Use Social Media - Make People Listen

Say you're a struggling musician...looking to be the next Kanye West, Bono, or Madonna.

You've got a Facebook page. Your music is up on Myspace. But your only friends are your mother and your friends from high school. And they like you, right?

So, your music is decent. Or even really good. But no one knows who you are.

What do you do?

See, it isn't enough to be on the web. And talking to your friends only goes so far. You've got to make new connections come to you. At least if you want to be the next Madonna.

How do you do that?! How do you get thousands of people on the web to listen to you?

@greatfulbread on Twitter just told me this morning that "being a giving member of social web is ALWAYS beneficial." And that's just what Chris Blake did.

I found his video in an article by Chris Brogan, a community & social media blogger I follow.

Apparently, Chris Blake googled "biggest regrets", saw what people were talking about and made a YouTube video with it. Guess what the background music was?

Now his video has been seen about 75,000 times, including by many people who wondered, "What song is this?" and likely went on to discover the rest of his music.

Lesson: Chris Blake gave the Web 2.0 community something profound and sometimes funny. He created something related to what he was doing that was free and struck a chord with many human beings. And now people all over the world can share his music.

Alright, so he won't be the next Madonna. But that video, seen by many, has now become his best promotional tool.