Soulja Boy Tell Em – Personal Branding Done Right

Nov
2008

posted by Bob Buskirk on Make Money Online, Ramblings, The Net

A few weeks ago a friend of mine sent me to a YouTube video of Soulja Boy. If you don’t know Soulja Boy is a 17 year old rapper. He is most known for the song Crank That, I’m sure most of you have heard it at least once. After watching the video my friend sent me I checked out a few more since the first was funny as hell. After looking around at a few of his videos I went to his website and looked around for a bit. I realize unlike most people doing what he does he really does a lot to promote his personal brand. Here are just a few of the things he does.

YouTube
Unlike most artists who only post up their music videos and some interviews Soulja Boy does video blogs, which are really a lot more interesting than the interview cause it’s just him saying whats on his mind. One thing that was really cool that he did was take videos when we was overseas in Japan and Hawaii. It gave you a sort of behind the scenes look into what he was doing on each trip. You really don’t get that with most popular rappers out there. His YouTube page has over 10 million views and 147,238 subscribers.

Kyte.tv
Kyte.tv is a live webcasting service that allows you to broadcast live video from your computer or supported cell phone. Soulja Boy uses this service whereever he is at so you know what he is up to. He has the stream embedded on his myspace page and his website, whenever he starts streaming you can watch live what he is doing. This is even more of a behind the scenes look, especially since it is live! Unlike most artists who use Kyte to showcase music videos Soulja Boy actually just records what he is up to.

Xbox Live
Like most people his age Soulja Boy likes to play video games. He lets everyone know his Xbox Live gamertag – Souljaboytellem, and displays his gamercard on his website. He is also started a gaming group called SODMG Gamers.

These are just a few of the things he is doing to promote his personal brand, but he sure is doing a good job at it. Like I said he is one of the only artists doing this on a constant basis. If you look at just at what YouTube has done for him over the past year then you will understand the power of personal branding.

http://www.personalbrandingblog.com Dan Schawbel

Good example. Most people aren’t using social media tools to get the word out and to appear where people already are. Britney Spears and Shaquille Oneal have recently entered into this realm and have gotten praise for their transparency.
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Interesting to see a celebrity taking things to the next level online beyond the standard promotional shlock that most use.

I wonder how involved he actually is with his gaming group. I would imagine he couldn’t be that involved if its to get press by being a programer group – but if its just social then it wouldnt be too hard.
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That is really cool. i think he went the extra mile with the XBox gamer tag, I am on XBox and I am sure many of you are. I am mainly on live so my nephew and i can play games and watch movies together, but what a way to interact with you fans than play video games with them.
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It really is amazing how up and coming rappers and musicians in general can use the power of the Internet to get their name out there. From Soulja Boy to Justin Bieber, YouTube and other website provide a really powerful marketing strategy. I think the more connected fans feel to an artist the more likely they are to support their careers.

- Andrew