Chasing for fame on Twitter

If you're on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, or ReverbNation, you might see the following zinging across your screen:

#IAMPHILLYCHASE

#FLIGHTCITY

#TEAMCHASE

#VERIFYPHILLYCHASE

What's it all about?

Philly Chase is a Philly-based rapper who's been at it since the early 2000s. You may not have heard of him yet, but quite a few people have. As in one million and counting.

Philly Chase is a living lesson in marketing 2013, with tips for below-the-radar, willing-to-work artists who, since "the world doesn't give you anything" (his words), build their own fan base, parent their own worldwide entourage.

Team Chase is his enormous team of faithful retweeters, Twitterers, and just plain fans who zing his every utterance into the media multiverse.

Flight City is his new album, released in January and recorded last year at the BatCave studio on Third Street. He's offering it free to download, and at least one track, "Girls Like to Party," with its clever YouTube vid, is getting some love.

As for this verify thing - we'll get to that later.

First, the amazing thing about Philly Chase: Singlehandedly, he has grown his Twitter following from 200,000 in January (which is very, very good) to 1,137,751 as of Wednesday. (For comparison, Justin Bieber has the most, with 32.3 million. But let's be serious: the average Twitter user has 208.)

He also has an impressive 7,500 Facebook likes, and 70,000 plays on the influential music site ReverbNation, where he has three million "widget impressions," or page views, a measure of traffic to his product. His music emphasizes humor and wit, with doses of well-placed tough stuff.

"Downloads have spiked," says his manager, Eddie Galan, head of Mach 1 Music. "He just hit No. 1 in ReverbNation for the U.S. and No. 2 worldwide, all based on downloads." Briefly, the hashtag #IAMPHILLYCHASE even broke into Twitter's U.S. trending topics.

"This guy did it by himself," says Galan. "He spends 16 to 18 hours a day just tweeting. I am not kidding you."

If you follow Philly Chase, he's blasting out tweets, shout-outs, thank-yous, and news like a paintball marauder.

"I'm no stranger to hard work," says Philly Chase (non-rap name: Tony Benson). "You don't get anything for free."

And throughout Twitter, in tens of thousands of tweets, his fans let you know. To quote blogger Shay Star: "This dude never sleeps and never stops grinding. This man gives hard work a whole new meaning that even I can't describe."

Galan reminds us that Twitter is a huge game of relay: "The more you write and tweet, the more people respond and retweet, the more reach you have. He reaches out to one person, he gets three in return."

Chase says that he "learned long ago that I can't do the hard sell directly. It's so much better to get my friends and fans stirring it up for me, retweeting, giving shout-outs, downloading and getting other people to download. People like you better if they see others promoting you. Basically, my Twitter fans become my greatest promoters. And if I can get a million great promoters, I feel like my work is paying off."

The Chase philosophy: DIY.

If anyone follows you, follow back.

Beside the one-million-plus followers, he is following 1,103,271 tweeters, a headbusting number. "A lot of stars don't do that," he says. "But fans care more if you follow them back. They feel they have a connection to you."

Answer as many tweets as inhumanly possible.

"Sometimes it's hard," he says, "especially on mornings you wake up to 10,000 new messages." Thus to @thomasjarmitage, he tweets, "Thank you For following! Check Out My New Album." Dani Da Bombshell tweets, "Ladies make sure u follow @IAMPHILLYCHASE he's a gentleman & a scholar. You will enjoy his tweets," and, gentleman that he is, he replies: "why thank you :)"

Make sure loyalty has its perks.

"I'm all about rewarding loyalty," he says. He has VIP followers, Most Beautiful followers, and Team Chase. He sends out the coveted "s/o" (shout out) to fans, and the even more coveted "VIP s/o."

When a fan in Australia asked for his autograph, Chase, 32, photographed his signature and tweeted it. A deluge of requests followed. Since he makes sure each autograph is fresh, "I've gone through so many books of paper."

Chase is Philly-born and lives just outside the city. In between came a life of family breakups, moves all over the place, including Florida ("to help my mom, who drives 18-wheelers") and Wilmington ("to live with my dad, who's a pastor"), sometimes selling mixtapes of his album The Chase Is On at car washes, other times opening for acts such as T.I. and State Property. Soon, he's off to L.A. to start a big push, which will include a concert tour.

Oh, yes . . . VERIFIYPHILLYCHASE. That's his quest for Twitter's coveted blue-check "verification badge" - the Twitter seal of approval - for accounts it deems authentic and trustworthy. It focuses on the great and powerful, and it doesn't accept public input. So Philly Chase has started a hashtag campaign, #VERIFYPHILLYCHASE, with thousands of tweeters like Kaleb Farnham pleading: "#VERIFYPHILLYCHASE #FLIGHTCITY @verified do it."

His spirited, humane tweets show that for Philly Chase, marketing is a human thing, not a mechanical, soulless chore.

"Hey, when I get two or three gold records, I can get fat and take a vacation," he says. And by e-mail: "I love work!!! Send me more!!"