So, what does Conan have to do with Social Media and viral marketing? The article says:
"I sincerely believe that Conan knew exactly what was going to happen, and used the internet to his advantage. Many of his writers and publicity team are very young, having grown up on the internet. They knew that if they needed good publicity they would only have to turn to the internet in order to get the point across.
They used social media to secretly create "I'm with CoCo" groups while at the same time constantly making sure there was new "buzz" to pass around on twitter. From posts on Craigslist of Conan selling himself to the highest bidder for favors to late night tweets from the writing staff to their fan base, they knew that they could always win the war with an audience - that frankly is a lot more internet savvy than the Leno fan base.
Anyone engaged in social media marketing, needs to look closely at how Conan did this, how he made it seem to be organic and natural and then allowed it to seemingly take its own course. He knew how to create buzz, but more importantly content for internet buzz fodder. He knew that the one-liners that could be posted on Twitter were a thousand times more powerful than any ten minute monologue that could be spoken by ...urhmm... that other guy."
This definitely got me thinking... When it comes to viral marketing and link bait, let us all take a note from CoCo....
Controversy creates buzz... buzz generates traffic, increased followers and even free links... I`m not saying you should get yourself into a mess for some free links, but if your subject is, shall we say, not that exciting, you might want to think about putting a unique spin on it. Funny, controversial, risky, taboo, outlandish and over the top videos, articles, blog posts and websites get a lot more traffic and free links than "the other stuff".
Just look at the Conan bandwagon results:
Type "I`m with CoCo" in your Google search bar, 27,400,000 results! (That`s almost double the results you`ll return if you just search his name, "Conan O'Brien")
Check out his new Twitter account: http://twitter.com/conanobrien created just 2 days ago, and only 2 tweets later, 374,482 followers!
I can`t login to Twitter, Facebook, Tublr and now even the popular SEM sites without seeing something about Coco.
Maybe you should think twice about going viral and what social media really means to your brand....
Nutshell: If you aren`t participating in social media and using humor, controversy or unique concepts in your marketing efforts, you`re missing out on a bigger audience!
P.S. Go team Coco!
