For as long as I can remember Scott Bradlee has always been that “incredibly talented pianist” down the street. Scott and I grew up on the same cul-de-sac in a small town in the part of New Jersey where deer and corn fields outnumber the people. I remember riding my bike and I could hear Scott playing the piano down the block, classical music, jazz, whatever he was playing that day.

I always knew he’d make a career out of music, but I would often stop to think what that meant to an eight-year-old. Would he be famous? In a band? Or one of those guys with the tuxedo with long tails, that he would flip back when he sat down at the piano. I had a hard time seeing how he would make a living playing the piano and who could blame me?

Today

Fast forward 20 years, add the Internet, Youtube, digital music distribution, crowd-sourcing, and content marketing. Now you have the environment that Scott makes a living in.

Scott’s list of achievements sounds as random and nearly as impressive as Forrest Gump’s. He’s rode on Eric Schmidt’s private Jet, performed on Good Morning America, been on the front page of Reddit half a dozen times, been covered in every major news publication from the Huffington Post to Mashable, topped iTunes jazz charts, even delivered a speech at a Ted Talk, and is rapidly closing in on 30 million Youtube views.

But, what I find most impressive and interesting about Scott is he’s developing a brand and a framework for content marketing success. And, true to the flywheel effect, he’s getting more and more efficient at that success. He’s using lean marketing techniques to rapidly evolve both his brand and his content marketing and I thought it would be a fascinating study to see how he’s doing it.

Scott Bradlee Interview

Given my personal friendship with Scott, I had the unique opportunity of being able to interview him with the goal of trying to understand how he approaches his content marketing. Many thanks to Scott for being so forthcoming in the interview.

1. You’ve hit the front page on Reddit several times, in your opinion, what’s the secret sauce? What makes you so appealing to that community?

The Reddit community is unique, because they’re an extremely savvy crowd. You’ll get judged on the strength of your content, first and foremost. It’s also crucial to be authentic and upfront about your intentions; if you’re trying to use reddit to push a product, you might as well state that in the title, because they’ll see right through any attempt to disguise that fact. The best posts are ones that inspire discussion and show creativity.

I like debuting new work over there because they’re an intelligent cross section of the internet; I’ll often receive comments that explain the projects I do better than I ever could. Of course, you have to be prepared to take criticism- especially if you get on the front page. On the plus side, the criticism will be more thought out than what’s typically found in the comment sections of other sites.

2. All the content you make is of high quality from a technical sense, but there’s clearly a difference in how much your content is shared. What’s the key difference between your less successful content and your super viral content?

I try not to get caught up too much in measuring success by view counts alone, because there’s not a particularly strong correlation between quality and virality. For content to go viral, it has to appear relevant to a very large audience, be succinct enough to hold Millennial attention spans, and be share-worthy to the point that someone might feel bad if they didn’t share it with all their friends. It’s a windfall of publicity when that happens, but it’s pretty difficult to achieve.

As exciting as viral content can be, I actually think the way to build a brand is through the consistent release of high quality content. View counts and Facebook likes don’t always convey engagement levels, and maintaining a highly engaged audience is crucial to success. A good analogy would be the phenomenon of “one hit wonders” in the 80’s: everyone can recognize these songs, but relatively few can actually name the band members (or, often, the band themselves). The bands failed to build a strong enough following to keep pace with the popularity of their hit; the same caveat applies to viral content.

3. You continually produce unique content, but are there some guidelines you use to make sure the content resonates with your fans?

It was actually easier for me to generate content in my early YouTube days, because I hadn’t yet established a real identity on there. I just put up whatever I wanted, without any real expectations. Nowadays, I’ve built an audience almost entirely from doing “vintage” transformations of Top 40 material, which often makes me think twice before posting anything that deviates too sharply from that kind of content.

On a positive note, though - I’m now able to crowd source the creation project much more than before, which has turned Postmodern Jukebox into a really cool collaboration between the band and our fans. Our fans on social media have actually suggested a few of our covers, including the jazz version of “Thrift Shop” and the Motown version of “Roar.” Your fans will tell you what they’re looking for, if you’re willing to let them.

4.You sell a lot of your music through Bandcamp and iTunes, have you ever been accused of being in it for the money or a sell out?

Not at all. If anything, I’ve found that people that enjoy your work WANT to support you and purchase your music--even when there are so many free alternatives out there.

a.(follow up) Any idea why your fans don’t feel that way?

For one thing, I never push it on them. Piracy doesn’t bother me; I really don’t mind if people share downloads or torrent my stuff, because I’ve had so many generous people support me on sites like Bandcamp and Patreon. If you build a strong fan base, you’ll be able to make a good living through all the opportunities that come your way; record sales are just a nice bonus.

5. What kind of outreach do you do after creating content? Has it reduced over time?

Mostly, it’s just a matter of posting to social media sites. If I think it’s something that would interest niche blogs or some of my friends in media, I’ll send it their way. Same goes for reddit. However, the key is to show discretion; if I was to inundate a blog with submission after submission without making absolutely sure that it was relevant to their interests, I’d only wind up damaging my relationship with that blog. The important thing to remember is that an artist’s (or “brand’s”, in general) relationship with the media needs to be mutually beneficial. You have to be sure to provide them with something that would be interesting to their constituents; after all, that’s their responsibility.

6. Do you find it easier to recruit talent now that you’ve developed a track record of producing viral content?

Definitely. At the very least, a lot more people take my phone calls!

7. Is there anything you learned from your emotectrl experiment? Anything you would do differently if you tried to do it again?

Emote Ctrl helped me refine a lot of concepts that led to Postmodern Jukebox, and also taught me how to truly build an engaged fan base. Live streaming is probably the most fun thing for me to do as a musician, and it was cool to watch the regulars come by week after week. I got to know so many people that way.

I’m really digging Stageit - which is a similar concept, but with a crowd funding twist. It’s low cost enough for viewers - 10 cents gets you access - but that 10 cent paywall cuts down on spam and ensures that the chat doesn’t get too crowded or out of hand. This was an eye opener for me; I think I was reluctant to put a paywall on Emote Ctrl because of my desire to provide access to everyone, but Stageit found a way to use one to provide a great experience for everyone involved.

8. Do you look in to what drives traffic to your videos? What are some metrics you care about? Has that evolved over time since you started?

I look at the first 48 hours of data for each video- that’s the make-or-break time for viral content. I can usually predict how fast and far something will spread just by looking at the amount of shares in the first hour, too - that’s probably the most useful metric in the short term. These days, I look a lot more at the data trends on longer time scale - how has the age of my viewers changed over time? What websites seem to lead to discovery of my videos? How are my videos generally being ranked by YouTube’s ‘search’ algorithm? When your goal is long-term success, it’s important to ignore the random data fluctuations that come with each new video; instead, find what you do well, provide excellent content, and stay the course.

What I've learned

Develop a loyal, loving following and make it consistent with your customer base

A good following meets two criteria:

1. They love the content you produce
2. They're going to be accepting of what you have to sell when it comes time.

The size of your following is important, but how loud those followers are willing to shout for you is equally important. Don't underestimate the wildly devoted fan that makes it his/her mission to make you known. Too often we have a tendency to take these fans for granted, Scott does a great job of responding to their comments and making them feel loved. That ensures they're infatuation with your brand is not just a passing fancy.Given enough time building a good fan base, it's value will exceed even the most prominent placements you can get on the web. As Scott's following grows he becomes less and less dependent on press placements or runaway Reddit success.

Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead

To create a brand people love, you have to also create a brand that some people hate. There is no brand in the world that is deeply loved that does not also create a small group that hates it. You're going to incur bad feedback, hateful comments, perhaps even sabotage attempts. You've got to have the good sense to ignore this and continue down your path.

Take a look at the screenshot above. For every 16 people that like this video, there's someone that dislikes it. That means that for as often as Scott hears "omg this is awesome <33333" he's also got to hear things like "this is trash, stop making music." The point is, you need to be able to hear bad feedback and stay the course. Truly unique and appealing content will be polarizing, and it's a good thing.

Just make sure that those leaving negative comments aren't followers who used to love your brand. If this is happening too often, it means you're no longer being consistent with the brand you created and content your following expects.

Failures are inevitable

Not every piece of content you produce will be a win. Explosive content lives at the intersection of new, unique, and untested. This same intersection is right on the edge of failure. If you're trying to produce explosive content and haven't failed a few times, it's because you're not trying truly new, unique, or untested content ideas.

This kind of experimentation may not be with the content topic, but the median, promotion methods, format, etc. If you've created a production process for infographics and can get wins with little risk then start to experiment with other visual assets, experiment with ebooks, whitepapers, social contests, tweet chats, video, etc.

Scott hosted a Reddit AMA and played any and all musical requests for 8 hours. He hit the front page of Reddit and accumulated 100,000 views in a sitting. Extraordinary, right? Well, what you don't see is he'd played similar shows that sometimes had technical problems or weren't nearly as explosive. I can remember one time when he continued to play an online request show after some technical problems and I was one of his two viewers. Despite these setbacks, his fan base was forgiving of technical problems or platform limitations because he was trying something so out-of-the-box they were happy to be a part of it.

Failure isn't something to be afraid of, chronic failure is. It's easy for companies to be paranoid of failure, but that kind of mentality limits innovation and prohibits long-term growth, you've got to establish a culture and mindset that doesn't fear failure, it embraces it as part of a lean marketing cycle.

Create. Learn. Evolve.

Exceptional is only one of the key ingredients

From a talent perspective, all of Scott's videos are exceptional. He works with incredibly talented musicians and puts together unique, well-performed arrangements. But, then how can his videos vary in views so wildly?

Scott mentions a few things in the interview that hint at what helps him succeed with content.

• Keep the content succinct (unlike this post)
• Make it widely appealing to your audience (if you're going for true virality)
• Rewarding to both parties to share. The sharer should feel excited to tell others, the recipient of the share should feel happy they were sent the content.

Virality creates awareness, consistent content retains followers

As Scott mentions in the interview, when he first started producing videos it was a buckshot approach. He could make any content because he hadn't established a brand or a following with expectations. But, for that same reason his viral successes were short lived and he remained entirely dependent on the each piece's viral appeal.

After creating a brand and managing expectations for the kind of content his following could anticipate, Scott started to see a huge increase in both the growth of his following and its value. It's easy to get distracted by viral content ideas that are tangential to your brand, but you've got to remember to nurture the following that you set out to build.

Winning with content is addictive and cyclical

Rand has outlined how content marketing has a flywheel effect and, by nature, gets more efficient the longer you're doing it. However, in addition to the process itself getting more efficient, something else happens. Within any organization, when you start to get content wins, something else happens. You start to pick up a momentum.

It may take some time for you to start getting the kind of wins that start turning heads, but when you do you start to pick up speed. It becomes easier to get buy-in from your organization, it becomes easier to get great contributors on board, and (hopefully) you get a budget.

Elicit an emotion

Scott mentions he strives to "...be share-worthy to the point that someone might feel bad if they didn’t share it with all their friends.” People don't feel compelled that way by a logical argument or a well reasoned-explanation. If you're trying to make content that gets passed around like a hot potato, you've got to make your reader/viewer feel something, a strong emotion.

Start now

Scott has been making videos for five years now. Only eight months ago did he have his first video that cracked a million views. It's been five years of a lean content marketing cycle that's led him to finding what works for him and his following.

If you want to start evolving as a content creator, you've got to start doing. There are no number of articles you can read, whiteboard videos you can watch, or ebooks you can download that can substitute for hands on experience. Start creating now and start holding yourself to real success metrics. Don't just create a blog and hit the publish button, drive readers to it, social shares, whitepaper downloads. Whatever it is, start creating and start measuring success.

Wrap up

Talking with Scott over the last five years, it's so difficult not to be inspired by some of his successes. Whenever he sends me an idea for a new piece he's working on (like pianograms), I can't help but get excited. I'd love to hear from all of you in the comments, what new content formats are you working on that excite you? Any extraordinary successes? Miserable failures?

We've done quite a bit of reading and not a lot of listening, so here's a video for you to enjoy. It's a really tall clown singing "Royals" like he's Tom Jones.