Accidental Viral: How To Unlock Your Creative Career with Just One Post

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You. Would you believe me if I told you that your entire creative career could be revolutionized by just one blog post? One social media post could be the difference between you stagnation and you elevating your creative career to a level that you have not dreamed of? Now, I'm not saying this as hype dream, as something that I'm just making up to try to get you to pay attention to the rest of this episode. I'm saying it because that's why God and Gigs exist, because of one blog post.

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And I'm going to explain how it led to what we have today in our community, as well as how you can replicate the same things we did with this one post that can help you elevate your creative career to where God has it to be and wants it to be and where you want it to be. Just give me a moment to welcome those of you who are new to our platform and then we'll get right into this important and powerful discussion.

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Hello and welcome to our show. Thank you so much for making this podcast a part of your creative day. If you're new to the podcast to The God and Gig Show, let me introduce myself. My name is Allen C. Paul.

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I'm the host and founder of God and Gigs. And you are in the right place at the right time. Because as a creative musician, freelancer entrepreneur, anyone at the intersection of the arts, entertainment industry and the ministry, you may not be performing or creating inside a religious institution or a church, but you have a religious, spiritual, Christian foundation and you want to solve temporary creative problems with timeless spiritual principles. But that's what we do here at the God and Gig Show. So you're in the right place.

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Make sure you subscribe tap the notifications bell if you're watching on YouTube and make sure that you stay in touch with us throughout our sharing in our community, our coaching, and our social media platforms. Well, today we're talking about really the way that God and Gigs got started. And the reason I love to share this story with our listeners, with our audience, with you, is because it helps you to see how you can have the same results. Now, I always make sure to give this caveat whenever I share about God and Gigs. This is not about making millions of dollars, even though I believe God can bless you with that.

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I believe some businesses, some creatives, some entrepreneurial journeys are meant to bring in wild success and a lot of cash and a lot of income and a lot of notoriety. And that's great. But that's not the purpose behind God and Gigs. We're here to help you live your best creative life for the grace of the season that you're in in your particular creative niche. And that means inside or outside of the church, and that means wherever you are in your creative journey.

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Now, where God and Gigs was back when I first started this in 2015, was as a lowly blog. I had no followers, I had nobody really paying attention to it. The original name of the blog was Jesus and Jazz. I'm still embarrassed when I say that name out loud, but yes, as you can see, we like alliteration around here, it seems. But I was just finishing a blog.

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Well, actually just continuing a blog I was writing as a home school dad, I had a few posts that my friends really enjoyed. And as a musician in the church, I was starting to write about being a musician at church, but I had no idea how to connect the dots between making a living blogging. That was not my intention at all. And as you can tell, since I'm talking about a blog, you can see that that was really the heyday of that. And podcasting was not even really a thing yet that people even were considering as a career or as a way to spread their message.

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So the podcast was way in the distance in terms of whether it would be a part of my creative journey. I just wanted to share. But there are certain things that happened right around 2015 and this is kind of as I'm recording the anniversary season of God and Gigs. So it's a great time for us to reflect on how we got here and how you can use these same tactics to help you build your creative platform in a way that is accidentally viral, because I certainly didn't intend to go viral. The first thing I would say about our post that went miniviral, not even really a huge amount of views, but it definitely exploded in terms of my community, in terms of the music community, is that it was unexpected, it was dealing with a legitimate pain, it was personal, and it wasn't meant to make people happy.

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It wasn't meant to make people consider me popular or the guru or anything. It really wasn't meant for any of those things. So, in other words, it was directly authentic to what I wanted to share, irregardless of the audience. So I want to make sure that when I share these tactics with you, that you hear the same heart behind it. This is not designed to make you automatically famous.

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As a matter of fact, the reason why one post can be the difference between you having no impact and you having a great impact is not how many people immediately follow you. It is whether you start to understand your clear voice, your authentic voice, and understand what you're called to do and say. And that one post can be the catalyst that makes all of that clear. You might have thought that I was going to say that the way to get this amazing new career out of this one post was that the post goes viral. Now that's great, but virality is really not the purpose.

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The purpose is clarity. So I want to tell you a little bit about this first post that I wrote back in 2015 that kind of went mini viral, at least for me. 50,000 views is not a huge amount of views, but it's definitely way more when your blog post had no views or ten views or 20 views or 200 views before that. And then all of a sudden you have one that gets I don't know what the power is, but exponentially more in just 24 48 hours. So, as I mentioned, the first thing that my post, which was five excuses that musicians like to say at rehearsals, that was our first post on the new guiding gigs.

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I just renamed it and I wrote this post really as an attempt to get under the skin of some musicians that I was annoyed with who were showing up at rehearsals without being prepared. And so I wrote this satirical type of post just to kind of poke fun at people who made excuses when they showed up for rehearsals unprepared. Now, what happened when I wrote that post was, as you can probably guess, people reacted. Let's talk about first why they reacted, because it wasn't expected that I was going to say some things out loud that other people were thinking. And what happens when you share your post, when you share your music, when you share your perspective?

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Most likely you are thinking something that someone else has not yet said out loud. You vocalizing and sharing your one post that is clearly about your perspective and the way you see things. Most likely, if you're honest about it, will resonate with somebody else. It gives you clarity because you are very clearly announcing and telling the world, here's how I feel about a certain subject. Now, I know people do this all the time with lifestyle blogs and telling people their perspective, but I want to make this clear that all this has to go together.

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And it's why I believe this one post had such an impact on gotten gigs. I never realized there was that much emotion around musicians not coming to rehearsal prepared. So it was unexpected, but it hit a legitimate pain point that other people were thinking. That's the second part of what I think really made this post kind of blow up in people's mindset and why it told me that God and Gigs had a voice because it dealt with a legitimate pain point that I started to realize was not just about musicians not showing up to rehearsal already, but also had to do with the entire professional and spiritual and emotional approach that creatives that were in both the music ministry and the music industry were taking. So it gave me a sense of, hey, this needs to be talked about.

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So I wasn't looking for the virality and people to have a million views that again, wasn't really a thing as far as YouTube or anything else. Back when I first posted this, however, it did give me clarity on who would listen, who wanted to listen, who was interested in this, and reminded me that I needed to do more of that. Now, you may not get 50,000 views or 100,000 views, a million views of any of the materials of that first post that gets you all the attention that you so desire. But pay attention to what gets people interested, moving toward your content, moving toward what you're sharing, because it's not necessarily the numbers, it's the clear path that sharing that one post gave me that it could also give you. So I challenge you, as we go through these different things that help this post become like a clarion call to me to share more of it, that it was unexpected, that I dealt with a legitimate pain point, that I was saying something that other people were thinking but not saying, and it was personal.

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I didn't write this. I did write it in the third person. I will say that I wrote it kind of like as a neutral party, but I was very clear that this was coming from my standpoint, and it was because I was legitimately frustrated. When you share that one post, it needs to have a clear personal connection to you. If you share things that everybody's heard, whether it's Chat, GPT or any other kind of AI generated content, or maybe just borrowed content from somebody else.

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But it's not really personal to you, I can guarantee you. While you might get a lot of views, it's not going to give you the clarity that I got from my first post, which told me that God in gigs, had a voice, had an audience. So the key thing of this is to keep it personal. Make a statement with your work, with your art, with your one post that is very, very personal. Get vulnerable.

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I didn't like sharing that I was not happy. I didn't like the things I had to write about other musicians. I almost felt like I was kind of picking on some of my friends. I didn't name anyone by name, but I was very, very clear. And that's why I think, again, it got a big response from people emotionally.

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Not necessarily numbers wise, but emotionally. People had yes or no, had very strong reactions that they said I was being very dismissive, or they said, Right on, brother, say more. The key is not to be lukewarm about your sharing. You've got to be personal and take a stand on something, whether even if it's musical, and you just want to be very clear that this is your style, or if you want to write something that's more in the literary sense, whatever it is, be personal, be authentic. And then you will hear and see the responses from people that are very clearly for or against, and it tells you what direction to go in.

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And the last part I'll say about this one viralish post was that it wasn't meant to be popular at all. It wasn't ever intended to be viral. I didn't want it to be viral. I wasn't looking for viral. I just wrote something.

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And so I think one of the keys of you finding that one post that's going to revolutionize your brand, guess what? It's probably not the one you think is going to do that. If you go out in the intention of writing something popular, most likely you're going to fail, because this is not something that can be predicted very well. Now, of course, there's analytics and data and I research the very topics that I talk about on this podcast. So I'm not saying not to do your research, but I'm saying it's more important to be consistent than to try to find that magic wand that you can wave at one particular post.

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And that's the one that's going to create the incredible momentum in your career. What I would suggest is you keep writing, keep sharing, and make sure that when that one post hits, you're already in the framework of writing and sharing and creating and composing and painting so that you're not just stuck with that one viral thing. You're already writing. You're already doing the work of an artist. You're already doing the work of a creative.

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So if you want to check out that very first post that went viral, I'm going to put a link for it in the description right there in this app of what you're using right now. So go check out that first post. Tell me what you think. It's five, six, seven years old now, but I still think it kind of packs a little bit of a punch, even for non musicians. You'll get the gist of what I was saying, but more importantly, you can get the gist of how I worded and how I felt through that post.

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And that is what I believe people reacted to. We got again, we went from zero to 50,000. And then what's funny about it is that that 50,000 dropped off. So it's not about necessarily that that post suddenly created a bunch of traffic to the rest of my post, but what it did do is remind me that I had an audience. And it started me on the path to writing my book.

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It started me on the path to creating a podcast. It started me on the path of creating this entire community, which has now blessed hundreds and hundreds of creatives like you. So the one post that revolutionizes your career may not be the viral one. It may not be something that gets a bunch of views or a bunch of acknowledgment on social media, but it will be the one that gets you started on the path. And the best time to work on that is right now, my friend, I hope this has encouraged you.

00:15:17
This has been our Paul Creative Services episode. I hope you'll stay connected once again by subscribing on this app, by making sure you follow the notifications bell or tap the notifications bell if you're watching on YouTube. And if you are interested in getting more information about what we share in guiding Gigs all the time, being first in line for new episodes, for new discounts, and for new workshops, join our mailing list. And I don't like to even call it a mailing list. It's more like our newsletter.

00:15:44
It's our community called the Paul Creative Services, but it does get you on the email list. You can find that@godandgeeks.com info, there's a link for it right there in this description as well. And you can stay connected with everything we do here at God and Gigs. Especially in this as I'm recording our anniversary season where we're celebrating soon 250 episodes of The God and Gig Show and our 6th year of existence as a podcast. And I think our now the 7th year as a podcast.

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Six years? No, seven years as a blog. Okay, whatever. I can't remember the numbers right now. Just say we've been around for a while, so make sure you hang around.

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We're going to be doing some really special stuff for our anniversary season as well as some very special discounts on some of our premium community products and coaching products. So you want to stay connected with that. Well my friend, thank you so much for joining me on this episode. I hope this has encouraged and inspired you. And remember, until next time, continue to become the creative that you were created to be.

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God bless and I'll see you next episode. Thanks for joining us here at the God and Gigs show. Please leave us a review on itunes like our Facebook page or visit Godandgigs.com and tell us what you thought of this show. We'll be back soon. In the mean time, go create something amazing.