Justin Bieber : A social media case study

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I really hope all of you know who Justin Bieber is, if not your not worth reading this post, to get a bit deeper this kid was born just 2 years before me in London and like any other jobless teenager he had an interest in music, he didn’t go to any classes like most people do and was mostly a self taught musician which was actually something which made him different and creative.

After mastering himself with this wasteful art his mother decided to record his singing and post it on Youtube for his family and friends to see, so basically they had no idea about the power of social media.

While he and his mother kept doing so they found an increase in viewership, I bet they always had people other than his family and friends watching, so they decided in the beginning of 2008 to make their videos look more professional and by now they already had a loyal audience. They got over 10 million views with just pure word-of-mouth promotion which can be called ‘The snowball effect”.

One of the many of watched his videos were Scooter Braun and Usher Raymond, both of who are famous celebrity managers, they immediately took charge of him and turned his hobby into a professional full time business, and by the end of 2008 he was also signed for Raymond Braun Media Group which released his debut “One Time”.

All of this was more than enough to launch an artist’s career, but getting to this level is not easy for anyone, but little Bieber got this overnight, I bet he himself hasn’t realized the reason behind it other than his talent, as their are currently many kids out there who sing better than him. This is not a celebrity blog, so more than Bieber’s success story we’ll be concentrating on how social media played a major role in it.

The beginning : Power of Youtube

In 2008, two years after Google took-over Youtube, it was at its highest state, I always believe that 2007 – 08 were the best times to start a Youtube business as at that time their traffic was on a constant rise and the competition was extremely low than compared to today, so quiet often almost every upload received tons of views and if it was good, no one could stop the video from going viral.

I believe in this because many of the successful Youtube channels such as RayWilliamJohnson, Smosh and JakeValeFilms rose to popularity during these two years. Youtube videos faced the ‘snowball effect’ much faster and easier back then, so I bet Justin Bieber’s word-of-mouth campaign started out with bloggers and webmasters embedding his videos onto their sites.

Soon his videos got branded well enough and started to attain loyal subscribers, which was the backbone of his long term success and Youtube often shows unpredictable results once you touch this level.

I believe Justin looked forward to monetize his asset on Youtube by signing up to their partner program, which I highly appreciate as unlike other artists of that time who considered running advertisements as a bleak to their brand image, Bieber was successfully leveraging good income allowing him to reinvest and improve his videos and at the same time meet with his expenses.

Youtube is a great step towards brand promotion and one could easily leverage his influence and audience there to other networks and purposes, I believe Justin Bieber built his initial Twitter following with the help of the same, and many big channels on Youtube have contact and advertise links through which they receive proposals for various business deals.

The next step : Get social, create a buzz

I strongly believe that popularity cannot be based upon the number of people who know something or someone, but its based on the number of times they speak and discuss about that something or someone. By now millions of net surfers knew who Justin Bieber was, but they hardly spoke or discussed about him.

This was solved by getting him to be more social, the first way would be to constantly interact with fans on Youtube, Facebook and Twitter, I’m sure he would have outsourced this real soon. This helped boost discussion about him and because he outsourced it I’m sure the same was done in a massive scale, which added on to the previous ‘snowball effect’.

Many celebrity management and social media firms help build fame triggering fake discussions and massive social media upscale which involves creating fake controversies in ones name only to promote his / her brand, this method is tough and can be learnt only via experience and is popularly called ‘The naked fanatics’.

Again because Justin Bieber monetized at an early stage he was able to invest on these methods which are sure to cost thousands of dollars.

A big leap : Partnerships and Joint ventures

Every economic activity depends on a few others in order to be successful and at times one small partnership is all it takes, that is why I mentioned to always remain open for business deals in all your social media profiles. This may lead to a possible takeover, advertiser, sale or many a times a partnership / joint venture.

Justin Bieber soon came into the limelight of a few entrepreneurs in the music industry, many of them were smalltime, but soon enough he had a big deal from Scooter Braun which was basically a game-changer for him.

He got a huge contract which turned his small time internet show to a huge mainstream business. Many times even I myself receive many offers for joint ventures and business opportunities on this blog, most of them have helped me to a certain level, but you must watch out for scams a few times.

Rise to mainstream fame

As soon as he signed the contract with Raymond Braun Media Group he immediately launched his album which was efficiently promoted by RBMG, moreover his online bases were improved and well developed at the hands of professionals hired by RBMG, they promoted Justin Bieber and his talent in mainstream media with the help of publicists and made sure he gets all the mainstream fame.

The Music company did take a share of his earnings to cover up their expenses and to earn a considerable amount for their services but all of Justin Bieber’s launch depended on them.

His highly influential social media bases helped him leverage mainstream publications which brought him more fame and influence over the community. Like any other professional singer Justin Bieber started having his own concerts organized by his manager which again added to his ever growing fame.

These concerts were organized by his managers, and they generated millions of dollars from that and when Justin was singing for someone else he would charge upto $300,000 for it. Other than this his managers, RBMG got him a lot of sponsorships and endorsement deals which again brought him good revenues.

Being controversial

I’ve written about being controversial in many of my case studies and in all of them I’ve recommended my readers to be controversial in order to get your name out there. Justin Bieber may not have got into controversies for the sake of fame, but even then his name spread across the world due to his small controversies.

I believe that one must not be afraid of doing things differently, even if he fails at it I’m sure their will be some sort of positive outcome from it, that is what bring controversial is all about.

In today’s social media one can gain fame by going against the odds, lying and being daring enough, and Justin Bieber being 14 became a pop sensation which itself was something daring and against the odds, I feel that Bieber got maximum benefits from the fact that he was just a teenager.

On to our readers

This post was meant to be a case study on how an artist can get fame with the help of social media, but this can be for anyone else in any profession, Justin Bieber is actually one fine example of social media success and I hope all of you have realized that after reading this post.

No matter what he is today, his career began on the internet and I’m sure many more singers will use this medium to get world wide fame. All this while I considered singing a non-economic and wasteful activity, but I must say I was very much wrong although I would never dare venture out to such a business.

Many things in this post cannot be backed by proof, but I’m sure this was somewhat similar to the methods used by Justin Bieber in promoting himself, to keep up with future posts of this sort please do subscribe to our feed and also follow us on Twitter.

Tagged as: case study, Justin Bieber, social media, social media for artists, social media for singers, success of justin bieber, using social media, vevo, youtube celebrity, youtube for singers