How Golem Went *Viral*
I’m the Lead Producer of a new musical comedy called Golem Owned A Tropical Smoothie.
(You know that ring-obsessed creature from Lord of the Rings? This musical dares to ask… what if he owned a smoothie shop in Panama City Beach, Florida?).
For the last few years, through several readings, workshops, and developmental productions, our scrappy little show has started to build a following. For a long time, it was a struggle. Close friends would faithfully attend, maybe a new straggler or two would take a chance. Our social media content was barely hitting 2-5k views, even after taking online courses trying to crack the code. I remember the day when our Instagram hit 1k followers after months of watching it slowly tick up - it felt like we were finally arriving.
But then, a few weeks ago, something unexpected happened.
Golem went viral.
And I’m not talking about a few thousand views.
I’m talking 28 MILLION.
(And all we spent was $0.)
Out of nowhere, a ten-second rehearsal clip that we tossed to Tiktok hit the algorithm just right and took off flying. Our video was everywhere. People from around the country were reaching out asking when the show was coming to their hometown. A group of college students from Boston drove four hours to NYC just to see our 45 minute showcase presentation. Multiple theatre companies reached out, wanting to license their own productions.
On July 1 of this year, we had roughly 1,000 followers on Tiktok and Instagram. Now, both accounts have over 40,000 each.
My team and I have been asked what we did right. And honestly, the easiest answer has been: “we got lucky”. But as mysterious as the algorithm may be to all of us, I’ve come to recognize a few key things that my team has done well (specifically, our brilliant Writers Ethan Crystal and Garrett Poladian) to set us up for viral success.
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Leaving Them Wanting More: That one video went viral largely because the final lyric gets cut off, and the comments blew up with people demanding to know the ending. But instead of giving it to them right away, we leaned into the mystery - teasing the lyric across multiple videos, encouraging fans to guess, and fueling interaction. When we finally revealed the full lyric, the fandom erupted again.
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Inviting Interaction: We paid attention to the comments. If fans made a suggestion, we posted a video response. When people requested merch, we made it — including a Canadian flag with Golem’s face on it (yes, it sold). By responding quickly and directly, our page became more than promotion — it became a community.
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Finding Our Unique Voice: Sometimes our posts are “created” by Golem himself, spelling errors and all. Other times, they come from the Writers through behind-the-scenes videos. And naturally, we also mix in more traditional content - B-roll, cast interviews, show clips, etc. But across this variety, we’ve always maintained a consistent voice that is authentic, funny, and subversive — exactly like the show.
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Diversifying Content: Not only do we want to introduce our fans to our musical, but we also want to deepen their relationship with our creatives, our cast, and our characters. So we’ve produced a series of videos featuring Golem talking directly to his fans. We’ve shot rogue videos of Golem being spotted around NYC. We've responded to trends, like when Golem played Eva Peron. We’ve posted content from old readings and early development, giving fans access to the multi-year journey of the show. And if a video really hits - we’ll post it again later, knowing that the algorithm may feed it to new people!
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Staying Consistent: The real secret sauce is persistence - even when it means failing 9 times out of 10. Some of our funniest videos haven’t hit the way we expected. And sometimes, the ones we didn’t expect to hit get nearly 30 million views. It took years of producing clever content before one video really found an audience. But once that video blew up, it introduced a whole new world of people to the rest of our content, and soon enough, old videos that barely cracked 1,000 views are now being viewed by hundreds of thousands.
Of course, going viral is just the beginning. Building a following is hard; maintaining one is harder. With Golem heading to its Off-Broadway premiere at Soho Playhouse next year, our team has plenty of work ahead to keep this momentum alive.
But if this process has taught us anything, it’s this: you don’t need to be a social media genius to find your audience. In all reality, your audience is dying to find you. So help them out by pushing out as much content as you can - from your own unique creativity, using your own authentic voice, for your own curated community.
Keep an eye on Golem, folks. He’s going places. But in the meantime, I can’t wait to see your amazing content show up on my “For You” page.
Because if two guys with a pantyhose puppet can do it, so can you.
- Jonathan Hogue
