What do you do?
I am a full time musician, songwriter, and vocalist under the moniker “Donny Drama,” taken from my Instagram handle @donny.drama – a page with over 740,000 followers where I create and curate viral content, share my journey as a hip-hop artist, and sell promotion to brands and individuals. I build, buy, and sell Instagram pages and also consult brands and individuals on their social media presence and brand, focusing on strengthening their brand and content and growing their Instagram page.
When did you get started?
I have always been around music and experimented with various instruments since childhood. I have a specific passion for hip hop and lyricism in rap which I experimented with throughout high school and college. I started the Instagram page in the spring of 2016.
What motivated you to do what you do?
My goal in life is to own and operate my own business, ideally offering various goods and services all under my established name/brand. My dream is to be an extremely successful musician at the highest level. In spring 2016, I started to believe I could acquire a substantial following on Instagram using memes as the bulk of the content, which would be invaluable as a platform to advertise any venture I would explore in the future. I also saw the potential to earn significant income selling advertisement on a page with a large following, which would be a good source of funding for my future ventures. I had a feeling I had what it takes to build a following and a successful meme page on Instagram. Day by day it grew and things snowballed relatively quickly. These days the page gains between 2-4000+ followers a day.
What are three tips for success that you’ve picked up through experience?
1) Persistence and showing up each and every day is essential. Since the day I started the Instagram page, I have not missed a day of posting at the very least 5 times. A regular day typically includes 10-12 posts. It’s been almost two years. The same work ethic applies to my music and can be applied to working towards any goal.
2) Doing something you enjoy or it will be extremely difficult to stay motivated enough to succeed.
3) Networking is so important. On Instagram, I wouldn’t even be at half the following if it wasn’t for the help of 30+ allies I made along the way. Trading shoutouts has been a very useful growth strategy. In the music industry, it is absolutely essential to constantly build your network and meet new people in order to open new doors.
What are your biggest successes?
Getting the first 10,000 followers (the point where Instagram shortens what would be “10,000” to “10k”). The first 10,000 followers is the hardest and longest part of the process. Once you reach around 10,000 followers, the network effect begins to play a noticeable role, helping build momentum and making things slightly easier if the same effort is upheld. 100,000 followers was a similar milestone, as was 500,000.
Gaining celebrity followers such as Ellie Goulding, George Lopez, Drew Taggart (one of the 2 Chainsmokers), Joe Rogan, Keegan Allen, Adrian Grenier, Simone Biles, Nargis Fakhri, Christy Mack, Asa Akira, Chris Delia, Candace Parker, Elite Daily, The Chive, many more.
Releasing my first single “Medusa’s Eulogy” and reaching 100,000 streams and over 40,000 listeners just on Spotify, 10,000 views on Youtube, and much more in only the first month. Aided by heavy promotion on my Instagram pages.
Creating over 15 original memes that spread virally on the internet. Creating 3 original memes featured on @fuckjerry and one original meme featured on @thefatjewish
What have been your biggest struggles?
Balancing Instagram and music with a full-time job in consulting on government contracts for a year and a half.
Mistakes made due to inexperience when I first started the Instagram page burned bridges with certain key players, many of which I am yet to be able to mend relations with, that could have helped in various ways along the way and in the present.
Who has been a mentor to you?
With Instagram, I learned everything on my own along the way and got the hang of it fast. Musically, I’ve been fortunate enough to meet and have a lot of support and advising from artist Rob Level in song-making, and producer Aki “Nawlage” Espi of NDroidBeats in creating and marketing tracks as well as priceless music industry knowledge.
Who are some people you look up to?
Within the meme world, people who can consistently create content that is fresh, witty, and funny. In music, Drake, J. Cole, Kendrick Lamar, The Weeknd, Lil Wayne, Eminem, Jay-Z, Kanye, Future, Nav, Lil Uzi, Travis $cott
Extra facts:
Born 1994 in New York, 2 israeli born parents, graduated from the University of Maryland with a degree in accounting, spring 2016. Left a job with an accounting firm consulting on government contracts in DC to work on music and building the Donny Drama brand full time, moved to LA.
He never paid or did anything to gain followers inorganically.
In addition to the following organically gained on @donny.drama since spring of 2016, He also gained a total of about 250,000 followers between 4 Instagram meme pages that he has since sold.
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