Interview with ‘Gotta Digg’ Girl, Kina Grannis

Glen Allsopp / 2 Comments / January 8th, 2008 / Subscribe via RSS

Kina Grannis made the Digg Top 10 in news, 2 days in a row with the same video. Obviously one missed by the Digg users but it certainly gave her a lot of (deserved) attention, Kina is a musician and wanted to tap into a bigger audience to help her get votes for the ‘Crash the Superbowl’ music competition.

The idea came to her to make a song targeted towards digg (link at the end) and it was a huge success both votes wise and for recognition. With that in mind I asked Kina a few questions which is only the 2nd ’social media’ interview we have done…enjoy!

Interview

Your song ‘gotta digg’, made the digg homepage twice. When did you think to try and ‘leverage’ digg traffic by creating a song targeted towards it’s users?

kina Well, initially when the contest began I was just posting originals and covers. I was getting great feedback, but it was difficult to really get that to spread. I knew I needed to do something to tap into a larger community.

Immediately Digg came to mind, as I have lost many an hour through browsing it’s pages and find it to be an incredibly entertaining community. My sisters are active Diggers as well, so we got to talking about all of Digg’s little trends and eventually “Gotta Digg” came about.

Techcrunch just featured you in an article, what can you tell us about that?

As for that particular article. It is true that after the release of “Gotta Digg” things really started to get crazy. Good crazy, that is. It generated a lot of attention from different people in the industry.

I spoke with several of them briefly and they were very interested, but there is no talk of a record deal at the moment, except for the one I could get if I win the Crash the Super Bowl contest. I do sense some exciting things to go down within the next month, however.

Although the majority of Digg feedback was positive, some people questioned your motives. Do you use the site as a submitter or just enjoy the content?

Before this I had never submitted anything to Digg. I was more of an observer. I figured there were enough people out there digging up interesting news in the world that it was okay for me to sit back and reap the benefits of their efforts
Did many diggers make it to your event where you played the song live? How was it meeting some of them in person…

Yes! I spoke with several real life Diggers! I can’t tell you how much that made my night. Up until then it was all a game, just number on my computer screen. The fact that those people actually CAME to my show and met me… it was awesome. I loved talking with them.

Have you used or considered using other big social media sites to help promote your music i.e. reddit, mixx, stumbleupon, facebook?

I do use facebook often for promoting shows and now for the contest. Having just graduated from USC, I’m fairly addicted to facebook. I did consider using other big social media sites, but it just came down to the fact that I am on Digg all the time, I am familiar with it, and goodness me, I didn’t want to go writing theme songs about every major website just for MY sake.

The Digg song was a fun little commentary on something I know, using the other sites would have been a stretch.

If you do get a record deal, do you think you will still be as approachable online or will you have to be more ’serious’ about actions you take like things you might write on a blog post?

I can’t imagine my approach changing much. I REALLY love feeling connected to the people that listen to and enjoy my music.

Granted, I might get a lot busier so I may not be able to respond to as many emails or blog as frequently, but my hope is that if I do get a deal, I won’t have to change the way I handle things online.

You’ve already seen a lot of positive feedback and some great comments on youtube, are your sisters going to give things a try solo?

My sisters are amazingly talented and are getting a few fans from our little Digg stint as well. While they are both very musical (we all grew up singing together and playing violin), they have both focused more on visual arts as we’ve grown up.

If people want to check out your music, where can they go?

They can go to any one of many sites…
http://www.twoweeksforkina.com/blog/index.html (video + blogs)
http://www.youtube.com/kinagrannis (just the videos)
http://www.myspace.com/kinagrannis (a few audios)
http://www.kinagrannis.com (clips from all three of my cds– which you can also purchase here)
OR, search for me on iTunes!