How can actors, dancers, and other performing artists leverage the internet to their advantage?  Phillip Chbeeb is a good example of how you can use the internet to spread the word about your work.

Phillip Chbeeb Tells His Story

Phillip started dancing when he was a kid, and co-founded Marvelous Motion Dance Studio when he was 15 years old.  He’s 20 now, and an engineering major at Loyola College.  Phillip has used Myspace and Youtube as two ways to leverage his career and help other people find out about his own unique style of hip hop dancing.

Marvelous Motion’s Myspace Page has just over 800 friends, and there his studio shares several videos that show him and his crew, as well as their students, dancing.

On top of that, on Youtube, Chbeeb’s LEAST popular videos have almost 30,000 views.  The video of Chbeeb and Robert Murraine dancing at the So You Think You Can Dance Season 4 finale has had over 1.5 million views in just under a year.  These popular videos have given Chbeeb a big boost in the voting this season.  While he struggles picking up forms of dance other than his own, he consistently gets votes from his fan base.  Nigel Lithgoe, SYTYCD’s producer and one of its judges, consistently mentions Chbeeb’s fan base as a reason that he’s doing so well on the show – and every week that he’s on the show, he gets a little bit better, and a little bit more exposure.

Phillip Chbeeb is also on Twitter.  He has over 2800 followers there now, and he shares links to interesting projects that he’s worked on with dancers like Luis Silva and Ariel Coker.

Unfortunately, there’s no PhillipChbeeb.com, which he could be using as a central place to share and store all of his videos, links, and side projects.

You can imitate Phillip Chbeeb’s exploits

1. Do great work. Phillip Chbeeb is popular because his work is amazing. He often tells a story about standing in front of a mirror for hours and practicing his pop & lock style to the sounds of construction outside his apartment.  Be dedicated to your work and people will want to see it.

2. Find places to perform. Chbeeb started out performing in the street, in small venues, any place that would take him and his crew.  He also made sure that a lot of those performances were recorded, even if it wasn’t terribly good quality.

3. Make it visible. Put videos of you doing your thing on Youtube, Vimeo, and other video sharing sites.  People love great performances and will pass those videos along to their friends via email and social media.

4. Share the love and be enthusiastic. Chbeeb shows that he gets the social media world when he enthusiastically shares links to his friends’ projects as well as his own.  He shows love for them by using some of his credibility to pass along the word on others’ good work.

5. Centralize & be interactive. Something that Chbeeb can work on, if he’s not already, is getting a site up where his millions of fans can go to check out his work, past & present.  A website that showcases your Youtube videos, giving them a backstory, is a great thing to have.  You can also use your site to promote upcoming concerts, performances, or films.  Build an email list and respond to fan mail on the site.  People love it when you are interactive.

Now what about you?  If you are a performer, what have you done to showcase your own work?

Tagged as: internet marketing for performers, phillip chbeeb, so you think you can dance