Be Controversial

People love to have their opinions don’t they? They just have to share it with you. Vegans are notorious for this stereotype - sometimes without reason 😂. Well if you’re trying to grow a following, why not take advantage of this? The reason it’s a popular subject is because it’s controversial. It gets talked about a lot. People have their views, and others have theirs, and there’s not enough hard facts to decide on who’s right. Well, except for climate change. Some people just love to be ignorant and ignore overwhelming evidence and agreement from the scientific community 😂. But that makes it a great topic to have a conversation!

In this article I’ll give some examples of places you can be controversial to get more people talking about and sharing your work as an artist or band.

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The Hub For Controversies: Social Media.

Social media in its very nature supports controversial topics. The sites/apps are designed to keep you on the app for longer, and topics where people are engaging in good discussions are a gold mine for this.

Controversial content=engagement=keeping people on the app=growth for you. The algorithms will favor those with good engagement, and share/show it to more people because it recognized people are interacting with it.

Controversial content inevitably brings out a specific group of people: haters. Embrace the haters! All they’re doing is helping you! If you can keep them talking, making a fool out of themselves, even better. It will drive engagement to your post and therefore get more eyes on your post.

Not only does controversial topics get shared from the site’s algorithm, but your post is shareable from people as well. If the person agrees with you, they’ll share it to let other people know about it. If they disagree with you, they’ll share it trying to argue against you! All while throwing more eyes on your post. Lovely thing isn’t it? Thanks haters! 😂

Controversial Lyrics

If you can embed controversial content into your lyrics, you’ll increase the chances of people listening, and then listening again. This is what made the 50’s and 60’s a great time for music; it was a time of rebellion and the start of rock music. These times had songs talking about the controversial topics at the time, race mixing (50’s) and sexuality in music (free love movement of the 60’s).

Politics are an easy way to talk about controversial things; and with Trump being president, makes it all the more wild! 😂 If your type/genre of band allows for the topic without going against your branding, go ahead and try a few!

Controversial Genres

Genre is pretty fluid nowadays so it’s a little more difficult to separate yourself, but you can have your own style of music that some people love, and some people hate. Billie Eilish is a very good modern example of this, where many people love her weird/uncommon type of music with a lot of whispering, and other people hate it!

Just have to find ways to be different and own it and see where it takes you; and if you practice enough, you’ll be the only ones who can pull it off while having your own style!

If you don’t want to make your own genre/style, you could pick controversial genres that are already well established; country probably being the most popular love/hate genre.

Even Country music inside itself is being controversial now; there’s a lot of pop and hip hop elements being added lately that a portion of the country community don’t like; but because of this, they’re getting talked about and shared.

People who weren’t into Country music before are now being introduced to it because these elements are being added from a genre they already liked. And that’s the power of having content that not everybody likes! So instead of trying to please everyone, look for content ideas that not everyone will like! It could help you!

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While talking and making content from controversial topics isn’t the only way to grow, it’s definitely something to keep in your back pocket when thinking of ways to grow your reach. Try it out and see what happens!

-Michael