Hello my fellow music creator! If you’re new here, welcome!
The Music of Tomorrow is a space for you to learn, interact and get cutting edge insights on various themes of the music business, production and industry. If you’ve seen us before, welcome back!
Today we’ll talk briefly about viral content, which by now you should know, can be a game changer in the career of an artist.
Several mainstream talents have been found and have become popular that way, so it’s important that you understand the importance to learn what’s behind going viral. And in front of it.
To start, let’s just develop a basic understanding of what the expression “viral” means in content creation, and then we’ll move on to a few things you should know about it, that will help you get started creating some of this content.
WHAT IS VIRAL?
By now, we’re all very accustomed to the concept of viral. A virus that is transmitted from person to person, in great number and with enormous speed.
A pandemic is the classic example of viral. It quickly moves from person to person, which makes that replicating process become larger, quicker and stronger as it keeps going.
In content is the same thing.
A video, or a meme, gets shared so many times, that after a while, seemingly everyone in the world knows about. How’s that for powerful?
WHY IS VIRAL IMPORTANT?
Now, why is this important? Why not just go the regular way, in which a label picks you out, start working on your career, pays you a fix salary, and so on? Why not just keep creating marketing material and developing credentials to grow as an artist?
This is all great, but viral has advantages that might be worth it considering, with or without other marketing efforts.
It's cheaper to promote
Viral content significantly reduces the cost to produce marketing materials, running ads and boosting campaigns, because it’s a word of mouth process. So you’re basically saving thousands of dollars worth of promotion.
It produces the best "marketing quality"
Traditional marketing is not easy. It’s a long and complex process because you’re basically trying to convince complete strangers to appreciate your music.
With viral, word of mouth, the source is already trustworthy. Think about it. When you share a video or a song with a friend, that content gets to her/him already qualified to their standards, and with a strong motivator to consume and like that stuff.
People think “if my friend really likes it, it must be good, and therefore I might like it too.” It’s easier to like things in group than by yourself.
Think when you’re in a theatre for example and something funny happens, and you stop yourself from laughing too hard because nobody else is laughing. But when everyone is cracking up, even if you didn’t find it so funny, it’s easier to giggle.
The same happens with viral content.
It's all about the audience... and their status
When it comes to promoting their music, the mistake most artists make is to think it’s all about them and how good and special they are. It’s not. A content is shared, and becomes viral, because it’s all about the audience.
Most of the time, when we share something, we’re trying to say something about us, rather than about the content creator. Think for example of that friend who only shares funny stuff. They do it to be perceived as funny.
Or the person who shares an interesting performance. They do it so they are perceived as culturally engaged, cool, and to transmit (themselves, not the creator) a certain emotion to the receiver.
What point am I trying to make? In order for a content to become viral, it needs somehow to offer status to who’s sharing. It can’t be average, it needs to be extraordinary. And not the performance per se, but the video, the setting, the energy, and the emotions associated to the video.
Check out this super simple video by Ruben Wan, which went viral, mostly because of the association of Rain, the quality of his playing, and the unusual setting behind him.
Another example is the music video for Young Thug’s Wycleff Jean, that uses a weird fact about the production (the fact that the artist didn’t show up to shoot the video😶), in order to create a surprising element to the video.
So one word I would always keep in mind when creating these videos is… unexpectedness.
CLARITY, CLARITY, CLARITY
Another thing you need to understand about viral videos, is that you have half a second to convince the audience to keep watching. People are constantly scrolling through their timelines, so if your content is not clear or interesting right off the bat, it won’t hold the audience, and therefore won’t be shared.
So, forget about long intros, or taking time to get right to the point. Show the good stuff in the beginning, and build expectation and curiosity if you can.
The more you make, the better your chances to go viral
All the tips above will help you improve your chances to make your content go viral, but they won’t work, if YOU don’t work.
So be ready to experiment and create many types of videos, so you understand about your audience and improve your chances to go viral. Once something works, do more of it.
Conclusion:
You might think going viral is a matter of luck, and the truth is that for some people, this might the case. But each day more and more people are finding ways to emulate formulas and strategies to optimize their content’s engagement and reach.
In this workshop, Viral Musician Formula, we’ll go over several strategies to make your music go viral, and immerse ourselves in real life examples, so once you’re coming up with an idea for a video, you can set yourself up for success.
Thanks for stopping by today and looking forward to connecting again soon!
Tchau!!
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