I started my blog Pacing the Panic Room two years ago as a way to stay connected to friends and document both my foray into step-fatherhood and my efforts to grow a new baby with my wife in Orlando, Florida. A year ago, I had an idea to see if my readers would help support a spin-off project. On Monday, my little label-less record, DO FUN STUFF, benefitting a charity for a genetic disorder nobody had ever heard of, was sitting at No. 1 in the Children’s Music genre on iTunes. The iTunes.
I’ve run a live rock ‘n’ roll venue, promoted bands and their records, managed their tours, and even worked briefly at an indie music label. But what’s happened with this album has changed the way I think about branding, marketing, and above all online influence.
Finding An Audience
Right away I discovered a huge community of parent bloggers (and that I was but one voice among thousands of established others). Then popular blogger Joanna Goddard mentioned my weekly photo series documenting my wife’s pregnancy on A Cup of Jo. My pageloads spiked from 800 to about 20,000 in a single day. And even when the traffic subsided, I had a dedicated new readership who followed the pregnancy and stuck around long afterward to read about my family’s ups and downs.
In the middle of that weekly photo series, my wife and I learned that our boy (who we call LB on the blog) had a rare disorder called Smith Magenis Syndrome, which manifests itself with a laundry list of symptoms that range from mild and manageable to nightmarish. It was a hard thump on the head learning all of the struggles and delays LB had experienced wouldn’t go away with age; SMS does not go away. And yet, none of his Doctors knew anything about it, nor could they offer any real insight. So we turned to the Internet and found our answers in a community called Parents and Researchers Interested in Smith Magenis Syndrome (PRISMS).
via How I Landed a No. 1 Album on iTunes Using Social Media | Fast Company.
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