If you are a content marketing student, you must have heard that the key to gaining a following online is to continuously put out content. If you are into music, the most talked about story is that of Russ who dropped almost a song a day on Soundcloud for more than a year and blew up 11 mixtapes/a;bums later. In the same field, others have gained prominence utilizing content other than music. DJ Khaled took himself to icon level by building a cult following on snapchat. Nipsey Hussle (R.I.P) is another artists that used soft content which was not necessarily music to build his brand as a musical artist.
I have seen a few people here try to emulate what the aforementioned names have done but we can all agree it is not as easy as it first seems because hardly anyone has kept up for up to a month. Th plain and simple fact is, It is expensive.DJ Khaled already had his money; so living and showing his flashy lifestyle was not something he had to stress to accomplish. Russ had to have had some sort of source of income that permitted him to stay in the studio for as long as he did. As a producer, he also did not have to spend money buying beats (I have said and I will repeat that the future of music belongs to those who can make their own beats.) Nipsey was long in the game and had set himself up with some business that were able to finance his content creation goals.
Besides all the difficulties in being able to stay consistent, it might actually be that staying consistent does not cut it anymore.
Let’s take RifleX for example. I have been watching the guy for a while now and he is on to something. Four months ago, he came out with the FlexFridays concept. Every Friday since then, he has dropped a video. We are talking about 16 videos till date. Those videos are not cell phone quality; and they look like quite a lot of time, energy and money was put into them. The beats are getting better and they are coming from different producers whom I doubt are just letting him have them for free. Overall, I have been impressed by both the content and the quality but one thing has not been right. At the time of me writing this article ( Monday,May 27, 2019 at 6:53 PM), the first of the FlexFridays videos has 194 views on YouTube while the last of them has 73 views. The most popular video has 250 views only.
I mean, when you look at what went in and what is coming out, there is a disconnect. If consistency was really the key, we should have seen some sort of upward trajectory in the views or reactions. His Facebook following is still below 1000. Here on PoiseSocial, I can say we have been one of the most consistent pages around but for a while, the growth has also stagnated. What I have seen with Riflex and here on Poise has led me to trying to figure out why consistency is no longer the key or why quality content is not enough.
Any-Ha!
It is easy to know why. Most of the social media platforms are saturated and have reached their point of maturity. If a new platform was to pop up right now, I am sure being consistent on there will be the key to building a following. When platforms are new, they are hungry for content. The little content on there is distributed to as many users as possible to see who is generating the best content. The best content than gets pushed so as to keep people on the site and attract new users. With mature platforms, you basically have to pay your way through the tons of great content. Reaching more people even becomes more expensive too.
So what is the new key?
ATTENTION. Yes, ATTENTION
Attention is different from reach. It is what happens after you reach your potential audience. Attention is how do you keep people interested? The content might be good but how do you keep them waiting for the next episode of Game Of Thrones. In the case of Riflex, I kind of kept up because I was using him for a case study. There was nothing to up my anticipation for the next episode. What made Poise grow was first of all the readers looking to see what next I will write about then it turned to the readers trying to figure out who wrote what. After Wandji Wilfred came on board. That Wandji Wilfred is still not known to most people also makes the page intriguing to come back to. With every post, readers feel like they are inching closer to finding out who exactly Wandji Wilfred is.
To hold the attention of the audience, you have to produce a different kind of content; you have to produce content that has suspense. To take another example, the Pagkne girls made us look forward to which celebrity was on next. We also wanted to see something new about these celebrities (how well they could act). Stanley Enow still gets attention because we are all waiting to see if he will finally do a song that beats Hein Pere. Jovi has to go on some Twitter wars before dropping his projects just to build our anticipation. He does not necessarily stay on top of our minds 24/7 but when he is closer to dropping a project, he finds a way to call our attention.
Artists need to figure out how to call attention. Unfortunately faking your death is like the boy who cried wolf. Nobody falls for that anymore. Artists need to think out of the box and figure out the spin they can add to their ideas to make them pull more attention.
So what should RifleX do?
If I was RifleX, I will find an opponent. Battles call for attention. Even before social media was the way, 50 Cent and Kanye West in 2007 used the battle strategy. Both artists were on the same label. Both were at turning points in their respective careers; both were dropping their all-important third albums. 50 Cent was geared to release Curtis on Sept. 11, 2007. West was readying Graduation for a Sept. 18 release, but bumped it up a week to set the stage for what was perhaps the biggest nonviolent event in hip-hop history — as the two duked it out in a contest to see who would take home a bigger haul of album sales. Kanye eventually won the battle but that moment is known to be the moment when Hip Hop became the music genre to define pop culture in general.
It doesn’t have to be a battle of insults or music attacking the “opponent.” What I would do if I was him is to find another artist who is relatively at the same level with regards to musical careers and make them join me on the project. We share the beats and we both release at the same time on Fridays and let the fans judge who did better on every beat. There are many ways this could be set up to gain the necessary attention depending on the resources available to both artists but I guess this article is already too long to start delving into those minute details. A good artist to go against will be someone like Kikoh.
Even though I wrote here in the context of musical artists. I think this applies to every content marketing strategy right now. It is time to get smarter about the kind of content you put out.
- Tino Foy