How we grew a beatbox publication organically from 4,000 to 150,000 monthly readers in 6 months
Project overview
The HumanBeatbox brand was adored by the older generation of beatboxers, but was not keeping up with the immense growth of "new-school" beatbox. With many of the features of the site outdated and old forum members fleeing the forums for Facebook groups, there was a cry for a better resource for beatboxers to learn and connect globally.
About HumanBeatbox
Beatboxing is the art form where one creates beats, patterns, and musical performances by only using the mouth, throat, and vocal chords. In the last decade, the beatbox community has grown immensely and continues to expand globally through social media and Youtube. Humanbeatbox.com was founded in 2001 by a beatboxer named A-Plus to serve the beatbox community by connecting beatboxers worldwide through a forum and a central platform for beatbox news and videos.
Today, HumanBeatbox is leading the charge to legitimizing beatbox culture.
Methodology
Articles
HumanBeatbox.com's content strategy revolved around two pillars: community values and beatbox education. Whatever we wrote about, we needed to ensure we were not focusing on keywords, but controversial topics that surrounded the community. Taking a strong stance early helped us earn trust and spread our content like wildfire. We built relationships with other creators and beatboxers with platforms to collaborate and build each others' channels. Additionally, we balanced this with evergreen content like analyses of styles, tutorials, how-to's, interviews, opinion pieces, and more.
Events
While we sponsored and helped organize events around the world, HBB served as a central platform for beatboxers to advertise their events and recap them so beatboxers can stay informed and connected globally.
At the peak of Facebook live, we ran the only well-moderated Facebook discussion groups to help us build relationships and ideate new content topics. We quotes multiple members of the community in our articles to help them stay engaged and drive conversation. Additionally, we ran Facebook live takeovers with beatboxers and curated the best beatbox videos from all over the web.
YouTube videos
With the market saturated with typical shoutout videos, we brought a fresh spin by treating beatboxers like celebrities for the first time. Through game shows, interviews, discussions, analyses, and creative showcases.
Forums
The forums served as a platform for beatboxers to talk and ask questions in an organized manner. Although Facebook groups were highly active, forums served as a more organized platform for beatboxers to engage with each other.
Project results
- Grew from 8,000 to 150,000+ organic unique monthly page views
- Instantly became the authority of beatbox education
- Sponsored, organized, and mobilized beatbox events around the world