I’m sure that, by now, most of you have heard of Winnipeg YouTube sensation Maria Aragon. If not, let me fill you in: Two weeks ago, 10-year-old Maria Aragon posted a YouTube video of herself covering Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way.” Apparently Lady Gaga searches herself on the Internet, as she stumbled upon Aragon’s video and on Feb. 17 tweeted it to her 8.5 million followers. From there, the rest is history.

In honour of our fellow Winnipegger, I give you a “How To” guide to getting famous on the Internet.

1 YouTube, Facebook, Twitter
The power of social media in our culture is insane. YouTube success stories such as Justin Bieber and Greyson Chance show us that reality. Your first step is to make yourself a YouTube channel, a Facebook fan page and a Twitter account. The YouTube channel will be for posting videos of yourself expressing your talent. Facebook and Twitter share a similar purpose: letting your fans know what’s going on. Getting personal with your fans will shine some positive light on your image.

2 Market yourself
You have to brand yourself with an image: something that is unique to you and stands out from the hundreds of thousands of other people posting YouTube videos. If you want people to stick around your channel and to click on your other videos, you have to make them want to stick around. Choose appealing borders or catchy video names. Be fun, lighthearted and all those things that bring a smile to someone’s face.

3 Get noticed
You need to get your name out there. Don’t be afraid to tweet famous celebs or local bands. The more people seeing your name the better. A possible strategy is to follow random people on Twitter, hoping that they follow you back, but be careful, as this can be a big annoyance. Your ultimate goal should be getting an established celebrity to notice you. Celebrities have huge amounts of influence in today’s society, and if they notice you, it could be your big break.

4 Proceed with caution
Be careful not to shoot yourself in the foot at any point during your rise to stardom. Be wary of the content that is in your videos and that you post in status updates and tweets. Stay away from racy remarks, overly emotional posts and sarcasm, as these are not well accepted by others and may come back to bite you just before you sign that big record deal.

5 Be consistent
Posting a video or song once a month is not going to take you anywhere. If you want to do something, put all your energy into that project. Post weekly, if not multiple times a week. The more content that you produce increases your chances of being noticed. Don’t be lazy and don’t procrastinate and you will see your video views increase.

6 Exploit social media
As briefly mentioned before, you must use social media to its full potential. You should already have your social networking accounts up, but the key is to constantly message your friends and get your friends to message their friends concerning you and your music. It creates a great big chain reaction that ultimately benefits you.

So there you have it, a few simple steps to get noticed on the Internet. If you follow these steps and don’t get famous overnight, give it some time. If you follow these steps and get famous overnight, give me a call.