God
Creator of the Universe
ill o.g.
There are different "vanilla" ways of gaining marketing for your music, such as unremarkable Google Ads or the commonplace guerilla marketing tactics of yesteryear, where you and your friends act as a street team and push your music wherever more than three people gather.
The key to getting publicity is to understand the way the system works. By "system," I specifically mean blogs. I'm not just thinking of getting a simple blog placement, that's a fool's errand. I'm talking about how do you get something in front of a lot of eyeballs very quickly?
Well, blogging works this way:
- Bloggers hired by major blogs usually get paid by how many pageviews their blog post garners. This means if there are less pageviews, the blogger will make less money than someone who posts about an item that is more sensational and demands more clicks. Do you know any media outlet that does that? Bloggers are not on salary, they get paid per post and get bonuses on how many pageviews they can get for each of their posts.
- Bloggers don't care about verifying sources. They can use "weasel" words to write about or sensational, controversial issues in ways that skirt around "fact-checking."
These two bullets are important because they support the fact that: blogs will post anything that gets them a lot of pageviews.
This means they will post false information and then claim to "update" or "correct" it later (after most of the pageviews have occurred on their false, yet sensational post.)
So God, you're talking about all this stuff -- but how can me, as a lowly rapper, use this method to get attention.
My answer: make up shit.
What I mean by this, is you have to have a gimmick -- maybe a very controversial song, or maybe a controversial LP cover or something that makes people angry. Why angry? Because anger is most prominent emotion that gets people to share a particular piece of information across the internet. The NY Times found that the news stories on its site that were e-mailed the most were ones that caused the most anger.
Think about that for a second. Anything that is controversial gets coverage. That's nothing new, but how do you actually get the coverage, God?
Here it is in a couple simple steps. If you end up caught, in jail or something bad happens to you, I am not condoning the actions I'm telling you with this post. The information in this post is for "entertainment purposes only." There's my disclaimer.
In fact, if you think about it -- the fact that I had to disclaim my own post, probably makes people want to read my post even more, right? Anyway onward with my point...
1. Think about something controversial: Make one crazy song attacking somebody in the news, get your LP banned from an old school record store because of its cover. Have your local church issue a comment on how horrible your song is. Do something that is out of the norm. Get it on video or if you can't, your story will do.
2. Go to a local blog. Not anything big. Have your friend send them an email "tip" saying that Illmuzik Rapper A was banned by a local church group for his song. Have a couple other friends send tips posing as "good citizens" who are appalled by the music. Make sure you or your friends write in proper grammar.
3. The local blog (please don't shoot high, make it a really local/smalltime blog) will likely publish the story and not verify it.
4. Send an anonymous tip via your friend's email account to a bigger blog, linking to the smaller blog. The smaller blog's post on your music gives the bigger blog the citation and "evidence" it needs to justify posting about your story.
5. Repeat among mid-level blogs.
6. Have concerned citizens send emails saying "how appalled they are" at your music. These emails to the blogger will make it seem like there really is a problem out there.
7. Once you get posted about in these bigger blogs, aim higher. Send a tip to a news organization. You have "proof" from all the blog posts about you that are online. Make sure to send links.
8. Make sure to have your friends comment on all the blog posts. Have them fight with each other on the blog posts arguing from a concerned citizens standpoint or other.
Watch yourself make the evening news. Or watch yourself get into a national blog. Just know which blogs to target. Don't just aim for rap blogs, but news blogs -- if you hit the main media blogs, like Gawker, HuffingtonPost or something like that -- well, congratulations, you made it to the big time.
The key to getting publicity is to understand the way the system works. By "system," I specifically mean blogs. I'm not just thinking of getting a simple blog placement, that's a fool's errand. I'm talking about how do you get something in front of a lot of eyeballs very quickly?
Well, blogging works this way:
- Bloggers hired by major blogs usually get paid by how many pageviews their blog post garners. This means if there are less pageviews, the blogger will make less money than someone who posts about an item that is more sensational and demands more clicks. Do you know any media outlet that does that? Bloggers are not on salary, they get paid per post and get bonuses on how many pageviews they can get for each of their posts.
- Bloggers don't care about verifying sources. They can use "weasel" words to write about or sensational, controversial issues in ways that skirt around "fact-checking."
These two bullets are important because they support the fact that: blogs will post anything that gets them a lot of pageviews.
This means they will post false information and then claim to "update" or "correct" it later (after most of the pageviews have occurred on their false, yet sensational post.)
So God, you're talking about all this stuff -- but how can me, as a lowly rapper, use this method to get attention.
My answer: make up shit.
What I mean by this, is you have to have a gimmick -- maybe a very controversial song, or maybe a controversial LP cover or something that makes people angry. Why angry? Because anger is most prominent emotion that gets people to share a particular piece of information across the internet. The NY Times found that the news stories on its site that were e-mailed the most were ones that caused the most anger.
Think about that for a second. Anything that is controversial gets coverage. That's nothing new, but how do you actually get the coverage, God?
Here it is in a couple simple steps. If you end up caught, in jail or something bad happens to you, I am not condoning the actions I'm telling you with this post. The information in this post is for "entertainment purposes only." There's my disclaimer.
In fact, if you think about it -- the fact that I had to disclaim my own post, probably makes people want to read my post even more, right? Anyway onward with my point...
1. Think about something controversial: Make one crazy song attacking somebody in the news, get your LP banned from an old school record store because of its cover. Have your local church issue a comment on how horrible your song is. Do something that is out of the norm. Get it on video or if you can't, your story will do.
2. Go to a local blog. Not anything big. Have your friend send them an email "tip" saying that Illmuzik Rapper A was banned by a local church group for his song. Have a couple other friends send tips posing as "good citizens" who are appalled by the music. Make sure you or your friends write in proper grammar.
3. The local blog (please don't shoot high, make it a really local/smalltime blog) will likely publish the story and not verify it.
4. Send an anonymous tip via your friend's email account to a bigger blog, linking to the smaller blog. The smaller blog's post on your music gives the bigger blog the citation and "evidence" it needs to justify posting about your story.
5. Repeat among mid-level blogs.
6. Have concerned citizens send emails saying "how appalled they are" at your music. These emails to the blogger will make it seem like there really is a problem out there.
7. Once you get posted about in these bigger blogs, aim higher. Send a tip to a news organization. You have "proof" from all the blog posts about you that are online. Make sure to send links.
8. Make sure to have your friends comment on all the blog posts. Have them fight with each other on the blog posts arguing from a concerned citizens standpoint or other.
Watch yourself make the evening news. Or watch yourself get into a national blog. Just know which blogs to target. Don't just aim for rap blogs, but news blogs -- if you hit the main media blogs, like Gawker, HuffingtonPost or something like that -- well, congratulations, you made it to the big time.
