Heard about the online sensation Ylvis, the Norwegian band behind YouTube’s most viral video in 2013? Wish your internet posts would blow up like their quirky comedy clip, What Does the Fox Say? Well, now they can. Get ready for your 15 minutes’ of fame…
Back in 2005, a British high school dropout posted a demo of herself singing on the social network, Myspace. Record label Regal Records signed her up and within weeks the 21-year-old had released her first album, LDN.
Lily Allen went on to win a Brit award in 2010 for best British female solo artist.
The singer isn’t the only person to use social media to catapult to fame and fortune. The king of the internet, facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, is worth US$19 billion, and is ranked 24th on the Forbes’ list of the world’s most powerful people. Mark’s joined by a number of nobodies who shot to stardom after a single tweet, one-off blog or 30-second video.
Take Seth Adam Smith, the newlywed who published ‘Marriage Isn’t For You’ on www.forwardwalking.com. The post’s unexpected message – that marriage should be for your spouse, and not for you – made it go viral within hours, crashing the site. It’s since been translated into 19 languages and read 28 million times.
Then there’s Billy Ray Harris, a homeless man who returned a diamond ring to the owner who accidentally dropped it in his collection cup. The owner set up an online donation page to thank him, earning Billy US $180,000 – enough to buy a house and car. Billy also found a job and was reunited with his family after 16 years of separation.
Want a piece of the pie? Adam Gray, author of Brilliant Social Media, knows how to get noticed online. He says, ‘First, identify your goals. Do you want to win customers, keep fans informed or create awareness?
Always keep your audience in mind. Katy Perry is the most popular tweeter, and she updates 12 times a day. That works for her audience, but it’s not for everyone. Tweet at times that suit your audience. Whether you join facebook, Instagram or YouTube is up to you, but it’s better to do one well than five badly.
‘From a business perspective, you need to be where your customers are. On a business card, you provide a landline and mobile number, email and postal address, so customers can choose how to contact you; it’s the same online – give them options, so they can get in touch via facebook or Twitter for example.
‘Ultimately, if you do a good job and play nice you’ll be a success – whether that’s more facebook likes or getting noticed on YouTube. Deliver a great product quickly and politely.’
Even if you just want to leave your mark, here’s how to build brand Me…
Seven tips to getting started
Some of the more vacuous Z-listers around may have found overnight fame through vulgarity or more often sheer stupidity, but most online celebs have worked hard for their rewards. So don’t expect instant fame, as it takes time, skill and dedication to build your brand. But first, the basics.
• Think about what you can offer. Beauty expert? Mad about Russian poetry? Know every Arsenal football result, ever? Stick with what you know
• Get computer savvy. Learn the website building code, HTML, and how to use the photo enhancing programme, Photoshop
• Create an online persona. Choose a username and photo, then create an email address with a matching Twitter handle – use the same details for all your social media accounts and create links between them
• Make yourself impossible to forget. Set up forums about yourself, write your own Wikipedia entry, host live web chats, offer to be a guest blogger and update all of your accounts at least once a day
• Make it easy for people to contact you – and reply promptly
• Respond to criticism openly and honestly, instead of burying or ignoring it
• Content is key. To stand out, never post anything online that isn’t funny, interesting, useful or original
Viral ventures
We take a look at the vital statistics of those who’ve made it online…
Bloggers
Mario Armando Lavandeira – better known as Perez Hilton – is the author behind the controversial celebrity gossip blog, www.perezhilton.com. Mario launched the blog in 2004 at a time when most blogs were personal diaries; five years later it was ranked by the commercial web traffic data company, Alexa, as 143rd out of all US websites.
Lesson to learn: Be original
YouTube
Jodie-Amy Rivera, also known as Venetian Princess, is an internet personality who makes videos which are parodies of pop songs. Jodie-Amy shot to global fame in 2006 after being featured on
the front page of YouTube. In December 2008, Samsung announced her ‘Somewhere Else’ music video would be pre-installed on all Samsung Behold mobiles.
Lesson to learn: Be entertaining
Twitter
John and Hank Green, also known as the Vlog brothers, got their start in 2007 with Brotherhood 2.0, when they posted videos back and forth to one another for a year instead of talking on the phone or sending emails. The brothers describe themselves an internetainerpreneurs and make educational YouTube videos. John posts on Twitter as @realjohngreen. His tweets have gained him 2.08m followers, boosting his Klout score to 88. Hank posts as @hankgreen and has 359k Twitter followers and Klout score of 81.
Lesson to learn: Provide a service
Facebook
A few weeks ago, American mum Jennifer Cunningham asked her son Colin if he wanted a party when he turns 11 on March 9 – and he replied there was no point as he had no friends. His mum took to facebook, creating a page called Happy Birthday Colin, and within two weeks it had 1.9 million likes and thousands had posted well wishes – all of which she is saving to surprise Colin on his birthday.
Lesson to learn: Trigger people’s emotions
Wikipedia
Jimmy Wales is the entrepreneur who co-founded the world’s first online non-profit encyclopedia, Wikipedia. Even though the site does not rely on advertising as a source of income and is free to use, Jimmy is worth US$1 million which he earns from speaking engagements and as head of the for-profit web-hosting firm Wikia.
Lesson to learn: Be a pioneer
The price of fame
Congratulations! You’ve hit the big time! But now you’re famous, beware of ridicule from trolls, a lack of privacy, violent threats and stalkers – on and off line. Protect yourself by not giving away too much personal information about you, your friends or your family.
Don’t forget posting online is still publishing. You can delete a post or tweet, but you can’t unpublish it once it’s been retweeted. Adam warns, ‘You’re committing your words to paper – electronic paper – and you’re sharing them with the world. Remember that. Decide how honest you want to be. Do you want to polarise your audience with extreme views? Do you want people to love – and hate – you? I’m opinionated and swear a lot, but never online, as words can be taken out of context.’
The Abu Dhabi twitterati
Brit Lorna Cole, 26, lives in Abu Dhabi. While Lorna’s vital statsare modest – she has 1,120 facebook friends, 1,226 Twitter followers and 186 followers on Instagram – collectively they give her a respectable Klout score of 51.
She says, ‘I joined facebook at 18, and Twitter in 2009. I studied marketing and am responsible for a hospital management firm’s social media. Social media can’t be taught in a formal environment; I learnt tips as I’m genuinely interested in it so I pour over www.mashable.com and learn from others’ mistakes.
‘I don’t chase followers. I don’t need anyone to follow my personal account; people are either interested in what I have to say or not – and I want to talk about what interests me. That said, I avoid over-sharing personal details and stay positive. My work account has a small following, but we are a specialised company who appeal to a specific audience so we value quality over quantity. Have I made money from social networking? No, but for me, social media is all about building relationships.’
Know your clout
Monitor your online influence by signing up to www.klout.com, which counts your followers from each of your social media accounts, monitors how influential they are, how often you’re retweeted or liked and how many inactive accounts follow you. A Klout score ranges from one to 100 – the higher the number, the more online influence you have. The average score is 40; users with a score over 63 are in the top five per cent of all users. At the time of writing TOAD’s score was 55. Not bad, eh?
