99% of the Internet reads content that 1% creates.

Given this uneven balance, bloggers and companies alike climb hand over foot to trigger “virality” and reach into the 99% (readers) as far as possible.

Virality or “going viral” is simple to understand, and hard to execute. I’m basing all my understanding of virality on an experiment I did where I got 1Million views in 7 hours, earlier this year.

The premise behind sending something viral is attaching content to a basic human emotion.

If your content triggers, fear, anger, happiness, disgust, sadness or suspense, people will share it.

I talk to a lot of entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley, and many have one character trait in common, “Viral Jealousy.”

Entrepreneurs and business owners hold huge grudges against companies (primarily startups) that have acquired millions of users or customers with “stupid” concepts, using virality.

This fascinates me. Constantly.

These “stupid” concepts that people are referring to all share one characteristic in common. They’ve all executed flawlessly on attaching a basic human emotion to their app, or company.

Think of any company that has grown extremely fast in the past decade.

Did the company, product, or service trigger; fear, anger, happiness, disgust, sadness or suspense?

Mens Humor – Humor

BuzzFeed – Comfort, Happiness, Curiosity

Facebook – All of the above

ProductHunt – Suspense, Curiosity

Yo – Happiness, Curiosity

DropBox — Comfort/Happiness

TeeSpring – Suspense

BBC – All of the above

Uber — Comfort/Happiness

Ello — Curiosity, Humor, Suspense

Twitter – All of the above

All of these companies have another essential piece of their business model in common; Their “virality” is BUILT IN. (“Invite a friend for more storage space”)

These companies did not grow from 0–10,000 with funny “viral” videos.

—-

Now, for the best part.

I’ve met with countless entrepreneurs in coffee shops and offices all across Silicon Valley who talk about how they’re sinking large quantities of their budget into a “viral video campaign.”

The assumption is that they will make a funny video (or pay for one) and people will share it. The campaign will then proceed to launch them and their company into orbit with Instagram, TechCrunch, and Uber.

Fact: I have met people who believe this to be an entire marketing strategy.

With 100 hours uploaded every minute to YouTube, Statistically, this will not happen.

1. If you don’t have an active following, you will fail.
2. If you’re targeting the correct basic human emotion associated with you business, you’ll fail.

Why re-invent the wheel when the odds of success are against you to begin with?

———

First step is simple, for bloggers and businesses alike. You must build an active audience.

1. Blog about interesting, captivating topics that people care about, without plugging you business or product.

2. Trigger a human emotion you want yourself and/or your brand associated with through your interesting topics.

Everything else will fall into place later.

First, get people to listen.

———

Viral Jealousy infected entrepreneurs,

If you hold grudges against these “stupid” concepts, you are wasting your time.

You should focus on taking ACTION rather than TALKING about others impressive actions.

There are many moving parts behind the scenes that you will never know or hear about.

So, start creating your own insanity behind the scenes, and make us proud.

Sincerely,
@NotSteveMcGarry

P.s. I am a Silicon Valley entrepreneur.

I found out about bitcoin in February of 2013 and fell in love with the concept. Unfortunately, I was to late to get into mining and decided to not buy any coins at $79. (No ‘Ragets’ right?)

I studied bitcoin throughout the year during it’s ups and downs (MtGox) and became fascinated by the decentralized currency.

People being able to instantly send .25 of a bitcoin to a loved on in China for a .0000011 transaction fee blew my mind.  Travelers could withdraw USD from a bitcoin ATM without dealing with banks.

I was, and still am, fully submerged in the startup scene, so money was tight and investing was slim to none. I nickel and dimed it basically.

After spending a year day trading (regular stocks) I figured I would try day trading with bitcoin. I understood the overall concept, blockchain, exchanges, “parts” of the bitcoin protocol, and most importantly how to jump onto altcoins while they were on the rise. (Altcoins are any cryptocurrency other than bitcoin)

In one day, taking bets on two altcoins (X11, SilkCoin) I turned .25 BTC ($150 USD) into .75 BTC ($450 USD)

This may not seem like a lot of money to people, because it is not. But lets say you have to pay an electric bill, or make rent in San Francisco and don’t have the cash.  Altcoins are a quick (risky) solution.

I called my parents and told them to buy 1 bitcoin on Coinbase, print the transaction off, and keep it under their mattress. They listened, and of course MtGox happened the same week. They lost money then, but bitcoin at the moment is on the rise, so they will be fine.

The moral of the story is bitcoin is volatile, but altcoins are 10x as risky. High risk, high return.

DO NOT INVEST MONEY YOU CANNOT LOSE. (That’s a given)

You do not have to understand how bitcoin works or the dynamics of mining pools, just buy into it.

Pieces of plastic and banks are ancient, and still use dead trees to notify you about low balances. Disruption is inevitable.

Don’t you want to get in early?

The best places for news and learning are Coinbase, Coindesk and coinIQ

What does the Marketplace Lending “lendscape” look like?

Until more P2P lending platforms launch, most investors and borrowers are running to the top two P2P players.

Here are some quick metrics on the top two industry giants:

1. Lending Club: San Francisco, CA (USA)

With over $3 billion in loans to borrowers Lending Club is the industry leader.

Check out the Lending Club blog HERE

2. Prosper: San Francisco, CA (USA)

Many investors have claimed to have seen better returns using Prosper over Lending Club, but they both have their perks. Many investors enjoy the automation of Prosper for their investments.

Check out Prospers blog HERE

Now that the P2P lending industry has been pioneered there is room for other companies to jump on board and help disrupt the formal/ancient bank loan industry.  

 Quick Scenario:

You’re about to go through a 12-week software programming school that costs $10,000.

For whatever reason, you don’t have the full tuition payment up front for your classes.

You want to get tuition paid and start doing what matters, learning. This is when P2P Lending comes into play. You can borrow a peer-to-peer loan with a fair interest rate and make payments without dealing with a bank.

My suggestion, borrow from a P2P platform.

Why?

Because in the new world of Peer-to-Peer lending, literally everyone wins.

The two main pieces to the Peer-to-Peer puzzle:

Borrowers (you) sign up by entering your credit information (to make sure you are capable of obtaining and paying off the loan.) After being verified to borrow, you can post your loan to a peer-to-peer platform of your choice.  (top two are Lending Club and Prosper in US)

Lenders (investors) go through P2P platforms and invest in the loans posted by borrowers based on the loans risk profile. Investors diversify their portfolio with different types of loans (Small business, Student loans, ect.) to reduce their level of risk and maximize their ROI. Different platforms use different metrics to show investors how likely a borrower is to default. (Defaulting is failing to pay a loan off) Common identifiers are AA and BB being the best lowest rick, to HR meaning high risk.

When you put these two pieces together you have a P2P Lending platform.

Borrowers have a monthly payment (with an interest rate) that is split up and sent to the investors that funded their posted loan. This monthly payment means that investors are making recurring revenue from their investments. This is why the industry will loan over $1 trillion by 2025. Investors are sprinting towards P2P Lending.

I like to think of P2P as investors crowdsourcing loans for borrowers.

Why/how does everyone win?

Investors make recurring revenue, and high returns from their low risk investments.

Borrowers receive their loans quicker and cheaper than any bank could provide. 

Peer-to-Peer lending, investing, and borrowing is the future.

Peer-to-peer lending is the practice of lending money to unrelated individuals, or “peers”, without going through a traditional financial intermediary such as a bank or other traditional financial institution

With the market being relatively new, with platforms like lending club and prosper lending over $100 million every month, peer-to-peer lending is disruption at its finest.

At the Lendit Conference in San Francisco this week Ron Suber (president of Prosper), said when they started originating loans at prosper, they were generating $9 million a month. Within their first year (365 days) they were generating over $100 million in loans per month. (Quick math, thats 10x growth)

This is crazy.

Why/how did Prosper grow so fast?

The fact is banks turn down 85% of people who try to get a loan. 

Where do those people go?

These people (borrowers) are now turning to peer-to-peer lending platforms like prosper and lending club to get “crowdsourced” loans from investors all over the world. Borrowers can make reasonable monthly payments on their loan, and know they are dealing with a group of PEOPLE on the other side, instead of a centralized bank.

Peer-to-Peer is disrupting banks, and formal loans that have been in place for decades.

Therefore, peer-to-peer lending is helping people that the banks wouldn’t. Why wouldn’t you be all for that?

As far as investors goes, they are trampling each other to jump into peer-to-peer lending because of the 10% returns some investors are now getting. Borrowers are paying the monthly fee that investors split, everyone wins.

I have met/talked to dozens of peer-to-peer investor and borrowers about various pain points that P2P lending solves.

Surprisingly, both investors and borrowers shared the same pain point, time.

Small businesses seeking for loans, don’t have time.

Recent college grads swamped with debt, that need to consolidate their student loans, don’t have time.

Investors, don’t have time.

Peer-to-Peer lending is the answer to this problem. Everyone involved wins. Period. 

Moral of the story: P2P lending is still an infant industry. However, It’s exploding now because it saves investors and borrowers the time and hassle of the banks.

Fact to back this; At the Lendit conference, Charles Moldow partner at Foundation Capital said "By 2025 this industry will originate $1 trillion in loans."

That gives companies like LendLayer 10 years.

Go.

After bootstrapping for over a year in two startup “hubs”, my co-founders and I have mastered laundry hacks all across the country.

Given we are data dorks, I went out and got a small data set of entrepreneurs to back this laundry “lifestyle.”

First, categorize your clothes.

Sleeping shirts. (3 uses per shirt)

Meeting shirts. (3 uses per shirt)

Pants. (7 days per pair)

Underwear. (1 per day)

We will start with “sleeping shirts.”

Most of the scrappy entrepreneurs I know sleep in shared spaces where others are sleeping. Don’t be the guy that sleeps naked. Sleeping shirts are a great resource for wearing around everywhere, other than to meetings. (Surprisingly many entrepreneurs wear sleeping shirts to meetings, for a lack of fucks given.)

7 out of 10 entrepreneurs said these shirts could last up to 3 days before washing.

“Meeting shirts”

These are a must; first impressions are everything in meetings. These are going to be your most reused item, so treat them with care. 

What is a meeting shirt?

A meeting shirt is a shirt with buttons on it, which everyone can afford. If you say you can’t afford one of these that is a lie.

How do you keep these fresh for 3 uses?

Step 1. Take the shirt off and hang it up when you get to where you are sleeping.

Step 2. Pack your suitcase with dryer sheets when traveling. (Some said they keep dryer sheets in their backpacks when caring a change of clothes)

8 out of 10 entrepreneurs said they reuse their meeting shirts at least twice a week.

Pants.

Try not to spill on your pants. Everyone reuses pants but stretch theses as far as possible due to them taking up suitcase space and being heavy.

Reuse these for at least 7 days to save money.

10 of 10 entrepreneurs said they reuse their pants up to 5 days.

Underwear.

This is the one item you need to change every day. (That’s a given to some)

3 out of 10 entrepreneurs said they give each pair 2 uses. This is stretching it. C’mon guys.

Comfort of the crotch is an essential part of staying happy and energized. (This is totally backed by science, somewhere.)

Where do you do laundry for cheap?

Always do laundry in apartment complexes. I have done hundreds of loads of laundry in Boston, MA and San Francisco, CA testing this theory.

Apartment complexes are always coin op in cities and they are cheap ($1.00 in SF) It is an amenity of the apartment complex therefore they can operate it for cheap.

The reality is if anyone living there asks you who you are (they wont) you can tell him or her the truth or lie.

It doesn’t matter, because they will not care.

10 out of 10 entrepreneurs I interviewed use apartment complex coin op laundry machines

7 out of the 10 said they didn’t live in the apartments they were doing their laundry at.

If you follow these bootstrap clothing categories with:

3 meeting shirts

4 sleeping shirts

2 pants

14 pairs of underwear

You will have two weeks of runway before having to wash your clothes.

Happy washing.

Data supporting this experiment:

Over the course of 5 days:

10 posted Vine videos, obtaining 32 followers.

10 posted Instagram videos, obtaining 69 followers.

Brands are just now starting to gain serious traction on Vine and instagram.

Fortune 500 companies are publishing 6 second clips every few weeks trying to figure out how to get their brand into the hands of the 40 million Vine and 150 million Instagram users.

There is a way to get yourself or your brand in front of a large portion of these users. It just takes time.

The functionality of Vine and Instagram makes it difficult to drive users to a site from your profile bio. This deters a lot of ‘old school’ marketers. Many marketers think that “If it’s not driving traffic right away, why do it?”

The answer is “To build a community based around hashtags.”

Hashtags have become a vital aspect to marketing on video and image sharing platforms. (#SlingbotScience, #SlingbotHero)

Think of image and video marketing like this:

When you put out a press release, you shouldn’t expect every reader to come straight to your product or service and buy everything you have to offer. Right?

This is the mentality you have to have for promoting on Vine and Instagram. If you think traffic will flood to your site right away from either of these platforms, your wrong.

The key is to grow your audience over time, similar to content marketing and inbound traffic. High schoolers on Vine and Instagram have grasped the idea of building an active community over time; your company and brand should too.

So, I repeat, driving traffic from Vine and Instagram will take time.

Once you build a following, your posts will be shared to more people and this will increase the amount of overall viewers. In short, your post will become more valuable with an active following.

Also after you have built a strong following you can take your brands hashtag to the next level. (#SlingbotScience)

Key to know: Shares are what you are looking for followers to do. Marketing on both Instagram and Vine is a “numbers game.”

Vine: The 6 second wonder.

The key to Vine is Hashtags, (#) Jimmy Falon did an amazing skit with Jonah Hill that basically describes how many hashtags I recommend having in the descriptions of each of your posts.

When someone searches on Vine they will be directed based on hashtags and user accounts (@).

Your goal is to get in front of the people searching for the trending (popular) hashtags.

Now, at first in order to build your following you will need to include ALL the trending hashtags. Not just ones that have to do directly with your video. They can be loosely correlated to your videos content. This is something many people don’t understand. When promoting you want people who are searching for trending material to share yours. Why? Because they are the influencers and already have a large following.

Before recording your Vine go to the ‘Explore’ channel and scroll to the bottom.

 You will see the ‘Trending Tags’ section at the bottom. Write these down before you start recording so you are prepared to implement them into your description.

Tip: If you see a hashtag that is sad (rare) don’t tag your video with the hashtag. Go with your gut. The tags don’t have to be directly related to your video at all, but it’s best to keep your brand associated with happy tags :)

Record your video.

Make it funny and/or extremely creative. (top two categories are the most popular and are at the top Comedy and Art/Experimental)

Comedy is the most active category on Vine. 

Studies show humor entices users to share more to their following. So be funny.

Create a production time limit:

Spend at least 1 hour on your Vine from concept to publish. It is important to set rough time guidelines so that you can have a recording routine to follow each time you publish a video.

After doing this a few dozen times, I now know when I am preparing to publish a Vine, it will take roughly an hour of my day. (This isn’t about time management, so we will move on)

Your Vine Description:

When describing your video make sure your copy is relevant and funny. Start with comparisons and short phrases your followers can all relate to. (When you do ____ then ______) (That moment you realize _____ is ________) (How ____ really works) 

Creativity comes into play for description, so take 10-15 minutes of your hour production time and think of clever and funny copy before adding your hashtags.

Description incentivizes users to share.

Tagging other users (@) in your description is a great way to drive eyeballs to your video as well.

Tag someone who is an influencer on Vine. You can see the top influencers here http://www.rankzoo.com/ Get on their radar.

Vine Hashtags:

The ‘Trending Tags’ you wrote down earlier, will go in your description after the written portion. (written description before hashtags so people know what’s going on in the video)

There are a few you should have in ALL your descriptions when building your following.

#Popular

#Trending

#Ranked

#Raising

#Revine

#Follow

The magic of tagging videos and images with hashtags is you can manipulate and trigger sharing. Telling the world your photo or video is popular, with out proof of it being popular, can only happen on the internet. This is powerful in marketing. 

If none of the Trending Tags you saw before on the ‘explore channel’ have to do with your brand, or you don’t like their connotation. Go here http://seenive.com/tag/trending and start adding hashtags from these videos. The reason being these videos are already trending on Vine and when people search for them they will see yours (if it is tagged with the same hashtag)

I strongly recommend having the ‘popular’ six tags I mentioned above, as your backbone hashtags for each of your video descriptions. This will build your community fast.

Once you have an active Vine community you can start adding your brands Hashtags.

Creating a hashtag just for your brand allows people to find your brand through searching. It is the equivalent of keywords increasing SEO. (#SlingbotScience , #SlingerOfTheWeek , #SlingbotHero )

Upon making your brands hashtag you have to stick to your guns and use it EVERYTIME you post on Vine or Instagram. People will search for your hashtag like they would search on Google for your url or keywords having to do with your brand.

Instagram - Effective Video and Photo promotion

After recording your Vine video you can now upload it onto Instagram and continue recording for another 9 valuable seconds.

Yes, my order is Vine before Instagram. 

Why?

If you link the videos and add content for a additional messaging on Instagram you are triggering engagement from your followers.

Recording times:

Vine- 6 seconds

Instagram- 15 seconds

Once you have done a few videos, with all the trending hashtags bringing eyes and followers to your accounts, you can start developing a story behind your Vine and Instagram videos.

Example:

The last video I published on Slingbot’s Vine was shooting a Tweet out of a slingshot and having it turn into flying Twitter followers (pieces of paper).

This is where the Vine stopped.

I then uploaded the 6 second clip onto Instagram and added 9 seconds onto the end of the video that concluded why I had done it.

Linking your Vine and Instagram accounts together can create a fun and entertaining narrative for your brand. Cross posting can be extremely powerful when you start gaining more followers on these two platforms. (viral promotions, contest, give aways ect.)

Hastags on Instagram:

Just like with Vine we will check what hashtags are currently trending. I check http://instawaves.com/ and go into the ‘explore’ channel. (Just like with Vine)

 The key is to look for hashtag overlap within the explore channel. (Which photos or videos have the same hashtags)

Once you have your list, upload your saved Vine video (should always be saving these videos to your phone) and finish the promotion with the remaining 9 seconds.

Close the Instagram video with: Who, what, when, where, why, or how your company relates to the viewer. 

As with Vine, keep it funny and entertaining or no body will share your video.

Instagram Description:

Hashtags can be mixed with influencer’s accounts (@) in your description. You will notice lots of popular Instagram users mix hashtags with accounts (@) to grab the attention of the people searching for those users and terms.

With this example above anyone who searches Instagram with these terms while they are trending, my video will show up in the feed.

Like I mentioned before, think of hashtags as the keywords to improve your videos SEO on these platforms.

Overview:

The reason we started Slingbot was to help people grow their social following. Understand them using analytics and convert them to customers. We are passionate about social engagement.

Instagram and Vine are great examples of platforms you have to STAY engaged on.

I followed 60 people on Vine and over 300 people on Instagram so that I could like their videos and images.

I favorite or ‘like’ at least a dozen photos and videos everyday to gain followers on both Vine and Instagram.

If you are serious about getting hundreds of thousands of followers on these two platforms for your brand, then you are going to have to stay engaged with users, constantly. 

You do not have to record a video every day, but you will have to like and favorite relevant photos and videos to keep gaining traction.

Quick way to grab followers on both platforms:

Search hashtags having to do with your industry (Tech, Startup, San Francisco) and favorite every single image or video in the trending feed. You will see results within minutes.

 Cheers,
@TheSteveMcGarry

Sign up and grow your brands social reach with Slingbot

Everything in this short story is true and actually happened to me between December 2012-December 2013. The startup I dumped my girlfriend to start is Slingbot Twitter Social Marketing Platform

Enjoy.


#Chunk1

When I graduated from college I took my first big boy job working for a global logistics company making $45,000 a year with full benefits and stock options.

I had a beautiful trophy girlfriend, went to bars with friends, and was enjoying what I thought was the “young professional” lifestyle. (Some may call it that)

One intellectually stimulating workday, my co-worker “Royer the Destroyer” came up to me and asked If I knew anything about programming website. I knew some HTML and CSS from business IT classes in college, so I told him “hell yeah I know how to program websites.”

A few days later we met at the water cooler, (yes, we had a water cooler for gossip) and talked about starting a social network for truck drivers. Given we were in logistics we saw exactly how disconnected drivers were from each other and the problems it caused.

I spent a week outside of work moving around and editing some basic HTML and CSS on what used to be a shitty social media template site called “Ning.com” (This was before they got big and had nice templates)

We launched SocialTruck (my first software startup) on a Monday morning and within hours drivers started signing up from all over the world. We gained so many users we had to upgrade our plan on ning.

This was the moment of infection.

Similar to crack the startup bug sweeps over you like a war blanket. At the moment of infection you start to feel the entrepreneurial hunger tearing at your brain with ideas on how you can tweak and grow your concept. Twitching is involved.

After about 5 days and 500 sign ups, we got shut down by our employer.
The logistics company we were working for said they didn’t promote creativity in this fashion and they needed to protect their employee’s “brand” online.

 They sent out a company wide email (15,000 employees) the next day stating “Employees are not allowed to build social networks for truck drivers.” 

This was awesome. 
 
I got tons of emails from employees saying how they thought it was an amazing idea and how it was not right they shut us down, and blah blah blah (Still have that email)

I quit.

After jumping off the corporate bandwagon I searched Twitter and found The Startup Institute Of Boston. I Applied. I interviewed. I got in. I was amazed and grateful. I still am.

#Chunk2

Now, at this time I was dating my wonderful girlfriend of 3 years in North Carolina. We were at that “nicknames” and “I love you” stage that most couples don’t talk about, and guys tend to just deny it happens all together.
  
I enjoyed every moment spent with her and I still love her very much, she was my best friend. (like girlfriends should be) Given our strong friendship when the Startup Institute gave me the opportunity of lifetime, we both knew that there was a strong possibility we would break up.

I chose to break up with her and to move to Boston and startup. Long distance relationships are not fair to anyone.

Yes, It was hard. (if you say breaking up is not hard, you’re completely full of shit)

When people heard my story about breaking up with my girlfriend of 3 years to pursue the not so glamorous entrepreneurial lifestyle during my time at the Startup Institute, it spread like wildfire.

People from all around the Boston startup community started asking me “You’re the guy that dumped his girlfriend of 3 years for this right?”

At first I though it was to personal to tell everyone but I realized the story was helping people.

Now, I wasn’t freakin’ Mahatma Ghandi or anything, but people really seemed to be interested in hearing every detail about the girl I dumped. 

I found that the people asking me about my stories details were using them as some kind of motivation for what their current and past relationships had restricted them from.

It was weird.

People even started telling me about their situations.

I got bizarre questions from people like:
"Can I see a picture of her?"
"Would you do it again?"
"Why didn’t she move here?"
"Will you move back after you get acquired or something, bro?"
"Do you regret dumping her to move into poverty, also known as starting up?"

My story quickly became a “thing” at meetup events I would go to around Boston.

The greatest part about telling this story was people told me that the story made them feel better about their startup situation, because they thought that my starting up experience was harder. That’s what kept me telling it.

The facts were that my girlfriend had an amazing job she loved in back in North Carolina and I was about to be moving 100 mph (mentally and physically) from city to city playing entrepreneur. That’s not fair for both people involved. Be sensible and not ignorant when it comes to others time.

In other words, don’t be a dick and make your partner follow you around. If you want to chase a dream, do it, because life is short. Do what you love and the rest is just noise.

Just know this to shall pass, and time heals everything. (I refuse to say Yolo but I will say Cape Diem!)

#Chunk3

When I got to Boston I was fully submerged in the startup community and fed my entrepreneurial hunger daily.

It was amazing.

I attended Startup Institute, while living in CrashPad (Now called Krash) and met amazing people from all over the world who were chasing a dream as well.

I knew I found my calling. (Sounds lame but it happened and it’s true)

I co-founded a company with two amazing guys coming out of Startup Institute and we took off running.

First, came Dogpatch Labs (Alumni: Instagram and Task Rabbit)

Then came Betaspring the accelerator program. 

It has been a wild ride and I have met amazing people on the journey. You know what the cool part is? 

This was just 2013. 
My journey is just starting to take off after a year, and yours will too if you keep your head down and work your ass off.

"The definition of entrepreneurship is living a few years of your life like others will not, so you can live the rest of your life like others cannot." 


Cheers and good luck,
@TheSteveMcGarry

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