How Not to Go Viral
My favorite job of all time was being the musical director on a Country music gig - I worked directly with the talent, co-wrote the songs, managed the band, developed the tracks and generally lived the dream.
I did however wear another hat - a marketing one - under that guise I led the team that designed the website, shot the imagery, designed the bus decal and built the distribution platform.
Guess which job I enjoyed more?
Social Media Marketing
It was 06 / 07 and Twitter had just appeared - I instinctively felt it would be a great tool for artist promotion and fan relations and pitched it to the talent. The message back from management was that they couldn't see the point, it would take too long and it wouldn't scale - so they never did it.
I truly believe that if they had made just one connection a day - they'd now be sitting with a follower base in the tens of thousands and would have an established distribution model, built, one fan at a time.
The Takeaway
- Social media is an opportunity but you've got to show up to play
- You can't make social media "scale," you've got to build it one connection at a time
- You can't make your message go viral but your social media connections can
If you continue to show up, continue to make connections and continue to produce something of value, you create the environment for your message to go viral. That's when you actually see how social media can scale and all the hard work will have been worth it.
If you're struggling with this call me on 310 980 2499 or email me here and let's talk.
Written while listening to: Ride - Acoustic Development
Image Credit: Big Black Bus - by Kelli on Flickr