//upscri.be/hackernoon/Meet James Shamsi — The King of VIRAL.

Did you hear about the guy that hid $10,000 inside of 200 fake vaginas?

How about the one that tried to kill the Kardashians online with Kardblock? (which it turns out was an SEO PR stunt, see James’ Entertainment Tonight interview ).

The one that got Instagram to publicly apologize to him over manboobs, as part of the #freethenipplecampaign?(see more of that )

Drove over 900 million views for free on Facebook?

The guy that hijacked TechCrunch’s summer party with a Snapchat filter?

Or, the one that raised over half a million dollars on Kickstarter in less than 30 days?

Maybe the guy that creates influencers? Recently growing influencer Julius Dein on Facebook from o to 8 million likes in 2 years.

The guy that used Tinder to get his first graduate job?

Maybe the man that made an app that allowed you to photoshop puppies into your pictures so you get more swipes? (which turned out to be a clever PR stunt)

Recently created a way to blow up Instagram followings for models, creating influencers?

These are just a small handful of the stunts and viral projects that Shamsi can publicly disclose…

Meet , dubbed a ‘social media savant’ by Business Insider — and for good reason…

Shamsi, a 23-year old Brit now living in LA, has been responsible for some of the biggest viral campaigns and PR stunts of the past few years, accumulating over 900m views on his work.

Though he can’t talk publicly talk about his stunts with major A-list celebrities, artists and brands, he strives to make himself go viral to prove he knows his craft too.

For example: created the viral sensation (which turned out to be an SEO stunt), to receiving global news coverage for fighting for female nipple rights by uploading in a very clever way…

He’s also used his tactics so raise $500,000 in 30 days on Kickstarter, shown how to make money from Snapchat by using 10 second snaps to sell $7,000+ worth of product.

Shamsi is the brains behind multiple major viral campaigns and PR stunts that you would’ve seen in the past 3 years. This is just a small snapshot, see more of his work .

How does he do it?

Through the most genius hustle I’ve ever seen. Shamsi’s mantra is to be cheap and lazy. Cheap, as it forces you to be lean. Lazy, as it forces you to find the most efficient possible solutions. As he says himself:

“I’ don’t like spending money.

I’ve actually never spent a single dollar on PR.

But, I get myself AND my clients millions of views per campaign, and secure front page coverage on sites like Mashable, The Washington Post, The Observer, The Hollywood Report, and TV coverage on the likes on Entertainment Tonight, Good Morning America, The Today Show, Jimmy Kimmel and a fuck ton of others.

Going viral doesn’t require money.It requires creativity… and the most overused word of this year — hustle.

Shamsi doing an interview on Entertainment Tonight for his Kardblock PR stunt.

Take the $10,000 + 200 fake vagina stunt for example….

This was a stunt for a brand with YouTubers where the idea was to hide money filled sex toys as a public “Easter egg hunt”. One of the many ways Shamsi got free coverage for this isn’t because of any connections. Instead, Shamsi made a list of VERY conservative media outlets, from Christian radio stations to strong conservative blogs and begun contacting them, pretending to be a concerned parent for example. The result? He organized marches and blogs against HIMSELF.

He boasts:

Haha yes for the vagina thing I actually got a super conservative religious group to send an email to all their 100,000+ members denouncing the campaign… little did they realize that by doing that they got people talking about it so much that it helped me get covered in Playboy and other mainstream publications,

Using this same ‘broke mentality’, as Shamsi describes, he spent 2 months every day running tests to figure out how to hack Facebook growth.

The result? He’s able to create influencers at will.

One of James’s clients, Kristen Hanby, a Facebook influencer he helped grow from from 0 to 1m in a year.

Having grown influencer Julius Dein from 0 to 8,000,000+ likes on Facebook in 2 years, James now has his sights set on Instagram.

In the past few months he’s broken the algorithm for growth for INSTAGRAM too.

Within a month of working with one of his influencers, James has single handedly driven millions of views to her profile within a mere few weeks. This is what her stats were like before and after. Something which influencers jokingly call, ‘The Shamsi Effect’:

James says he now has the secret formula to going viral on Instagram, and well… the proof’s in the pudding, as the British would say.

Shamsi showed me a little peek into the stats of one of his influencers… and the results are undeniable. Check out his most recent work with model @morganketzner, who hit1 million views with (what was at the time) 50,000 followers:

Source: Instagram — @jamesshamsi

This below post is from an influencers account who has less than 350,000 followers, but with ‘the shamsi effect’ her post was seen by 6 million people.

“She averaged 300,000 views on her own, which is cool don’t get me wrong.

Since using my new formula with her, we’ve insanely multiplied her growth, engagement and views.

We’ve had two of her videos hit 4 million views, and 3 others hit 1 million — all in under 1 month. There is a secret way to go viral on Instagram” — James.

The Connect Collective , the next big thing…

From this success and his secrets to hacking Instagram growth, James has now co-founded The Connect Collective — a service for influencers to rapidly grow their following on Instagram and get high end brand deals. See more on By taking a new data driven approach to Instagram growth hacking their team have create a secret sauce for Instagram growth — check out a snapshot of one of their clients daily growth below:

A snapshot of Instagram growth from one of Runway Media’s latest clients.

So what’s the latest crazy thing James’s done ?

Well, a few months ago Snapchat begun allowing people to buy geofilters, giving everyone the option to place a custom geofilter at a place of their desire for a short time. So far it’s been used predictably for private events with generic filters, e.g. ones like ‘50th annual cupcake convention’, or ‘Mikes 20th birthday’ as banners… that was until now. Shamsi, (who is also a tech start-up advisor), heard of TechCrunch’s annual summer party — but his excitement was short-lived once he saw the $85 price tag for a ticket. Here’s his reaction:

“I saw it was $85, and I was like f**k that, I’m not paying that much to just network no matter who’s there”

The solution?

“Instead of buying a ticket for $85, I realized I could just buy a Snapchat geo filter for $5 that covers the entire event.

Not only does this save me a f**k ton of money, but it also makes it so much more efficient, as I can now leave a lasting impression on all the VC’s, influencers, start-ups etc there — as opposed to spending the day talking talking to just just 15–20 people”.

Here it is… the big ‘F YOU’ geofilter to TechCrunch:

Source: @snapkarenx

What was the result? Shamsi said he got over 7,000 impressions, coming from 64 silicon valley and social media influencers taking selfies and using his filter — considering this was an incredibly niche event with high profile angels, investors and heavy weights in the tech sphere (who also have influential followers)… this is pretty epic.

Source:

So, what does this all mean?

Speaking with James has opened my eyes. Stop doing things the traditional way, stop using agencies and stop following the rules. If you want results like Shamsi’s, you have to start thinking outside the box.

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Want to contact or learn more about James?

Instagram — Facebook — Website — The Connect Collective — 

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