared to the funny memes, unrelated to music, that he would post.

“Old Town Road” first came about when Lil Nas X bought the beat from a Dutch teen Young Kio through a website called beatstars.com for $30 dollars. The banjos in the song, sampled from a Nine Inch Nails song, inspired him to write a song with a “loner cowboy runaway” vibe that reflected his current life situation.

Side Note: If you want to learn more about the story of the song from the perspective of the young producer who made the beat, Young Kio, you can check out this article.

Lil Nas X deliberately wanted to make a viral song. He spent the whole month of November writing the song and released it early December. A couple of days after the release, he sent the below tweet:

twitter please help me get billy ray cyrus on this pic.twitter.com/UDoeiOZqc1

— nope (@LilNasX) December 5, 2018

As we are all aware of now, the irony of the tweet from this unknown kid in Atlanta at the time was that he did get Billy Ray Cyrus on the track months later.

By marketing and promoting his song through numerous memes, “Old Town Road” reached the top 50 Country list on SoundCloud around December 19th:

OLD TOWN ROAD IS TOP 50 COUNTRY ON SOUNDCLOUD!! pic.twitter.com/vtstydGpnU

— nope (@LilNasX) December 20, 2018

In February;, Lil Nas X first uploaded the “Old Town Road” to the short-form video app TikTok. This really helped the song take off.

By March 16th of this year, “Old Town Road” was generated enough streams to make its way into the Billboard charts at number 19. This is where the controversy began and took his viral success to the next level. Billboard disqualified the song because it “does not embrace enough elements of today’s country music to chart in its current version.”

Lil Nas X then signed a deal with Columbia Records and got Billy Ray Cyrus on the remix of the song, which allowed it to be on the Billboard Country charts in April.

That was an overview of what happened in case you were not familiar with his story. We’ll get into the details.
 

What exactly did Lil Nas X do to go viral?

 
As I mentioned earlier, Lil Nas X claimed he purposely wrote “Old Town Road” to become a viral hit. A lot of times songs that actually go viral aren’t done so intentionally. However, this may be an exception.

He crafted the song around cowboy culture, including the title itself, and injected western lingo throughout the lyrics. Unlike the other songs he put out that didn’t do well, it was the first time that he wrote a song to formulate a viral hit.

According to Lil Nas X, the viral song had to be:

• Short
• Catchy
• Quotable, with fun lines and lyrics that people want to use as captions
• Used in memes

Once it came out, he promoted the song nonstop by retweeting horse and cowboy memes with the song from his friends and followers. From there, it slowly caught on a couple of months in.

I tried digging up his old tweets as examples of how we went about promoting “Old Town Road” and these were what I found. I’m sure there was a lot more, but this should give you a good idea of the memes he was creating:

good morning buckaroos lets get this mf cattle ?⚡️ pic.twitter.com/MYhVTMeamD

— nope (@LilNasX) December 12, 2018

country music is evolving pic.twitter.com/BEZIw3TE8l

— nope (@LilNasX) December 3, 2018

pic.twitter.com/qbExBTU78G

— nope (@LilNasX) December 21, 2018

Although there are other factors outside his control that went in his favor that allowed the song to become the global hit (discussed below), he spent a lot of time pushing and promoting the song. In other words, the song didn’t just magically catch on, there was work being put behind it.

Next, I’ll go over 6 key factors that allowed Lil Nas X to go viral that you can learn and adapt in some way to your own career.
 

1. Make a “good” song.

 
With all this being said, it leads to one of the first principles of virality – practical value. It is one of the 6 research based principles for something to go viral, according to marketing professor and bestselling author Jonah Berger.

Another way of saying it is, without the story, hype, controversy and memes, is the song likable as it is? Does the song provide some sort of value or benefit to the listener?

It sounds obvious, but it’s easy to let your own personal biases about your music get in the way of what you think is good or not good. The producer who made the beat to “Old Town Road” actually said it was his “throwaway beat,” yet it was good enough to later become one of the hottest songs in our culture. It works both ways.

The point here is that your song needs to be good at whatever it is you’re trying to accomplish. Lil Nas X wrote the song to be fun and entertaining so it could go viral. Clearly, he accomplished that. Without the song actually being catchy and quotable, could the song have become the global hit that it became? I would doubt it.

How do you know if your music is “good”? You promote it the best you can and see how people respond. After all, something that is considered “good” is very subjective to different audiences. You need to make sure you put in the proper time and work to get your song out there to the right audience to see if it’s good and resonates with people. Just posting it on SoundCloud or Spotify is not enough, especially when you haven’t established yourself yet.

At the very least, you should:

• Get your friends and network to help promote it
• Share it with your community (if you don’t have one, find one)
• Post it on all your channels using the right hashtags
• Pay for Facebook, Instagram or YouTube ads
• Reach out to influencers and content creators

Lil Nas X clearly knew he had a good song, and you can read the responses from his old tweets indicating that people liked the song when he first started promoting it on Twitter.

When influencers, with large followings of their own, reach out to you to use the song because they know it’ll make them look good if they shared it, you know you have something good. This was what helped “Old Town Road” go viral and leads to the next point.
 

2. Get people talking about you with a good story.

 
Whenever I first hear about an artist that has gone viral, it has always started the same way.

When my friend first introduced me to Post Malone’s White Iverson, he said, “Check out the video with this goofy looking white guy who thinks he’s like a white Allen Iverson”.

When another friend introduced me to Rich Brian, he asked me to guess the race of the rapper based on just the music without seeing the video.

The same thing happened with Lil Nas X when a friend asked me, “Did you hear about how this black kid wrote a viral country trap song and was kicked out of the Hot 100 Country Billboard list?”

All of these cases were through word of mouth when I learned about them in person. I didn’t ask my friends to introduce me to music. There was something interesting, funny, surprising or different about the artist that they felt inclined to share with me.

Why is this important? It’s this concept of social currency.

In subtle ways, we share things based on how something makes us look and how others will perceive us. Social currency is what helps make the person who shares something look good or valuable to the other person they are telling it in a social context.

For example, if I share a really funny video with you, it makes me look good if you really like it because it puts me in a positive light in how you perceive me. If I tell you about a hot, upcoming artist you never heard of who becomes really famous it makes me look good when I introduce you to them. This is because it demonstrates that I have good taste in music or that I’m in the know.

When it comes to virality, you need to do or create something that carries social currency so it’s worth mentioning through word of mouth and sharing with others.

On top of good music, there needs to be some other element, like a good story, that makes people feel inclined to talk about it with others. Humans are hardwired to be receptive to stories. Notice how in the cases above, it never started with “check out this really good song.” There’s always more to it.

To see the power of story in this particular case, let’s look at Google search trends.

You can see that Lil Nas X didn’t really go super-viral until March when the controversy with Billboard occurred. From then, that’s when he really took off. The story about the Billboard controversy generated so much social currency that the media, news and blogs all had to share.

Lil Nas X on Google Trends

We can’t give Lil Nas X credit for the story aspect as I’m sure he didn’t anticipate his song charting on the Hot 100 Country list and getting kicked off before teaming up Billy Ray Cyrus.

However, as covered earlier, Lil Nas X did other things that led up to this point and deserves credit for. This comes to show that you really can’t control virality as much as it seems. If you do things right knowing what you know in this blog, you’ll be in a better position to do so.

These are the principles that power of word of mouth marketing and fuels virality. We all know that when you can spark discussion or better yet, debate and controversy, that is how things can really spread. This leads to the next principle.
 

3. Generate debate / controversy and evoke emotions

 
Is it country? Is it rap? Is it country trap?

Is “Old Town Road” not country enough? Or was Billboard being racists because the artist is a young black kid from Atlanta?

These are the types of questions that got people thinking when the song was first disqualified from Billboard’s Hot 100 Country list. I would argue it was the big catalyst that allowed the song to see the type of success that it did.

When looking at it more broadly, there’s often an emotional component to things that go viral. Then, when you get people triggered by controversy, emotions get entangled even more, which creates a perfect storm.

From my understanding, race in country music has been an ongoing issue for quite some time. When issues of racism and cultural appropriation get into the mix, it’s bound to cause some debate.

Although Billboard denies it had anything to do with race, there have been other white Country music artists who incorporated elements of hip hop into their beats and production techniques. Examples are artists like Florida Georgia Line and Sam Hunt.

This doesn’t necessarily mean you should do extreme things that are controversial just to get attention. People who try different things and push the boundaries may naturally generate some discussion or debate. This leads to the next point.
 

4. Trying something new or different.

 
When I say this, it doesn’t mean it has to be something no one has thought of or tried, because combining country and rap is not new nor is “country trap.” Lil Nas X has helped to put this sound on the global stage, but he credits Young Thug for pioneering Country Trap. The influence of country music in hip hop music has been around for quite some time.

For Lil Nas X, “Old Town Road” was completely different from anything he put out before. He came across the beat and was inspired to try something he never did in his short career in music.

With so many people doing the same thing, you have to be willing to experiment and take artistic risks. It doesn’t have to be something that has never, ever been done before, but hopefully, it’s refreshing and creative. There’s power in combining or blending things that don’t normally go together or uncommonly done.

And of course, there are risks involved because it doesn’t always mean that everyone will like it. That’s why it makes the reward worth it if you have something special, as it can be the fuel you need for exposure. Post Malone is a good example of this as well.

“I believe whenever you’re trying something new, it’s always going to get some kind of bad reception.” – Lil Nas X

Having heard this story, I’m sure people are inspired to do their own genre crossover in hopes to get exposure. Don’t force it though, because I feel people can sense it. But if you ever come across an idea or opportunity to make something different or uncommon, do it.
 

5. Incorporate Visuals (Video / Memes / Dances)

 
Another element that all things that go viral seem to have in common is some visual component. Things that have gone viral, at least from what I can recall, was never just a song. There was always some video attached to it.

As mentioned in my blog on virality, one of the core principles of virality is when something is public, which I would extend to say something we can visually see.

With Lil Nas X, there were visual elements:

• Videos
• Dances
• Memes

When Lil Nas X first released “Old Town Road,” he created some visuals to go with the song. The first was a “music video” with the song synced up to some clips from the video game Red Dead Redemption 2.

A couple weeks after, he created a lyric video using video game clips as well.

These are nothing spectacular, but it got the job done. It comes to show that you don’t need high production videos, but it should complement the song and the goal you want to accomplish with it.

The other visual component that he credits for helping to promote the song were the memes. Some of them were shared above. He had a knack for making memes, and knew that it was a powerful way to market his song. Memes are a big vehicle for virality and attention because they essentially are designed to trigger shares or retweets.

Because he purposely created and promoted his song with a cowboy theme in mind so it was easy to establish the visuals for it.

However, what took the song to the next level was when it caught on to the video-sharing app TikTok. For weeks, people were dancing to his track while dressed up in cowboy attire. We should all be familiar with the power of dance attached to certain songs and how that can catch on quick.

It should be no surprise that visuals or things that are in the public eye help are a crucial mechanism for virality.

This leads to the final point about virality.
 

6. Capitalize on what’s trending online.

One of the big cultural trends that took off at the time when “Old Town Road” was released, which worked in his favor, was the Yeehaw Agenda.

What started out as memes, the Yeehaw Agenda became a movement of appropriating cowboy fashion and culture as seen with many celebrities rocking various cowboy aesthetics.

On top of this cowboy style trend, the song also gained traction on the social network app TikTok as a part of the #YeeHawChallenge where people would dress in full cowboy attire and dance to “Old Town Road.” It quickly became the soundtrack and anthem of this cowboy movement. This is what allowed it to climb up various streaming charts and led to the Billboard controversy.

An influencer on TikTok known as @nicemichael reached out to Lil Nas X to use his song and claims he was the first one to use “Old Town Road” in one of his videos. After he posted a video of him dancing to his song as a cowboy to his 123k followers on TikTok, which created a wave of people doing the same thing for weeks on the platform.

@nicemichael how’s this for a country boy #foryou #funny #dance #countryboy ♬ Old Town Road – Lil Nas X

Did Lil Nas X create “Old Town Road” knowing that he could capitalize on the YeeHaw Agenda? Possibly.

The big lesson here is to keep a pulse on what’s going on in the news, culture, world events and social media. Attention is the currency of the digital age. If there’s something trending that has people’s attention, it might be an opportunity for you to capitalize on it if it makes sense for your brand.

Another principle of virality that Lil Nas X had successfully implemented has to do with this concept of triggers.

A good example and explanation of triggers is from one of the early viral internet songs “Friday” by Rebecca Black. Because of the song’s association with the day Friday, many people shared it and used it as memes once a week all on the same day. Yup, when Fridays came around, this triggered people to think about the Rebecca Black song, which was what helped the song and video become a viral hit.

With Lil Nas X, he successfully created a song that would associate with “Old Time Road” when they were triggered through cowboy memes and fashion.
 

Conclusion

 
So did Lil Nas X really figure out virality? Yes, but it’s nothing we didn’t already know.

As I’ve laid out in this blog, he did everything that one would need to do to go viral, but there were a lot of other factors out of his control that went in his favor to be successful with “Old Town Road.” With some luck, every piece needed for the song to take off lined up perfectly.

The reason why I don’t advocate for going viral is that it’s not as easy as it seems and you’re not in full control of the outcome. It’s like trying to become a millionaire by spending all your money on lottery tickets every week. Lots of people get caught up in wanting overnight success and growth hacks because they are impatient. The chances are never in your favor, which is why you shouldn’t solely focus on going viral.

A big takeaway from this blog is to be aware of what’s going on in culture and around your own life. With the virality principles in mind, know when to capitalize on certain trends and opportunities that make sense for you. Knowing the mechanisms of virality should help you maximize the potential exposure of everything you do to help get you where you want to be just a bit quicker, even if it’s not to be a viral superstar.

If you want to read more about virality, check out this blog I referenced throughout this blog:

Going Viral: 6 Research Based-Principles to Increase Music Exposure

The post Going Viral: Did Lil Nas X Hack the Secret Code to Virality? The 6 Keys to His Success appeared first on D4 Music Marketing.

In the last 3 months, Hobo Johnson has:

• Reached 700k+ Facebook followers (up from a few thousand)
• Gained 256k+ Youtube Subscribers
• Sold out shows all over the U.S. and U.K.
• Reached #11 on Billboards Heatseeker’s Chart
• Had at least 4 of his songs at the same time on Spotify’s U.S. Viral 50 Playlist
• Booked his first big festivals – Bumbershoot in Seattle and Outside Lands in San Francisco

In the world of virality and mainstream artists, this is relatively impressive. But to the average independent artist, this is an astronomical feat for a 20 something-year-old adult from Sacramento.

How did he do it? It was all thanks to this video he released with this band The Lovemakers on March 7, 2018:

It wasn’t a hot recorded song or album that propelled him to internet stardom. It was a NPR Tiny Desk submission video recorded in what looks like someone’s backyard in Sacramento.

After watching the video, you may be inspired to create your own Tiny Desk submission, but don’t expect the same success.

The fact is Hobo Johnson is a one of a kind artist with his own unique energy.

This story hit home for me, because I currently do live in Sacramento where Hobo Johnson is from. I’ll be honest and admit I underestimated Hobo Johnson. I’ve known about him for a couple years before this happened, but it never occurred crossed my mind that he was capable of this kind of success.

In this blog, I will share what stood out to me about his story that I think other artists can learn from.

Note: The quotes you see are actual comments people have left related to Hobo Johnson. I find that reading and studying comments is very insightful.
 

1) Going viral is still NOT a viable strategy.

“Literally watching this man rise in just the past 2 weeks blows my God damn mind.”

As inspiring as his story is, trying to go viral as a way to become “successful” is not an effective strategy. It’s much harder than it seems.

However, this doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t study the various factors or characteristics of a video that can increase the likelihood of something you create going viral. This is a good habit, because it shows you what makes great content that people want to share.

Take a look at 3 artists who have gone viral in the past few years (I tried my best to not include hip hop artists).

2015: Post Malone with White Iverson:

2016: Rich Brian (Rich Chigga) with Dat Stick:

2017: Clairo with Pretty Girl:

If you’re not familiar with these videos, I would watch them and pay close attention to what elements or characteristics these artists have and what stands out in their songs and videos. I will touch on some of these things in this blog. After watching, you should notice reoccurring elements in Hobo Johnson’s song and in each of these 3 example videos.

The fact still remains that you shouldn’t sit around and bank on trying to manufacture a video or song so it will go viral. But, if this is still a channel you want to pursue, there are key elements that can increases your opportunity. If you’re interested in learning the science of going viral, check out my other blog.

One last point. Hobo Johnson even said himself that he was caught off guard that this was the video out of all things that caught on.

More often than not, it would appear that artists achieve viral success when it’s unexpected. I have yet to come across an artist who has gone viral because they intentionally were trying to or knew they were absolutely on the right path to becoming a viral success. Authenticity is so important nowadays that we can detect bullshit and people who are trying too hard.

You don’t need to go viral to be a success, but sometimes it just takes that one song or video to trigger a chain reaction for everything that you’ve worked for to come into fruition.
 

2) You can do something different and still become successful being yourself.

“He is definitely talented and different.”

I’m sure we’re all familiar with this message, but I think it’s important to reinforce in today’s society. It’s easy to get caught up in trends and conform to what is popular, especially in music.

For several years now (thanks to the internet), we’ve been seeing a shift with all types of different people becoming popular who don’t necessarily fit into the typical mold, more so then in the past it seems. There’s a market for all types of people who are: awkward, not physically fit, weird, quirky, dorky, gay, goofy looking, scrawny, shy, unattractive, have different body types or strange styles, dress funny or don’t conform to gender roles.

Because we have the ability to become our own media company (a Gary Vee reference) via social media, there’s more room for diversity and opportunity for different niches in music.

Hobo has created his own distinct sound and style that resonates with others like him. There isn’t anyone that I know that comes close to his voice.

This shift is a sign. People like different. In other words, there’s more opportunity to be accepted for who you are because it’s easier to find and connect with people who are like you through the internet.

This doesn’t mean intentionally trying to be different or over the top just to gain attention. It needs to be authentic, which ties into the next point.
 

3) People really appreciate vulnerability and authenticity.

“I’ve struggled with depression and anxiety my whole life and I think that’s why I enjoy his art. Not too often you see people these days being vulnerable on purpose.”

I think artists and musicians put themselves in vulnerable positions in varying degrees through their lyrics and performances. Music has always been an emotional and personal outlet, but I think we’re seeing a higher level of it now.

Even Kanye West has openly talked about his addiction to opioids, insecurities of being overweight and bipolar diagnosis.

When you really open yourself up, I feel it makes it easier for others to emotionally connect with you and relate to your music. It puts you on the same level as your fans. In a culture of superficiality and status, vulnerability brings out a layer of authenticity that people can trust and resonate with.

Some topics are so sensitive that we are taught not to talk about them, like insecurities, addictions and mental illness. In western culture, discussion of these topics can be seen as a sign of weakness that brings about shame and embarrassment.

There is social pressure to present an image of ourselves in a positive light on social media all the time, because we think that’s what others want to see. I see this quite frequently in artist bios.

Of course we want to highlight our achievements and accolades, but I believe sharing the struggles and challenges we experience are just as important because it makes for a good story. To me, music is about connection and oftentimes as Hobo says, “not feeling so alone.”

Eligh of the Living Legends, an artist whom I work with, is someone who openly talks about his addiction to heroin and is now 12 years sober from all substances. His brand has grown organically around sobriety, and many of his hardcore fans really relate to him, especially ones who deal with addiction themselves. Many of them will reach out to ask for advice and guidance. Because he allows himself to be open and vulnerable, he’s developed a deeper relationship with his fans.

Although Hobo Johnson’s persona can come off as slightly exaggerated, it’s clear that he’s coming from a place of real life struggles when he touches on topics of loneliness, anxiety, low self-esteem, depression and the hardships of growing up in a broken family. How he expresses his emotions clearly resonates with his fans:

“He sounds like he’s on the verge of a mental breakdown… hella relatable.”

“Dude, lyrically your analogies are the shit. They’re honest, creative and still very relatable. You have a lot of endearing qualities that really make you seem very much like the rest of us, shy, awkward, maybe a little ADD. Heard Peach Scone the other day and became an instant fan.”

“It is refreshing to finally hear someone that brings up inner emotions and someone who is so real and in your face and no bullshit. I’m happy there are still people like that left. I like the idea of putting your life in a song and just blast it all out in the open.”

“I have to say, the main reason I am a fan of you, Hobo Johnson, is that you’re real. Your emotions and lyrics are raw and extremely relatable. You’re very very unique. Seems like you have been through a lot of shit in your young life, and I have as well. That’s why I can relate so well.”

Hobo has a unique energy that even if you don’t necessarily relate, you can respect the art and what he brings. Although I knew of him before he blew up, I was never a fan, but I did appreciate his emotionality and vulnerability.
 

4) Nothing gets people talking more than controversy.

“I honestly don’t know if this is rubbish or pure gold. This is like the 100th time I’ve heard it as well.”

We know that beef and controversy in music helps get people’s attention and sell records (back when people use to buy them). In our social media driven world, anything polarizing that gets people debating and arguing is great for exposure and social transmission.

Not that Hobo Johnson is a “controversial” artist, but he has definitely stirred up a lot of discussion and even confusion about the type of music he does.

Common questions and issues that often come up when talking about Hobo Johnson:

• Is this really hip hop or rap?
• Is he a rapper or slam poet?
• Is the song good or trash?
• Is he creative or creepy?
• In Peach Scone, is the crush on his friend scary or unhealthy?
• Is he misogynistic?
• Is he actually talented?
• Is he exaggerating too much?

I think part of this “controversy” has to do with this concept of music genres being challenged from crossover artists and blending of musical styles. Apparently people have a problem when artists don’t have clear genre lines to define and categorize them.

Hobo Johnson has described his style as “low-fi hip hop with folk-punk influence.” A similar thing happened with Post Malone when he first came on the scene and people tried to describe his music. Although he calls his music “genre-less,” others have called it a fusion of hip hop, country, grunge, R&B and electric folk.

As a result of his popularity and apparently ambiguous nature, Hobo Johnson has received a lot of negative attention.

“I keep seeing his name on Facebook, but I have no idea who he is and why he’s getting so much negative attention. He keeps getting death threats, his apartment was broken into and his mom possibly being doxed…”

Here’s what his critics had to say:

“This is just awful. I cringe every time I hear his voice which is all the time because these videos keep getting passed around. Stick something sharp in my ears instead.”

“This shit is garbage. Fake deep. Creepy and cringy shit from some weirdo stumbling over his words and staring oddly into the camera.”

“The musicians don’t have much talent. Neither does he, and all he talks about is being in the friendzone. It’s fucking dumb.”

“Seems like nobody’s allowed to have a negative opinion or critique on this man’s music without an 80 comment reply of people calling that person a dick or an idiot for having an opinion. This kid has some lyrics I can dig, but his exaggerated emotions to give off his persona feels forced …. Like birthing a child forced.”

As you would expect, his fans will defend him and share their perspectives:

“I don’t understand how people believe the lyrics to Peach Scone are misogynistic. It seems like the opposite to me. What I got from the lyrics is that it’s about a man who loves a girl who is in a relationship with someone else. Even though it hurts him, he realizes that he wants her to be happy. The lyric towards the end… I just hope she doesn’t get hurt…is probably my favorite. It shows how much he cares for her.”

You often hear sayings like, ‘you know you’ve made it or become successful when you have haters’. I use to think it was silly, but from a marketing and branding perspective, it actually makes a lot more sense to me now. Hating, controversy and debating get people worked up. As a result, they comment and share more.

You also hear the saying, ‘any press is good press’. Polarizing views feed into social sharing and give you more exposure. This doesn’t mean you should create controversy on purpose to gain exposure, but be aware of its impact.
 

5) The power of social proof and influence is powerful.

“I went from not knowing who tf u were, to wtf is this??, to “ehh its ok”, to “Peach Scone” being stuck in my head and now I’m a fuckin groupie all in a matter of 48 hours. Seriously love you right now! Your music speaks to my soul lol 1.7k people felt the same.”

By now, we’re all aware of the power of social proof. It’s the reason why most artists obsess over how many followers or subscribers they have on social media. You know you are being subconsciously judged by the numbers displayed on your social media accounts.

It’s all about shaping a favorable image to those who don’t know you. We often associate these vanity metrics as a sign of quality. However, it’s not as influential as we might think, because it can be easily faked.

The one thing you can’t fake is when thousands of people share your content, and that’s powerful social influence. People shared that Peach Scone video on Facebook 130k times. The actual share number is even higher, because it doesn’t take into account the people who shared it after that and the shares of the Youtube video.

When things go viral and get passed around like the Hobo Johnson video, there’s a lot of interesting social science going on. What others think can influence our own perceptions of what we think is a “good” song.

You might think that anything that is “good” would naturally become popular or successful, whether we’re talking about music, books, art or movies. Historically, this has not always been the case. Many famous artists and authors have been passed on and rejected many times in their career before making it big. Why is that?

Matthew Salganik, a Princeton Sociologist, conducted a study to understand that very question.

In the experiment, he set up a website where people could listen and download music for free. It contained a list of songs from new, local artists that no one had heard of. Song order was shuffled and participants could see what others had liked and downloaded. Over 14,000 people were randomly placed into 8 different groups, or worlds, that all started with the same initial conditions.

Theoretically, the best songs should be the most popular in all 8 worlds. However, that was not the case. Some songs that were the most popular in one world, were one of the least popular in another. The conclusion was that quality or talent alone isn’t a predictor of success. Social influence plays a big role as well.

In most cases, social influence isn’t enough to make something that is actually “bad” be considered “good” or vice versa. The experiment showed that quality was correlated with success. While it may not completely change your perception of what is “good,” it’s enough to tip the scales to get people to pay attention rather than scroll past it in the news feed, especially when it is seen frequently.

This is only a brief rundown of the study. You can read it in full here:
http://www.princeton.edu/~mjs3/musiclab.shtml

This is why shared content is powerful. When people share your content and it goes viral, we interpret it as being too difficult to fake. As viral marketing expert Jonah Berger states, “Social influence only works when other people’s opinions or behaviors are observable.” In the context of the experiment, we take into account what others think and do to shape our own preferences.

“This randomly came up in my Facebook feed: hated it, couldn’t stop watching it, COULDN’T STOP THINKING ABOUT IT AND MISSING IT FOR DAYS. Found it on YouTube bc I remembered the lyrics, have replayed it 5 times.”
 

6) Even with more exposure, you still need to build your brand.

“Maybe Hobo Johnson will use his music to become some kind of bad ass mental health advocate.”

It seems like many artists out there think that exposure is all they need to become “successful.” To be exposed or discovered is a short term thing. You need people to actually stick around for the long term. This is where your brand comes in.

In my opinion, having a strong brand played a big role for Hobo Johnson becoming a viral sensation and resonating with so many people.

I won’t touch too much more on branding, since I talk about it in a bunch of other blogs. However, the two things I want to point out is that his brand comes from an authentic place and it is consistent.

Hobo Johnson’s persona may seem a bit exaggerated, but at the core of it, it is still an authentic extension of who he is. A self-deprecating, neurotic guy who deals with insecurity and being in the friend zone.

His brand ties very well with his story about getting kicked out of the house and living out of his 1994 Toyota Corolla at the age of 19 – hence the name Hobo Johnson (Real name is Frank Lopes).

For as long as I’ve known of him, his brand, look and style has been unchanged. Same voice. Same weird look. Same delivery and awkward sense of humor. Look back at all his stuff and you’ll see the same consistent characteristics of who he is.

When you look at his content, website, posts and videos, there’s a consistent feel that really comes off as his own. Bad grammar, cheesy and outdated graphics, corny / amateurish style and totally not professional, which makes him more relatable. He comes off as someone who’s doing really badly at trying to fit in; unconfident, unsure of himself, but it plays well to his “hobo” persona.

Even the music video he released after blowing up is consistent with his brand:

“This music video is so oddly aesthetic since it’s the complete opposite…if you know what I mean?”

His tagline on Instagram reads:
Songwriter. Poemer. AbletonLiver. Piano Player Kinda.

His mailing list is titled “join our cult.”
https://www.hobojohnson.com/cult

This is his Kickstarter campaign from early 2017:
Kickstart Hobo Johnson’s Kinda Good Music Career
 

Additional Resources

 
If you’re interested in hearing more about Hobo Johnson and his story, check out the links below.

Interview with Anthony “The Needle Drop Guy” Fantano

DJ Booth Article: I Really Wanted to Hate Hobo Johnson… But I Couldn’t

Hipster Rapper Hobo Johnson Is Going Viral — & It’s All Thanks To THIS Music Video!

The post Going Viral: 6 Important Lessons Artists can Learn from the Rise of Hobo Johnson appeared first on D4 Music Marketing.

“Compelling content hinges on one key detail: its sharability. It’s not enough to have a Facebook page or tweet every once in a while. Facebook and Twitter are technologies, not strategies in and of themselves. You have to understand why people share some things rather than others in order to use social media to your advantage.” – Jonah Berger

Have you ever wondered why certain artists or songs go viral and achieve a cult-like following? What separates them from the millions of other songs and video uploads flooding the internet? Just imagine what the dramatic increase in exposure could do for your music career.

If you’ve ever questioned why certain content spreads faster than others, this blog will offer insights to answer the questions of why we love to share and how to get more people to talk about your music.

Jonah Berger, a marketing professor and bestselling author, has studied social influence for over 15 years to learn how and why certain things catch on, become popular, and go viral, including things like:
• Articles
• YouTube videos
• Political messages
• Baby names
• Brand publicity
• Messages

In his book Contagious: Why Things Catch On, Jonah breaks down the science and his research behind social transmission (aka social influence). He discovered that there are 6 core principles behind what makes something more likely to be shared by word of mouth. I wanted to “share” this information because I figure these principles could help musicians out there improve the sharability of their music to increase exposure. After all, the most effective type of marketing is when you have others recommending your music through word of mouth.

Do you remember back in 2013 when Nipsey Hussle sold 1,000 copies of his limited edition $100 mixtape Crenshaw? He made $100,000 in one day from that release! Guess where he got the idea from – Jonah Berger’s book Contagious.

Disclaimer: Although the principles here can help you go “viral,” trying to go viral isn’t a practical strategy for achieving musical success. The principles in this book can help increase exposure and shares, but I wouldn’t recommend spending all your time online trying to go “viral.”
 

The Power of Word of Mouth

 
One of the most effective forms of marketing is word of mouth. In our digital and cyber world, it’s easy to forget the power of offline word of mouth. Online viral sharing is great, but research has shown that plain old word of mouth is the primary factor behind 20% – 50% of purchases and at least 10 times more effective than traditional advertising. When it comes to discovering new artists, it’s no different.

The reason why word of mouth is so effective is that often times recommendations you receive are coming from people you trust. Verbal word of mouth tends to be more honest, credible and targeted since it’s naturally directed towards an interested audience, which is why it’s still one of the top ways we learn about new music. I don’t know about you, but a lot of the artists I have come across came from recommendations from other people.
 

Why We Share

 
Word of mouth marketing is important because it taps into a natural behavior we all like to do, which is share. We like to share because we are hard-wired to find pleasure in self-disclosure, but this goes beyond just vanity. We share our thoughts, opinions, and actions because it helps us connect with others. After all, humans are social creatures looking to connect, so revealing information about us is intrinsically rewarding.

In addition, sharing can be seen as a tool we use to manage our public persona and achieve favorable impressions from people around us. This applies to in-person and online.

There’s a misconception that word of mouth mostly happens on social media. As valuable as online sharing is, when it comes to word of mouth marketing, social media falls short. Despite having a stronger potential to reach more people, only 7% of word of mouth happens online. Competition for attention is high on the internet, and that makes it more difficult to stand out from the clutter.

Now the ultimate question is, how can musicians and artists improve the sharability of their content so people are more likely to tell others through word of mouth? The guidelines below will break down the principles you need to know to create share-worthy content.
 

6 Principles of Contagiousness

 
The 6 research-based principles that are identified in Jonah Berger’s book Contagious are listed below. The author uses the acronym STEPPS (the first letter in each principle) as a handy method to help you remember them.

Applying these principles will improve the chances your music or videos gets shared and talked about. Of course, there’s no guaranteed formula to going viral. It is not a recipe, so not all principles are needed. However, the more the following principles are used together, the greater the chances are of you and your music becoming contagious.
 

1) Social Currency: We share things that make us look good

 
Whether people want to admit it or not, we share things based on how something will make us look and how others will perceive us. Social currency is measured by how good or valuable it makes the person who shares the content appear to the other person. After all, the choices we make, like what we choose to share, signals our identity. It is a reflection of how we want to be perceived.

The idea behind this principle is that your music or video needs to have something about it that makes the person who shares it look good. What you create needs to be inherently cool, interesting, funny or surprising so that it makes it worth talking about. Your content is only as good as how the person who shares it feels it makes them look.

I had a friend ask me to listen to this song and guess the race of the artist. After I made a guess, he showed me this music video to see if I was right:

As you would imagine, I was wrong. It was totally not what I expected. And for that reason, I was inclined to share it with my friends to get their reactions.

Social currency doesn’t always have to be so out of the ordinary, but it definitely helps a lot. Recommending a hot, new upcoming artist can make you look good too (social currency) by giving off the impression that you are in the know about music.
 

2) Triggers: Top of mind, tip of tongue

 
If you want people to talk about you more, you need to be associated with the right triggers.

A trigger is a stimulus in the environment that prompts people to think about related things, products, or ideas. These triggers can influence people consciously or subconsciously to talk about specific things. Triggers naturally boost word of mouth by sparking your songs or videos to be top of mind.

Take Rebecca Black’s song, “Friday” as an example. It became a viral meme when it first came out. The song was so bad that it became a joke to be shared at the end of the workweek. It made the people who shared this video comes off as light-hearted and having a sense of humor.

As you can imagine, the reason why it became so viral (over 100 million views) was because it has social currency and it was triggered often on Fridays.

Triggers are all about the association. If your songs or videos can be associated with the right triggers that make sense for your content, it’ll have a greater chance of being talked about and shared.
 

3) Emotion: When we care, we share

 
Whenever something invokes strong emotion, it is discussed and shared more frequently. People that consume the content develop an emotional connection to it and share it with others to pass those emotions along. We are more likely to share content that sparks some emotional response because it helps us connect and relate with other people.

Simply put, when we care… we share. When designing content, don’t forget the emotional element. Positive and negative emotions can increase your shared amount, whether it gets people to laugh, inspires us to be confident in ourselves or even invokes anger. The book does a great job of going into details about which types of emotions are the best for getting people to share. As long as you can really move someone with emotions, you can drive them to action and share that experience with others as a form of social currency.

The easiest example is a really funny music video. The one that comes to mind is Psy’s Gangnam Style, which is currently at 2.7 billion views.

Not only was this music video hilarious, but it also had a distinct dance that leads into the next principle.
 

4) Public: Built to show, built to grow

 
When there’s a public element involved in content, it is more likely to be triggered and imitated. Making actions observable makes it easier for people to copy. Have you ever taken out your phone because you see other people around you scrolling? You’re copying their behavior, most likely subconsciously. To make this principle work for you, design content that is visible off the screen, like a trademark dance move, a signature style (Justin Bieber’s hair) or tangible fashion statements.

Take the LMFAO’s viral hit Party Rocker’s Anthem. I would imagine what helped this video hit over 1.2 billion views had to do with the dance (shuffling). Think back to the principle about triggers.

Things catch on based on what others see and want to imitate and, thus, validate themselves.

We conform and imitate in times of uncertainty. This is why we use what we observe from others to helps us make decisions, also known as social proof. What we can observe is a form of validation or herd mentality, and we feel more comfortable following in the footsteps of the people in front. Having a long line outside a music venue will give people the impression that artists performing there must be popular, so we get curious and are more inclined to wait in line.

This principle may be the least common and hardest to put into practice, but public visibility is powerful as a trigger for boosting word of mouth.
 

5) Practical value: News you can use

 
Content that has practical value means it meets some need or want. If I were to show you a quick way to tune your musical instruments, it would provide practical value in the form of solving a problem and you saving time.

Basically, when your music or video has practical value, it does a good job of satisfying some problem, need or want.

For example, say you went through a breakup (a trigger), and you needed a song to get you through. I share a good breakup song (one listed below) that I feel you could relate to (social currency). You will find practical value in it because it is meeting an emotional need.

Billboard: Heartbreak Hits: Top 30 Breakup Songs

As a musician, all this principle is saying is you need to put out of some value if you want people to share it. I know sounds super obvious but something that is good is not always easily defined.

Providing practical value by satisfying a need or want through your content will increase the chances it will be shared or and talked about because of its usefulness.
 

6) Stories: Information travels under the guise of idle chatter

 
Stories are powerful vessels used to transmit messages and information. Not only are we physiologically receptive to a good story, but we also love telling them. A great analogy that is used in the book is thinking of stories like a Trojan Horse.

In order to make this principle work for you, you need to know the elements of a good story and incorporate them into the narrative of your content. More importantly, the deeper message inside your story or narrative needs to relate to you or your brand in some way. This is what is inside the Trojan Horse.

If people are receptive to your content through the story and share it, you want to make sure that how it benefits you is relevant to your brand.

Of course, not any story will work. It needs to be related to what you are about and reflect your brand as an artist. The story used in your content doesn’t necessarily even have to be about you. They can depict someone you know or even a fictional character. This principle is really about telling a narrative in your content that contains story elements that will engage or resonate with your audience. At the center of the story or plot is a message that should somehow connect with you or your brand.

Here’s a great song and video that I think does a wonderful job of presenting an honest narrative with a powerful message inside it. However, what I think made this video viral was the presence of the other principles I mentioned above: triggers (gay rights, which was a hot topic when this was released), social currency (it made people who shared it give off the impression that they were supportive of equal rights for gays) and emotion (love and acceptance).

To be clear, this principle isn’t necessarily about how to tell your own personal story as a musician. Although personal storytelling is important for your brand, you really have to think about stories from the perspective of the listener or audience. After all, the point is to incorporate elements of a story that will resonate and motivate others, because then it can serve as the social currency for the person that shares it. That is how your message gets spread and should ultimately lead back to you.

Learn how to tell a good story through your content and you’ll have a better chance of your message being shared.
 

Conclusion

 

Going viral is no easy task. However, you should be better equipped to produce content that is more likely to be talked about and shared so you can increase exposure for your music and hopefully win over some new fans.

If you need additional guidance, I highly recommend reading Jonah Berger’s book Contagious: Why Things Catch for examples and a more in-depth look at the research behind these 6 principles. Best of all, it is an easy and relatively short read.

The post Going Viral: 6 Research Based-Principles to Increase Music Exposure appeared first on D4 Music Marketing.