Published on March 5th, 2021 | by Marilyn Reles

The Winning Formula – Steve Zilberman Talks Viral Engineering for Oliver Tree and More

With well over 1.5 billion video views under his belt, viral engineer Steve Zilberman has gained a deep understanding of what will perform well online. While helping build Atlantic Records artist Oliver Tree from 10K followers on Instagram to over 1 million in the course of 16 months, he was able to keep Oliver’s engagement at an average high of 28%. Steve specializes as a cinematographer, video editor, creative director, photoshop expert, producer, project manager, content marketer, & photographer. He has worked with countless celebrities & has won multiple awards for his work. Steve has had his hands in several viral moments on the internet and will continue guiding both new & old influencers on how to maximize their online reach. We sat down with Steve to learn more…

What are some of the things you look for in a video’s potential to go viral? And does this differ from platform to platform? How?

The psychology behind what goes viral is one of the most fascinating things because it’s not always explainable. Personally I look at 3 things. Have I seen this before? Does this have my attention? If I have seen this before, has this been viral? Lastly, is there something to talk about (negative or positive)? I’ll give you an example. The other day I saw a video on tiktok that did very well, which was cheese being thrown at a baby’s face. The cheese sticks on and the baby has a funny look. I’ve seen videos go viral before of cheese being thrown on faces, walls, etc. On top of that you have a baby. Babies go viral often. So now you have a formula for what could go “viral”. (Side note: when I say viral, I’m saying 1 million views+). This isn’t ever guaranteed however, I’m no magician! But I am putting the odds strongly in my favor by using formulas that have worked for me in the past.

Virality differs platform to platform. Youtube is a whole other animal compared to Instagram, Twitter, or TikTok. That’s the toughest nut to crack because people go on there with a longer attention span; it’s because YouTube is meant for long form content. Now sprinkle in some of those formulas that I spoke about above….you have “how to make a million dollar music video” that I made with Oliver Tree. That’s a 30 minute video that has memeable things happening constantly. It’s essentially one long “viral” video. Twitter is pretty tough as well. I’m no master on that but I’ve had a few things work out for me there. Instagram was my forte! With Oliver, we were averaging out 28% engagement and I’ve even seen 32/33% at our max. This is average engagement. So on a video we might get 1 million plays and have 500k followers, but the average factors comments as well which is why it stays lower. Right now, because of tiktok, all these tiktokers are getting insane engagement on Instagram. Pretty wild to see because if you compare them to mega celebs like Kim Kardashian, they’re crushing them. Tiktok is the most predictable platform to go viral by far. The algorithm is made to reach a lot of people at the same time so if you’re confident in your content piece, your chances for going viral are exponentially larger.

You’ve seen a lot of success on both YouTube and TikTok. What are some pros and cons to being a content creator on both platforms and how do you work your way around some of the challenges that they present?

Both platforms share one thing in common that some may say is a pro and others as a con. You have to post consistently. Better yet, you should be posting a lot. Go to David Dobrik’s YouTube page and click on his overall videos. What you’ll notice immediately is consistency. All the screenshots are very similar. All of the video names are very similar and formatted similarly. Even during his rise, (I’m not too sure about now) I know he posted a lot. He’s taken his talents over to tiktok and has done the same thing. When you watch a Dobrik tiktok, he always does something you don’t expect, you see something you’ve never seen, or he features someone that is famous so you talk about it. He’s truly a master! The only con for me personally has been ego. And I say con loosely. Some creators have a stronger vision and don’t want to compromise that regardless of how much better it would do. I respect that, but it makes my job a bit more difficult haha. A big pro is the doors this stuff opens. Being a creator, you now have access to every single industry in the world. Even medical or law!

You’ve worked with several celebrities / well-known artists. Can you share a funny story with us about one of your experiences when working with these artists? This allows us to humanize your journey a bit.

The hardest question yet! There’s been so many. Pranking Post Malone, befriending Rosario Dawson & her mom, John Densmore crashing a band practice and going off on the drums, hurting Diplo’s feelings on accident. I’ll tell you my personal favorite only because of the rollercoaster of emotion I went through. Oliver & I played at BUKU in New Orleans and it was our first time in that city ever. Skrillex also played there and my team at the time was close with him. I haven’t met him yet though! To set the scene, I was backstage at a from first to last after party show that Sonny (skrillex) played. I was FaceTiming Oliver’s guitarist who knows Sonny, and I was flashing my camera at him showing where I was telling him to come. Sonny comes rushing over really angry telling me I can’t be taking pics of him; and I’m invading his privacy and all this stuff. It was pretty embarrassing but I showed him the FaceTime I was on & he recognized the guitarist. He laughed it off and we started talking. We talked for a while about a bunch of topics but the coolest thing is what it led to. I ended up going out with just him, the Suicide Boys, and Oliver Tree for one of the craziest nights. That was my first night ever in New Orleans and what a great first experience.

Steve Zilberman and Oliver Tree

What is one of the best pieces of advice you’ve ever been given and how do you apply it to the work you do today?

My best piece of advice came from somebody named Guy (apiecebyguy). He become a dead friend and is Elliot Teber’s (fuckjerry) right hand man. Years ago, Oliver & I were experimenting with only using iPhones and on the border of making things look fake but having it be real. When I first met guy he was doing the same thing, but what he did was explain to me why it worked. He taught me that the more mistakes happen during the filming of a content piece, the better it would do. The reason it was the best advice is because it started making me look deeper into the psychology of why things work over the content piece itself. I was already practicing this, but I didn’t have a full understanding of how it kept working.

What are your thoughts about the potential of the TikTok platform? It’s been under scrutiny for many reasons but it’s also proven to be one of the most fruitful support systems for teens during quarantine. We want to know how you see it developing over the next 5-10 years?

Tiktok is the craziest social media platform yet. China has so much money and so much resources that they’ve built the craziest social media algorithm we’ve ever seen. An algorithm that can hit so many people, so quickly, consistently. It doesn’t make any sense to me with the knowledge of these other platform algorithms I have. I didn’t believe it for a long time and was convinced tiktok was juicing numbers to seem bigger than life. I learned with the first viral video that had my face in it that this was not the case. I started having people I haven’t talked to in years or people from high school hitting me up saying they saw me. That moment is what made me confidentially say tiktok is exactly what we see it as. Now, whether China is mining this information to create an American profile so they can somehow weaponize it in the future, I don’t know. Social media is the most powerful weapon a country has. You’re directly linking with people and can sway opinions of entire countries. On the flip side, the amount of careers and money tiktok is funneling into our economy is unreal. From what I’m seeing, more and more resources are getting dumped into the platform & it’s making it grow while it’s growing naturally as well. In 5-10 years it can be the biggest platform or it can fizzle out the way vine did. I don’t think it will fizzle away because of the music component to it. There’s too much money involved with getting a song on the Billboard charts and tiktok works too well at doing that. The marriage between social media and music working symbiotically hasn’t been done this well before; so the only way it will crumble is if another platform does something similar or better.

Tell us in your words what it is you do as a creative director. Do you pick out the artists clothes for music videos? Do you design the videos? We’d like to learn more!

Being a creative director is a very loose term. For the Oliver project for example, he’s the main creative director even though I’m also creative director. He has a very strong vision of what he wants; but that doesn’t mean I didn’t step into those shoes when I needed to. You can have multiple creative directors on a project. Working together and bouncing ideas off of each other is how we were able to create such epic work. So when you bring multiple creatives into a room and have them all on the same playing field with a similar end goal, that’s the sweet spot. The Mason project is totally opposite. When I would come in to creative direct, I would have the full creative control. We wouldn’t collab..mainly because he was just a kid! Oliver was very heavily involved with the outfit design…Mason was not at all. We had a top stylist that would handle that. I try to leave outfits to the professionals but work with them often to fine tune for the specific project. I hope this explains it well enough! That’s part of the reason I went with the term creative engineer as opposed to director. I’m always engineering the project in one way or another, but not always the main director.

What is it about viral engineering that keeps you coming back for more? Why do you love doing what you do?

I’m obsessed with viral!! I don’t know why, but I get most satisfaction out of my job when someone I make starts being spread around. I’ve lost relationships and friendships over my obsession. It’s something I enjoy talking about the most, thinking about the most, and absolutely doing the most. It’s a fun game that you’re playing at such a large scale; you feel as if you’re a general moving battleships around the board. Where this stems from I can’t really say. Maybe it’s from growing up an internet nerd guy. In high school I was part of the something awful forums which if you’re familiar with 4chan, they were our enemies. When the meme world was first being created those were the two sides you essentially join. You were a goon (somethingawful) or you were a 4chan person. I’ve always been around memes and love memes but never made my own pages. My close friend and one of the partners I work with, pakalupapitocamel, was in the same boat as me growing up but he went the route to make a meme page. Now he’s in the meme hall of fame. It’s possible I’m getting that satisfaction out now, because most of my career revolves strictly around cinematography and editing.

What does a day in the life of Steve look like and how has that changed during COVID?

No day is the same as the previous. 2 weeks ago I got back from Hawaii producing a shoot for Bella Poarch. I found a location, rented gear, helped facilitate photographer/makeup team, and shot videos/edited them for tiktok. We also met up with other influencers there, kicked it, and she went off and did content with them without even me being there. Tomorrow I’m meeting with a Columbia artist to shoot some performance content for tiktok/IG. The following day, I’m meeting with an art agency that’s looking for creative marketing. In 3 days from now, I’m meeting with Benny Blanco to shoot a slew of tiktoks. He’s in/out from shooting a show so we have been meeting in waves instead of consistently like we did before he went into production. I hope this gives you an example of how hectic things could be but exciting at the same time! It was because of covid that I’ve gotten more busy than before covid. It blew tiktok out of the water for popularity which in turn made me very wanted in the field. I’ve been shooting live shows during the midst of the pandemic for guys like Zach Bryan & Contradash. Now that tiktok has ramped up, the vaccines out, and the world is slowly opening up again, I’m just getting busier.

Any final words to leave our audience with?

My company LUCKY TOUCH is going live in the coming weeks & months, so if there are any social media experts out there looking for work…I’m in search of trend spotters! You can reach me at [email protected] – also Coca Cola if you’re reading this I have big ideas, let’s connect haha

Follow Steve on Instagram here and TikTok here for more info.

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