R.I.P. – The Final Doubts About Social Media

I have had the pleasure this afternoon of having all of my final hesitations about social media, though small, put to rest. My doubts had survived a short life, from May 03, 2009 – March 05, 2010 and really, never stood a chance.

At 2:55 PM today, Conan O’Brien, who recently joined Twitter, posted the following tweet:

I’ve decided to follow someone at random. She likes peanut butter and gummy dinosaurs. Sarah Killen, your life is about to change.

The tweet was genuine and the prophecy upheld. Up until then, Conan had not been following a single user. A seemingly normal and relatively anonymous Twitter user, Sarah Killen, who had less than 100 followers, had nearly 900 new followers in under 5 minutes. Within 10 minutes: 1,712 followers. Within 25 minutes: 2,836.

Killen seemed to have won the lottery, but this didn’t bode well for Russell Bigos. Who’s Rusell Bigos? Well, apparently he’s an idiot. At least according to Killen’s most recent tweet, who has received almost as much buzz. At the time I am writing this, which is less than 30 minutes since COCO’s tweet, Sarah Killen has even become a trending topic on Twitter.

So what doubts did this kill? I’m not quite certain which specifically, but witnessing the power of this social network and the possibilities for a simple idea to become viral in a matter of seconds is phenomenal and has put a proverbial nail in the doubting coffin.

I’m not suggesting that you Twitter stalk Conan in hopes of gaining a mass following. And I’m not suggesting Twitter success is measured by the number of followers you have, merely the idea that your messages and ideas have the potential to spread like a wildfire.

Why should it be impossible for your messages to garnish the same level of viral distribution? Is it unrealistic to imagine that you could move a Chris Brogan or Liz Strauss to retweet your message, simply because it impacted him/her? The short answer is “no” and the simple solution is to understand your audience. Understand why your message should be important to them, if that’s what you’re telling them. Make them understand it first, and create an army of COCOs.

PS  - Since starting and finishing this post, Miss Killen has gained another 1,668 followers.