E396: Not all heroes wear capes.
This is how to do marketing on 4chan.
I used 4chan to make an unlistened-to video game music radio show, being recorded live in the middle of the night, go viral around the world.
If you want some ideas for how to start a grassroots movement on 4chan, this is a good episode.
Or if you just want a fun marketing story that will make you feel nice - this is a good episode too.
This was my first time going even a little viral and it was an altruistic act, to boot. You’re going to both smile and learn with this one.
Get the text here: https://edwardsturm.com/articles/4chan-marketing/
00:00 The First Time I Went Viral 00:18 Introduction to the Story 00:32 College Radio Show 00:37 4chan is Powerful 01:53 Execution 05:10 Virality 08:03 Aftermath 08:28 Takeaways 11:25 Reflections
#digitalmarketing #viralmarketing #4chanmarketing #socialmediamarketing
The Edward Show. Your daily digital marketing podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/
This is the story of the first time I went even a little bit viral. I think the last time I shared this story was over a year ago on this podcast. And I'm not sure I shared it like this, but I did share it in my newsletter back last October. And I'm going to read that because it's one of my favorite stories. I love this story. Here's the introduction. And it's called the story is saving a radio show with 4chan. If you want a Sunday, pick me up. This is a nice story. This is a nice growth hack story, driving publicity to a radio show that was getting no listeners, a college radio show that was getting no listeners. That's what this story is. The introduction is most people who have heard of 4chan believe it to be a toxic place. But I actually have the opposite opinion. My first time going even a little viral was with 4chan. And it was me doing something altruistic. If you've never heard of 4chan, it's an anonymous image board forum. It's popular and known for its low moderation and influence on internet culture. The first part of this article, the story, and it's what I'm reading, it's on my site, the full article will be linked to in the description. The first part of this article, the story, is from my personal marketing journal, what you will be listening to. I wrote 13 years ago. I wrote this in 2010 right after it happened. And then I actually updated it for the newsletter. And then I put the newsletter onto my website, everything that comes out in my newsletter at wordstorm.com forward slash newsletter. If it's not too black hat, then I will also syndicate it to my website. But sometimes I share the really dark stuff that I can't publish publicly on my site. And that only comes out in the newsletter. But this is this is black hat. This is a nice story. And then the second part of the story, the analysis, it's from present day, which is actually October of last year. So the story we hop in the time machine, we go to December 5th, 2010. It's a Sunday in Boston, which is where I'm going to college. I'm in college, 2010, Sunday, December 5th. And I write felt bad for a freshman at my college doing a great, but not listen to video game music radio show at the awful hours of 12 AM to 2 AM on Sunday night. And then a friend and I, we use 4chan to make him popular. That's a heading for this from my marketing journal. Before we started, the freshman DJ only had three listeners. He had listener number one, which was an unattended office computer in the office of the radio station. Listener number two was his dad and listener number three was me. He had two human listeners and one that was an unattended computer. But the crazy thing and the kind of funny thing is he thought tons of people were listening the station didn't allow DJs to see the listener's statistics because the station didn't want the DJs to become demoralized. If a lot of the DJs knew how few people were actually listening, because a lot of them thought it was hundreds or thousands. But if they knew that it was usually a handful, they probably wouldn't care about the shows and they definitely wouldn't put work into the shows. And I wrote, I had secret access to the live statistics. That's because a friend of mine worked at the radio station. And I remember because I went to go see what was on that radio station one Sunday night and I'm listening to the halo theme and I'm like, what? Is this the same college radio station? And it is. And then the guy comes on and he's like, hope you like that. This is my video game music radio show. And I'm like, oh, my God, this guy's playing my type of music. So I become one of three listeners. And then I write my first thread about this guy was on the random, the B board of 4chan and the B board of 4chan was like, no, most unmoderated, crazy place of 4chan. And I wrote my thread, my copy, use the whole pity angle. I explained that the DJ had no listeners, but he thought he had tons of listeners and he was doing this excellent video game music radio show. Then using the same copy that I wrote, a friend of mine, he made threads on the video game and the music boards of 4chan. So now we have three threads going around on 4chan on the B board, the most unruly, crazy, unmoderated board on the V board, the video game board and on the music board. And we were artificially, it's called bumping. We were artificially bumping these threads at the beginning to keep them at the top of each board, bumping brings a thread back to the top of the board where it will have the most visibility. So as soon as a thread on one of these forums gets a comment, that brings the thread up to the top. So then new people will see it and we were writing comments ourselves in the threads to keep them at the top so more people would see him. But we were making it look like we were random people who were coming across threads and posting. We were not making it look like the original posters. We're bumping their own threads. We were faking engagement. And then I write soon after starting, so many people were commenting on the threads that we no longer had to create artificial engagement. People liked the pity angle, people felt bad for this kid. I write people like the DJ story, his on air personality and the content and the music content, which is why listeners were sticking and engaging with our threads. This guy thought he had like hundreds of listeners or thousands of listeners and it was only two human listeners. They felt bad for him, but they liked him. They liked him as a character and they liked the content of the show. And then I write we kept interest high by constantly updating people with the show's listener count. So the DJ, he was focusing on the show. He didn't know how many listeners he had because he wasn't in the 4chan threads. He was just focusing on putting together a good show. He didn't know, but I was updating the threads because I originally told them, listen, this show only has two human listeners and then one listener. That's an unattended computer. I was updating 4chan with the show's listener count and then it started getting crazy. Eventually people started creating their own threads. People across 4chan were talking about this as it was unfolding in different boards, not just the video game board, not just the random board, not just the music board, the other boards. And it got so crazy. The station servers couldn't handle the load from the concurrent listeners we brought, which limited how many there were. So the most amount of listeners that we got set the record for the station. It was only 460 listeners and that's because the servers couldn't handle more. I write this show had listeners from around the world. It was eight a.m. in Spain and people were listening. And you know, this is before Instagram reels and TikTok where you put out a video and it's seen by people everywhere and you're just used to that. This was 14 years ago in 2010. People were complaining that they couldn't go to sleep until the show ended because it was in the middle of the night on the east coast of the United States. The DJ was getting inundated by instant messages and he got several phone calls. Lots of people were I aming instant messaging the station because the station had an instant messenger address, so he was getting lots of instant messages. The show was doing so well that the DJ kept it going for an extra two hours until four a.m. I physically went down to the station at three thirty a.m. to meet the DJ who I hadn't previously known. I only felt bad for him and that's why I was doing this. And then I got to say I got to go on air and say hi to everybody from Fortune. The DJ he was I wrote the DJ was overjoyed. He was in shock. This was happening and I stayed up until five thirty a.m. Watching people on 4chan talk about the show long after it ended. The show ended at four a.m. People were talking about it long after it ended. And here are some things that happened from the weeks after the show got many repeat listeners. Lots of people came back the next week. It was a weekly show. The DJ got many Facebook friends and even a girlfriend from this and then the store this story. I love this part. This story has been used year after year by the station staff to motivate new DJs and it was literally even written into the station manual to the analysis. Here's why this popped off number one bumping before our threads had reached critical mass. My friend and I kept them relevant by posting ourselves. If a few minutes went by without there being a comment, my friend and I would make one ourselves. So we were creating artificial engagement to keep the threads fresh so more eyeballs would come on them. It would be more opportunity for for this thing to pop off. Number two, empathy and compassion. I knew people on 4chan would see themselves in the DJ because he had similar interests to their own. Then by highlighting the low listener count, the high amount of work that the DJ was doing and the late night hours, I made the audience feel compassion for somebody like themselves. Number three, narrative bias were naturally drawn to stories, especially ones that evoke strong emotions. The tale of the underdog, which is this DJ getting unexpected and unprecedented support is a narrative that many wanted to be a part of. Lots of people wanted to be part of this story. Lots of people wanted to be part of the story of the underdog DJ. I mean, it's kind of crazy. He has virtually no listeners. It's me and his dad. Then he goes and sets the record that same night for the most listeners in the station's history and is since used as an example for every show since. And this is my first time going viral. By the way, now I've gone viral more times than I can count. This was my first time going viral. Social proof, the increasing listener count and engagement was validation that this was worthy of people's time. People saw other people talking about it. They felt FOMO, the fear of missing out. They wanted to be part of it and it reached critical mass. I write about FOMO as this started to unfold. People were tuning in just so they wouldn't miss out on a unique collective experience. Others were part of. And finally, the last one, 4chan as a platform. 4chan is still a great place to start grassroots movements. This is mostly because it's anonymous. Anybody can post without registering and users can express themselves without fear of repercussion and believe it or not, many 4chan users they like bonding through digitally labor intensive altruistic acts. Many movements have been started through 4chan and users are always looking for something exciting to be part of. I've shared my projects on 4chan all the time. I've gone viral because of 4chan all the time. If you have something good and you share it on 4chan in the right way, it can go hyper viral. So the summary of this story is we created an opportunity for altruism towards a likable character. We moved people with an emotional message. We artificially inflated the threads until they reached critical mass. You got to fake it till you make it. And then finally, we kept updating the crowds to create a sense of momentum and build fear of missing out and build fomo. And that's the story. The story is called saving a radio show with 4chan. The text of the story will be linked to in the description for the podcast. Another one down. This is episode 396 of my daily digital marketing podcast. I love this story. I will probably tell this story again, probably in several hundred more episodes. But I mean, this is my first time going viral. It's a very vivid memory that I have. And I've gone viral so many times in person since then. But you know, your first time is always the most memorable. And I really vividly remember this. It was a fun night in 2010, a fun cold December night in 2010. I hope you enjoy this story. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you so much for watching. If you're watching on YouTube and I will talk to you again. tomorrow. Bye now!
