Bum Rush the Charts - A case study in word-of-mouth promotion

Podcasters, bloggers and their readers are proving the power of their media by joining together Thursday to boost an indie band to the top of the iTunes charts.

This is an organic campaign that has evolved from a couple of people to a movement. The genesis was on an episode of Pacific Coast Hellway, with Mark Yoshimoto Nemcoff. For a look at how to make a grassroots event happen, visit the Bum Rush the Charts blog.

There’s a step-by-step guide for word of mouth activists to generate the maximum online impact on March 22:

Starting Wednesday morning, remind people about Bum Rush the Charts using email and MySpace bulletins & messages. Remind people that the link to buy Mine Again is:
http://www.FinancialAidPodcast.com/bumrush and that using this link will net us 5% in affiliate fees from Apple on top of the 50% donation from the band.
[ snip ]

If college and graduate students are part of your audience, remind them that in order to be eligible for the scholarship, they need to set up a free profile at: http://www.ScholarshipPoints.com

Also, it may sound silly, but it pays to remind people that they need to download and install iTunes, plus open an iTunes Music Store account with a valid credit card and/or PayPal account. http://www.iTunes.com

Make sure you’ve got a copy of the StumbleUpon toolbar for IE or Firefox, and that you have an account set up on StumbleUpon.
http://www.StumbleUpon.com

Once you’ve got StumbleUpon up and running, visit EVERY blog post (click on the titles of the posts on the main page) at Bum Rush the Charts and click the Thumbs Up button. Be sure to do this on the buy now URL as well.

On YouTube, make sure you watch and rate 5 stars the Bum Rush videos on there:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=jMx_66WS9hQ; http://youtube.com/watch?v=u5_y9EZcLDY; http://youtube.com/watch?v=T-zl5hZOScQ

== Thursday ==

Obviously, buy Mine Again on Thursday. In addition to that, we need to give a major social networking blast to BRTC stuff on Thursday.

Send out one final round of MySpace bulletins on Thursday. Ideally, delete any previous bulletins about BRTC and post a new one. If you have the time, delete and repost in the morning, afternoon, and evening, to ensure that the maximum number of friends see the bulletin (especially if you have a lot of friends).

Go to this Digg.com Bum Rush URL:
http://digg.com/videos/music/Bum_Rush_The_Charts_2
and click Digg It. If you don’t have a Digg.com account, set one up.

DO NOT DIGG THIS LINK BEFORE THURSDAY! It’s vital that everyone Digg the story ON THURSDAY ONLY, to get maximum benefit.

Note the blatant manipulation of the various voting sites, to create a huge bump in links and attention for the Black Flag song Mine Again.

Now, take those tactics and apply them to an election campaign, a word of mouth marketing campaign, a WTO protest - you name it.

In case you missed it, the call to action is to visit this link on March 22, and follow it to buy Black Lab’s Mine Again on the iTunes store (you need an account set up with a valid credit card).

Other posts worth checking:

Luke Armour, CBC, Lockergnome

Related posts:

Bum Rush the Charts Is Viral Activism 

Tags: black lab, podcasters, podcasting, bumrushthecharts, mark yoshimoto nemcoff, music, itunes, word of mouth, grassroots