Walk Off The Earth – Musicians & Marketers - Use Youtube Viral to Success

A success story of 5 creative musicians and many hours of work... (but no advertising dollars spent) brought this band recognition the world over. The Band – “Walk Off The Earth” from Burlington Ontario. (Burlington - just an hour away from my home town of Port Dover Ontario)

Walk Off the Earth made a simple you tube video that received over 44 Million hits in just one month. Their video was uploaded on January 5^th 2012, and now at the time of my writing February 3^rd, this video has reached 45,937,736 hits.

As of March 29th 2012 - 80,740,198 hits.... Not bad eh! .. Read On!

As of May 24th 2012 - 110,929,606 hits

As of June 23 2013 - just 18 months later "151,288,889" hits.

Still adding hits - As of July 31 2014 "159,574,258" .... 8 million more in last year. Awesome job.

Walk Off The Earth accomplished an amazing feat!

Playing a Gotye cover song called “Somebody That I Used To Know”

To the untrained eye, all this appears to have happened in under a month, but a careful review shows the dedication, energy and love these young musicians have put into their videos and music. They been at it for some time too. Not just a few minutes or this successful month. They have planned and worked hard for this! They developed a love for their You Tube and Face Book fans and were both dedicated and loyal to them. They were as passionate about their fans "fun" as they are passionate about music and to their dreams. Dreams of being full time musicians.

Friends - "They deserved this break! They truly worked for it!"
They have been creating professional, creative and entertaining videos for a few years. They developed a style of their own, with imagination and fun. The work and dedication to their fans brought them a "You Tube and Face Book" following of dedicated fans. The fans were dedicated to the group, because Walk Off The Earth continually entertained and rewarded their fans with quality music and lots of fun.

Why did the loyalty go both ways? Because that is the way Walk Off The Earth built it!

Walk Off The Earth created video clips doing many cover songs. They covered songs that were already somewhat famous, but also other songs that were not so popular.. And, I might add, from many styles of musicians. They even rewarded fans by doing videos of requested songs..... See they LOVED their fans and were dedicated to them as much as they were dedicated to the music they played.

Therefore - By recording many cover songs and being creative with their use of you tube video clips, they developed a loyal following who loved to share the videos with friends.

If they had only shared original tunes, you can be certain the following they developed would not be nearly as great. What they did was - they "capitalized on the familiar", plus focused on being entertaining with their videos. But most importantly they "WORKED" at developing a fan following!

NOTE - they DID NOT CRAM "ONLY" ORIGINAL TUNES down the listeners throat... rather, they made a lot of fun videos worth sharing..... and so the fans shared - - - - thus their "fan / friend list" grew and grew.

See - THE POWER OF DUPLICATION to understand this principle in depth.

Simply "They put together videos of not only quality music, but also quality entertainment. Kept it familiar and fun. They talked to their fans on their videos, making it personal to the fan. Thus the fans shared their video clips on face book making the bands following and popularity climb" ....... As the fan list grew "Then and only then" did they start promoting their original songs with more aggressive actions.

Marshall, Gianni, Taylor, Joel and Sarah are all dedicated, "Fan Loving Musicians" who capitalized on You Tube and Face Book... both free marketing tools.

Awesome!!!

Ellen Degenerous picked up on the You Tube Sensation and invited them perform that famous song the way they did it on the video. Live and on camera, on an unfamiliar stage, "All Five On One Guitar". Live meant "No Second Take".

So five nervous musicians, "JUST DID IT". And they pulled it off.

Showing only a wee bit of nervousness and discomfort, with the on stage setting, Ellen rewarded the team with five Fender guitars and Amps. Ellen brought the guitars out joking they no longer needed to share one guitar.

Following Ellen, CTV news (Canadian News) aired their story.

I'm a music lover, sing and play for fun myself.... so this story makes me smile. But I also LOVE Marketing and Networking! I was made aware of the video almost the day it was up loaded to You Tube. January 5th 2012.

So here I am..... "Watching and following this success story of viral marketing unfold".... along with great music.......

Well, it got me so excited I stopped procrastinating and wrote this hub. LMAO

Naturally, since I love both music and marketing, I can't stop here.

There is another two singers who I absolutely love that I am going to plug now.

Sarah Smith and Marija Smolcic.

Both of these Gals have amazing voices that I love..... but more than that! Lucky me, I have got to know them both as friends and I can say I deeply care for them both. Their hearts and souls radiate warmth, passion and a love for living that expresses itself in their music.

Sarah Played with The Joys , now going on a solo career. She is not sure yet if The Joys will be back, but the fans will sure be pushing for it.

Marija plays with Shadowstalk and records many of her own songs personally as demo's as well. Marija writes amazing lyrics. Deep touching stories on one hand and energetic rock songs on the other. Having overcome a hearing impairment.... well you do the research, the stories can be found her links.

Both Sarah Smith and Marija Smolcic can sing, write, play and entertain. Go check'm out.

No matter what you market - no matter what you do in life.... do it with passion... do it from the heart like the above musicians have shown. Put your whole heart into who you are. Learn the POWER OF DUPLICATION and then make it work for you.

Like I said in a previous hub - "We need to stop making such a huge deal about manufacturing "things" and we have to start making a big deal about building character. Build a new man from the inside out. No longer running from who we are inside."

One last Comment --- if you enjoy all the artists on this hub - do two things.

1- Promote their songs by sharing the links

2 MOST IMPORTANTLY --- Follow their links and download at least one of their itunes or MP3's..... come on -- you got more than 3 bucks of fun just spending the time reading this hub.... LOL

This hub is not only about music, networking, marketing and success..... it is about more than that. It is about Being Human Again.

Therefore that leads to

3 - If you enjoyed this Hub..... "share it"... and vote it up too! If you know a musician personally or have friends that do, share this hub on your Facebook Wall..... giving musicians ideas to promote themselves better will add to everyone's entertainment as well. So PLEASE SHARE if you love music and support LIVE MUSIC.

Love - Light - Laughter!

Neil

PS - Attention Musicians - need some recording done??... check out The Grove Productions