The "Secret Backdoor" That Built Lil Nas X | Lil Nas X's Story

From Couchsurfing at his sister's house to releasing the world's number one single, totaling a record breaking 19 weeks atop the US Billboard Hot 100, beating out the likes of Mariah Carey and Despacito. It's safe to say that Lil Nas X has become a household name, but not due to a crazy fluke or pure luck. Rather, his persistence, creativity and innovation has become a blueprint for many new artists. But with so many strategies out there, what made his so special? Montero Lamar Hill, a teenager from Atlanta, made waves in 2019 with his country trap pop hit Old Town Road. The single was everywhere, encompassing the summer of 2019 with its iconic lines, twang and jokes. Since then, he has released an EP that debuted in the Hot 100, amassed millions of followers, became the most nominated male artist of the 2020 Grammy Awards, and has even released his own children's book. Hill has accomplished all of this and more within the past year, and I'm going to tell you the strategies Hill and other new artists are taking advantage of right now. Growing up in a big family, Hill was born into a world where he felt he needed to stand out. From the very beginning, he had the drive and confidence to succeed, claiming in an interview that growing up, I honestly always felt I was going to be someone huge in some way. I just didn't know how. He carried this sentiment and mindset through his toughest times in his adolescence, while constantly having to change his living situations with his mom, then his dad and several brothers and sisters, he had little to become attached to other than the Internet. In his youth, he began to become very involved with social media and started to toy around with this idea of becoming viral. He was particularly drawn to Twitter, where he built a small empire of loyal fans. The question is, how did Hill's Twitter account ozmeraj surpass 150,000 followers from Twitter memes and Stan posts about Nicki Minaj alone? The answer relies on a simple strategy I call a backdoor marketing approach. Take the analogy of two different routes from point A to point B. In a big city, the majority of commuters will hop onto the freeway to get to point B. But with so many people doing the same thing at once, it's not a very efficient route. So in order to get to your destination and not get held up in traffic, you need to study the streets around the city and take a different approach. In this case, the streets bordering the freeway are less congested and faster. Even if Google Maps claims the freeway is the quickest route, the problem is Most people fail to realize that they are on the freeway, so take a moment to pull over, study the map again, and reroute. Chances are it will take you a lot longer if you rely on what the GPS says all the time. This analogy is exactly how marketing tends to work. If everyone is taking the same approach, those best practices become obsolete. Instead of taking the common approach of merely adding to the Internet's collection of millions of memes, Hilt based his account on unique choose your own adventure scenario threads that would inevitably encourage the viewer to interact more by using quotable tweets. An example would be his Twitter thread about a bank heist which resulted in an arrest, death, or a successful heist. These threads would garner tens of thousands of retweets and favorites. Even some YouTubers began to partake. This one guy called Nas Mirage and I know I've absolutely nailed that pronunciation. He's been banging like 100,000 retweets. By using this backdoor approach, Hill's Twitter account stood out from others and began to gain a reputation. Unfortunately, the account was suspended in early 2018 due to Hill's abuse of tweet decking, the act of spamming with multiple accounts in coordination to artificially make a tweet go viral. However, this did not deter Hill on his quest to virality. He was just getting started. As he entered college in 2018, he began making music because he was driven to out of boredom. His first song, titled Shame, was followed by almost 20 more songs. Although displaying a wide variety of styles and genres, his music was generally generic and took heavy inspiration from bigger artists. Unlike his Twitter account, Hill struggled to attract the attention of viewers for a much longer time in such a competitive and oversaturated market. His initial attempt at a high quantity of songs that copied current trends and artists just didn't stick out. Hill had yet to find what would differentiate himself from the millions of other wannabe rappers until he stumbled upon a very unique beat while browsing the website beatstars in October. The beat was deemed a throwaway by the producer Young Kyo, but Lil Nas X saw the potential and took his shot and thus Old Town Road was born. So how did some college dropout turn a $30 beat into a worldwide record? And how can you apply the same strategies? Hill learned from his past songs and mixtape that simply posting a link on his platform was not enough. He also knew that his generic lyrics and beats were were not easy to promote or gain interest with. Anyways, as Hill began to write his song, he kept three things in it had to be short. It had to be catchy. It had to be funny. With his original idea of a loner cowboy song, which expressed his emotions of dropping out of school and committing to something his parents didn't support, he began writing. He implemented his first marketing strategy. At the same time, Hill knew what the audience of his meme account on Twitter was looking for. So he put some potentially funny lines in there.

Even though it's something so simple. I got the horses in the back. I was like, this is gonna be the highlight of the memes right here. And then the cowboy hat, blue cheese wrangler on my booty. Riding on a horse, you can whip your Porsche. I was like, these are all quotables. I was just doing that the entire month of making a song.

Hill now had this song that could finally help him stand out from the crowd. But how did he get people to listen? He started with his small platform of about 30,000 Twitter followers, pairing his song to a video of a dancing cowboy and. And linking the song below. Finding his own backdoor approach, Hill stuck to this formula of short viral videos, and it began to start catching on. He would post dozens of memes a day, relentlessly promoting his track to no end. On top of sharing memes on his personal Twitter account, Hill had some more tricks up his sleeve. He created a Reddit account to start threads asking for the name of a song using his own lyrics from Old Town Road. As a result, this simple product placement would lead to a search for an answer, or at least be stored somewhere in the reader's memory. As his meme started to gain more attention, people began to make their own Old Town Road memes. This tweet of a man standing on a galloping horse went viral on Twitter, paired with the audio of Old Town Road. But when the Twitter user was asked why he made the video, he said Nas sent it to him. Another example of Hill's genius marketing. Aware of the tweet's virality, Hill promptly changed the title of Old Town Road to Old Town Road. I got the horses in the back on all the platforms in order to help people find the song easier. Then Lil Nas's already viral song was shared on TikTok with the hashtag Challenge Yee. A cowboy and a cowgirl. Trend then exploded the song's growth exponentially. Hill's methodical and restless marketing tactics finally began to pay off. But he didn't stop there. Once viral, he pushed the song even harder with remix after remix, which boosted the song's plays on the charts. He stayed constantly engaged when his song was taken off the country Billboard and as it reached new heights, posting it as it happened and even quickly began to work on an ep. Hill would spend hours marketing in all different ways, but to break down his formula Simply number one what is your backdoor approach? Number two speak the language of your audience. Number three spend less time promoting and more time engaging. 4. Capitalize on opportunity. Number five stay persistent when you don't initially gain traction Lil Nas use of social media to promote his music to the top of the charts has inspired several artists since Megan the Stallion started multiple viral dance trends and challenges from her songs Big Old Freak and Savage, which pushed her into stardom and mainstream. Doja Cat did the same with her songs say so Juicy like that and more. These artists use memorable lyrics and push groups of the Internet to promote their tracks for themselves by using social media in a non traditional way. There is a higher cap of success for these artists and even for you to reach Lil Nas X has just begun and with his first whole new album set to release in 2021, he's really just started. No one said it was easy, but if a college dropout teenager from a small town in Atlanta can do it, you can too. And if you want to dive in deeper and learn how you can stand out at the highest levels like Lil Nas X, I recommend checking out my book how to Stand out in a 3 second world. There's a link below that you can click on and dive in to learn more. And if you enjoyed this video, please click the subscribe button and the like button and I really look forward to connecting with you in the next video.