I have a Twitter account, but I rarely look at it. I don’t teach anything about Twitter marketing (though the basic principles I use and teach apply there).

But even I can’t resist the story of Lil Nas X and how he became an (almost) overnight celebrity 140(+) characters at a time.

Enter Lil Nas X.
I’m not really a rap fan. Unless it’s “Rapper’s Delight” by the Sugar Hill Gang. Back in the day, I could recite every word.

“Everybody go: Hotel, motel, Holiday Inn
You see, if your girl starts actin up, then you take her friend.”

Still love it. 😂😜💃

But this summer, everyone was singing “Old Town Road.” I’m pretty sure I was one of 5 people in the world who had not heard this song by July.

Until Lil Nas X landed on the cover of Time. In record time, I might add. Less than 9 months from his debut of “Old Town Road” on SoundCloud as a complete unknown to the cover of Time magazine. Unheard of.

How did he come from nowhere, overnight? (It’s never overnight, btw.)

He did it, almost exclusively, on Twitter.

Less than a year ago Montero Lamar Hill was a college dropout living on his sister’s couch in Atlanta, Georgia.

He was promoting comedy videos and his music on Instagram and Twitter but getting no real traction.

Last October he bought a “beat” off BeatStars from a Dutch guy named YoungKio for $30 and made a song. That song was “Old Town Road.” He released it independently on SoundCloud.

It got some traction on Twitter, so he kept it up. Lil Nas has a great sense of humor, so he started creating memes for Old Town Road. One after another…all day, every day.

He anonymously asked about his own song on Reddit. “What’s the name of that song that goes, “take my horse to the old town road?” The account has since been deleted, and the post archived but the comments tell the story of the “new marketing.”

He replied to Twitter stories by the hundreds always adding to his comments “…I made Old Town Road, by the way.” Social skills any marketing guru would be proud of.

The song went viral on the video-sharing platform Tik Tok. Everyone was doing their best cowboy impression of Lil Nas X and Old Town Road. #yeehaw

“Social media was one of the biggest factors in the song’s success. Social media is the biggest factor in every song’s success nowadays.” -Lil Nas X

But perhaps the biggest mover for the song was a social media controversy on Twitter. When Billboard decided that “Old Town Road” didn’t have enough “country music elements” to be listed on the Billboard Country Charts, it got the boot. This created a firestorm on Twitter. Which helped pushed the song to its meteoric rise. Thanks, Billboard!

Billy Ray Cyrus, a country legend (depending on how you look at it), put Billboard in its place on Twitter. He loved “Old Town Road.”

So he and Lil Nas X paired up. A snazzy video shoot, a little remix, and bam—no. 1 on the Hot 100 for 19 weeks and the first of what’s sure to be many awards (two MTV Music Video Awards including Song of the Year).

Billy Ray’s advice to Lil Nas? “Think like there is no box.” Amen, Billy Ray. Amen.

Lil Nas X decided he wanted to go viral, and he made it happen. He stayed focused like a laser beam. And he got a little help from his friends.

Time named him one of the 25 most influential people on the internet for his “global impact on social media” and “overall ability to drive news.”

“This is no accident. I’ve been pushin’ this hard.” -Lil Nas X

When Lil Nas X recorded this song, and up until the shooting of the music video, he had never been on a horse.

You can make whatever happen you want to have happen. And you can use social media to grow your business. If you don’t know how I’ll help you. We all get by with a little help from our friends.

Always behind you 1,000%-
Julia

PS – To get help all you have to do is click here.

The success in the details.
Every little thing counts. I’m a detail-oriented person and always have been, so seemingly small efforts are noticeable and important to me.

I love little touches of creativity that take something mediocre and make it great. These are the stories of 3 companies that used the smallest of details to capture their target market’s attention and sell more stuff.

We don’t support trips to the past. Yet.
Alexis Ohanian, the founder of Reddit, and an early investor and later the Marketing Director for Hipmunk, the uber-cool travel planning website, says people still tweet about Hipmunk’s error messages.

“We don’t support trips to the past. Yet.” is the message that appears if you try to book your return date in the past. “Why don’t you just move there? 30 days is the max.” is what you see if you try to book past the 30-day time limit. The 404-error message (for a website page that doesn’t exist) says, “You’ve gone off the map.”

Ohanian says this is simply “giving a damn” about your business. The smallest of details help you stand out in a big way.

In the case of Hipmunk, these creative error messages provide a smidge of entertainment during a tedious yet necessary task if you want to travel anywhere.

When was the last time you tweeted about an error message?

Your order has shipped.
Derek Sivers, the creator of CD Baby, a global music distributor for independent musicians, decided that the automated email copy to confirm shipment of a CD order (it started with CDs and is now all digital) simply wasn’t congruent with part of his mission—to make people smile.

Instead of the industry standard “your order has shipped,” Derek sat down one day and wrote this email notification, in his words, “in about 20 mins:”

“Your CD has been gently taken from our CD Baby shelves with sterilized contamination-free gloves and placed onto a satin pillow.

A team of 50 employees inspected your CD and polished it to make sure it was in the best possible condition before mailing.

Our packing specialist lit a candle, and a hush fell over the crowd as he put your CD into the finest gold-lined box that money can buy.

We all had a wonderful celebration afterward, and the whole party marched down the street to the post office where the entire town of Portland waved ‘Bon Voyage!’ to your package, on its way to you, in our private CD Baby jet on this day, Friday, June 21.

I hope you had a wonderful time shopping at CD Baby. We sure did.

Your picture is on our wall as “Customer of the Year.” We’re all exhausted but can’t wait for you to come back to CDBABY.COM!!”

A Google search for “CD Baby private jet” will get you many pages of results for this now-famous email. People have talked, tweeted, studied, and written about this non-automated, automated email confirmation for years.

Sivers says it is still his most successful email to-date. In 2008 he sold CD Baby for $22 million.

Welcome to Mr Porter, Mrs. Pizzolato.
My Husband is hip. Way hipper than me. This is how I know about Mr Porter, and this is how I came to receive this box, which is one of the most fabulous packaging efforts I’ve experienced in all my years of online shopping.

Granted, plenty of items on Mr Porter.com will run you big bucks. Those are not the ones my Sweet Husband ordered for me. But no matter the price of what you ordered, you still get the sweet unboxing experience everyone who shops at Mr Porter.com gets.

We seriously lamented having to throw away the box. I’m still hanging on to it, and the shirts came on Wednesday. They gave Jeff the opportunity to write a personalized note to include in the box (which he did, and it was super sweet).

I got a welcome packet, printed on the most fabulous paper I’ve ever touched and sealed with a ribbon that says Mr P on it. It tells me all about the style advice I can get, the same day delivery in certain cities, that they hope I’m delighted with my choice, and how I can get weekly style updates.

So much attention to detail has gone into the packaging and unboxing experience Mr Porter provides.

Thank You.
I’ve gotten personalized, hand-written thank you notes from online courses I’ve purchased, dried flowers and extra samples in my Jane Iredale deliveries, and stickers, makeup pouches and super cute notes from Glossier.

Even the business cards I get from Moo have a love note in the box. I love to get mail that’s not a bill (or junk), and I love to open cool packages. Sometimes the package-opening is better than what’s inside.

Confirmation emails, thank you pages, shipping boxes, and error messages may seem like small, inconsequential business necessities. Most people leave them programmed with boring, standard-issue messages.

I hope this has inspired you to up your game with the small stuff and make everything about your business meaningful at every turn.

The most overlooked things in most businesses can be what catapults your business to rock star status. Tiny tweaks can lead to Big Changes.

Always behind you 1,000%-
Julia

I joined Facebook 11 years ago today (July 13, 2008).

I have connected to people I would never have been able to create any kind of relationship with otherwise. I have reconnected to the people I missed. I have discovered the true colors of others.

I have gotten distracted by political arguments, memes of the day, those dang Goalcast videos that are like inspircrack (inspiration + crack), and stalking the pages of people I haven’t seen in the newsfeed in a while. Like every picture in your albums. Sigh.

I have learned so, so much. I have connected to people who have taught me more about marketing than any college education ever could have. I have learned more about nutrition and even helped a few people ditch some bad habits because of what I shared (THIS is one of my favorite things about social media).

I’m reading a book about morning routines, and this guy devotes almost an entire chapter to the dangers (to your success and society in general) of digital distraction. I could not agree more.

While I have seen social media make small business owners millionaires, literally hundreds of thousands of businesses and families supported via the audience they were able to reach on the platforms, I have seen the damage it has done as well (as we all have).

I post when I feel like I have something meaningful to say. Maybe something that I hope will make you laugh (most likely because it made me laugh), will inspire you or will cause you to think. I run my business pages the same way, and I run client pages this way as well.

Here’s what I’ve discovered is the key to “healthy” social media:

I put a time limit on it and try to remain very strict about it. That’s why if you comment, I may not respond for 24 hours, but I am always grateful to read what you have to say. Even if you are disagreeing with me. 😜👌🏼

I very carefully curate my feed. I unfollow a LOT of people. I search out people who are positive and inspirational. I never follow news channels. Ever.

I make it a point to look at my “most recent” feed to see new things and curate my feed more.

I actively take note of when I’m reaching for the phone out of boredom or because I want the distraction from work that just got hard… 😬

In the end, I still can’t help but wonder how many total hours of my life so far I’ve “wasted” on social media. The time that truly had no point other than scrolling. The times I got caught up in trying to make points with people who just can’t see past their own immediate life vision. The ones who don’t understand that we are all connected.

With all the media uproar of late around the social platforms and breaking them up (I am still undecided on my stance on this one), I still say it’s been a good thing. What’s been not so good is the way bad people have used social media to their own benefit and to manipulate the masses.

BTW – manipulation is not possible where education is in place. In other words, the more people are educated (not by the news) on any given topic, the less they will be manipulated around the opinions of others on that topic.

My suggestion: limit your time and commit to the limit. It’s still a great way to connect, create helpful communities (I’m in private groups for marketing that are literally BEYOND helpful. Help I could never even pay for and from thousands of people who want to help), and grow a business.

In other words, use it for good. Which I see most of you do. 😘👏🏼

The idea formulated at a creative brainstorming meeting at Bandolier Media in Austin, Texas. They ran with it. Then it hit Twitter (@barbzlovescarbs). Then a popular Instagram meme influencer (@middleclassfancy) got in the game. And that’s when the tide turned for @justaconstructionguy.

The story:
Some chick going by @barbzlovescarbs on Twitter posts that “her dad” asked her what an “influencer” was. She explained the concept, and he says, “I can do that.” So, he creates an Instagram account to prove it. A few influencer tags and re-posts later and bam, he’s got over 500,000 followers in less than 2 weeks.

He’s just a simple, coffee loving construction guy working on the East Side in Austin, Texas posting his crazy-good photos of designer coffee in a thermos. Hhhmmm…

The REAL story:
Mike McKim, the owner of Cuvee Coffee in Austin, Texas, wanted to pump up the marketing for his local coffee shops a bit. He felt like the typical influencers were passé and wanted to “create” an influencer more akin to the customers Cuvee actually had, specifically in their East Side shop.

The East Side of Austin has been under massive amounts of construction for the last 10 years or more. It’s a perfect example of gentrification at its best (or worst). When Jeff and I lived in Austin, we spent most of our time on the East Side and even looked for a house there right before we moved to Palm Springs. But I digress. The point is, the customers Cuvee saw most often were, of course, the construction guys on the neighborhood projects.

Someone at Bandolier Media knew a construction worker. Omar Madani was their guy. They approached him, and he agreed to be the face, err the Influencer, running the Instagram account @justaconsructionguy. The catch? Omar wasn’t really running it. Bandolier was. Omar was paid for the photo shoots, and Bandolier handled the rest.

After @barbzlovescarbs posted her Tweet about “her dad” and the influencer convo, the account literally blew up. But not one person knows or will claim who Barb is and why she did it. Mike McKimm says he has no idea who she is.

By the time the account got to about 400,000, the jig was up. The internet had been spoofed—Omar was a marketing ploy to “influence” people to drink Cuvee coffee.

The thing is, it worked for Omar, not for Cuvee. Once the cover was ripped off the story, Omar took over the account. He’s partnering with other brands to promote their products (this happened in 2 weeks, I kid you not). Omar got to go wave the flag at the big NASCAR race in Iowa over Father’s Day weekend.

This will literally change Omar’s life (has already). But what about Cuvee?

They are left to explain why Barb lied (Omar is NOT her dad), deal with the backlash of people angry to have been tricked, and slink away tail tucked. Some people think it’s funny and “so 2019” that they were so easily duped and some are straight-up mad.

The Challenge.
Bandolier Media did too good of a job. It looked staged, just like every picture on the Cuvee account does. There’s no way Just A Construction Guy could take photos like that on his own. The social media savvy picked up on it in a big fat hurry. Now the discussion is, is it right to use influencers? Is it inauthentic? Is it really brand influencing if you pay that person to use your products or services?

Hollywood has been using product placement to raise capital for movie production since the beginning of time. Sleight-of-hand advertising. Instagram just offers a different stage, right?

If an ad campaign, stunt, spoof—whatever you want to call this—leaves most or even any of your customers, potential or current, seriously questioning your integrity (the comments are all there on both Cuvee’s and Omar’s accounts) is any publicity good publicity?

My take: nope. Most of the comments are along the lines of disappointment in Cuvee for dishonesty or what a genius marketing stunt it was by Bandolier Media. Either way, it did nothing to sell Cuvee Coffee. It just made them look bad. Omar goes on with his 540,000+ followers, and Cuvee stays behind with their 16,000 and a bad rep.

You reap what you sow in marketing…and in life.

Always behind you 1,000%-
Julia