- Cyber Patterns by Jason Levin
- Posts
- Content Strategy Case Study: Russ
Sup nerds, you're reading Cyber Patterns. You’re joined by 4,668+ readers learning how to develop their Content Strategy.
Today, I’m taking a look at the rapper Russ’s content strategy. A true internet hustler, Russ failed for 10+ years. He now has 10M+ listens/month and plays sold-out shows around the world.
“Plays in the millions, guess I’m finally blowing up, 10 years making beats, patience tastes bitter but the aftertaste is so sweet”
Russ, Manifest
I started listening to Manifest by Russ back in 2016 as a freshman in college.
It would serve as my soundtrack as I pursued my internet dreams, hoping I too would make them happen and manifest them into reality one day. It took me 10+ years of failing, but I made it happen.
Listening to this song, I knew all I had to do was keep pushing. I must’ve listened to it 500 times. That’s the beauty of Russ’s music. It motivates you to keep on pushing. If it took Russ 10+ years, I knew it’d take me a while too.
While, I haven’t “blown up”, it’s been a wild year and the aftertaste is pretty sweet right now. I’m grateful for Russ for providing me with the motivation and emotional strength to believe in myself and push through all the failures.
Let’s take a deeper look at his content strategy and see how you can copy some of his methods.
“I’ve been at this shit for 9 years, now they start to call”
Russ released 11 albums for free over 9 years without seeing any success.
“I had put out eleven fucking projects and nothing had taken off,” he wrote in It’s All in Your Head. “The takeaway from all of this though was that I was now highly versed in what didn’t work. I studied my failures and strategized my triumphs.” From his failures, he had a realization.
Russ made a plan to release singles every week and market each single with the amount of care he’d typically market an album: album cover, music video, promo, etc. He spent a few months recording singles, but not releasing anything. “Once, I had half a year mapped out, then I put out song one.”
Why wait on releasing? “I wanted to always be six months ahead so when everything took off and I couldn’t get into the studio as often, I’d still have music to release.” Planning for a blow-up sounds crazy, but he made it happen.
Subscribe to Cyber Patterns to read the rest.
Become a paying subscriber of Cyber Patterns to get access to this post and other subscriber-only content.
Already a paying subscriber? Sign In