I enjoy reading the biographies and autobiographies of musicians and singers. There are a lot of common threads amongst these folks and one of them is what to do when they have a big hit. Especially the first big hit.
It’s not a guarantee that an artist will be a one hit wonder. It’s not a guarantee that they will suffer a sophomore slump. But these things do happen fairly often. It’s always more than one thing, but one thing that does seem to come up when artists explode onto the scene is that they say, “I wasn’t prepared…”
And how could one be prepared?
These folks likely spend around a decade working to build a career with little to no progress. And then one day it all clicks and they have a hit and they need to figure out how to navigate the new success and attention. They want to take advantage of the new opportunities without burning themselves out.
Blogging usually doesn’t see hits on the scale of a top song on the Billboard charts. But your first big hit blog post can have a big impact. You want to take advantage while being able to sustain the success and avoid any kind of burnout or lapse in effort.
Here are a few tips on what to do when you have a big hit piece of content.
1. Prepare A Content Catalog
I remember more than a few interviews with new artists talking about their first hit songs. They talk about what it was like putting the album together and things like that. And sometimes they would say, “I originally wrote enough for a second album as well.”
Now, that doesn’t mean that all the material for the second album will be great or even used. But it’s good to have some material built up.
Blogging is a little different in that you’re publishing new content on a regular schedule. It might be your 50th or 100th post that becomes a hit. You want to stick to your writing schedule as much as possible while you shift some focus to the hit, but you can also rely on your back catalog of material as well.
This way you have something to offer all of your new readers. They discover you through your hit blog post and then can go back through your catalog. I’ve done that with numerous blogs, YouTube channels, podcasts and more over the years. It’s always an extra reward to discover a new source and realize they have an extensive archive.
2. Put More Promotional Focus On It
I read the biography of Jimmy Bowen, a very successful music producer and label president. He found a formula that worked and was known as the guy that would come in and get a label rolling in the right direction.
One of the strategies he employed a few times was to take an artist that was hitting and put 70% or more of the marketing and promotional budget into that artist. He knew that it would lead to more revenues that would allow the company to have a bigger pie and thus be able to spend more on the other artists.
When Jimmy went to Capitol Records Nashville in either late 1989 or early 1990, he saw that a young artist was really starting to take off. So he put a lot of promotional effort behind that artist and it worked out really well. You’ve probably heard about Garth Brooks.
Take your promotional efforts and put it behind your new hit piece of content. Promote it on social media. Share it over and over again on social media. Rework it a bit when you share it and put more effort behind those promotions.
Forget about thee other things you’re promoting right now and go where the attention already is.
3. Make Time To Engage With The Audience
People are probably leaving comments all over in regards to your content. Obviously that’s relative, but you’re likely seeing a lot of engagement. Take the time to focus your efforts on engaging where the people want to engage.
If people are replying and leaving comments on Twitter, put your efforts there and engage back. Wherever people are engaging you want to be. And you want to be active and put thought into your replies and answers if they have questions.
You want to stick with your creation schedule as much as possible, but it’s probably better to cut back there for awhile and engage with your new audience. Make them feel welcomed and appreciated. Once the buzz dies a little you can reorganize things and get back to things later.
4. Repurpose It
Let’s say you wrote a blog post and it’s becoming a hit. Take that content and repurpose it for other platforms. Publish it on LinkedIn. Take snippets and publish those on Twitter and Facebook. Create a graphic to go along with a key snippet and post it on Instagram. Create a script based on the post and record it for a short podcast episode. See if you can do the same with a video based on the content.
There are lots of audiences all over online. You have to tweak your content for each one, but it can be well worth the effort especially if you have something that is a proven winner on one platform.
5. Find Help For New Content
Sometimes a new artist will have written or co-written most or all of the songs for their debut album. That’s kind of the nature of things when you’re new and unknown. It’s kind of all on you to prove that you’re going to be a success. Other writers are hesitant to let their best material be recorded by an unknown artist.
But once you hit there might not be time to continue writing as often. You have other obligations such as promoting your hit material. And because of that time crunch you need to start reaching out for help. And the good news is that great creators are likely more willing to work with you.
Let’s say you have a hit blog post. Hire someone to continue writing new posts while you work on promotion and engagement for awhile. This helps keep the production on schedule while you work in other areas. And you can always adjust in the future when things calm down. And you can certainly continue with the new person and with your own efforts to create more content.
6. Continue The Successful Formula
You want to look at what the hit content was about and try to figure out why it might have been successful. But focus on the big picture. It’s the entire formula of your effort that led to the success. Stick to that formula because just because one type of content was successful now doesn’t mean that it will always be a success in the future.
So keep working on a variety of different things and the things you’re good at. That will continue to lead to success in the future. Some won’t be surprising, but some will.
Conclusion
Hit content is exciting. It doesn’t last forever, but it can lead to some great new opportunities. Probably the biggest is that you will have a larger audience. I’ve seen it happen where you get a big surge and then it wanes a little, but even after the surge is over your audience remains much bigger than before. And that’s a wonderful thing.
I hope these tips help you to prepare for your next hit. It’ll allow you to take full advantage.