Of course leave it to Shaquille O'Neal to invent a new use for Social Media. Yesterday @The_Real_Shaq posted this tweet.
"THE_REAL_SHAQ I'm at the fashion sq mall, any1 touches me gets 2 tickets, tag me and say yur twit u hv 20 min"
The Tweet set off a flurry of Re-Tweets measuring in the hundreds! A majority of the people who I follow here in New England Re-Tweeted Shaq's contest even though we live across the country from Arizona.
The Shock wave of Shaqs single tweet cut through the noise of Twitter and almost everyone listened if only for a moment.
Its hard to quantify but easy to imagine how much word of mouth awareness and web site traffic this single tweet brought to Shaq and his teams brand the Phoenix Suns.
Yes, this isn’t the first time someone has cut through the noise of Twitter and it is definitely not the biggest (IE Hudson River plan crash, Twestival or Steve Jobs medical news.) but this was different. This was not breaking news, a large event or really very newsworthy in any way. Shaq was able to cut through the noise because his post was:
Creative - Find me, Tag me = not very creative, when its used to combine online and the real world = Genius
Novel = Sometimes Shaqs humor is like his free throw shooting ablility but he hits home here. "Tag your Twit" Would you really smack Shaq and not laugh?!
Time Element = Shaqs contest had a time limit, 20 min. This was exciting I was genuinely interested in if someone could do it in time or not. The time limit made it a contest and not just a game.
Relationship = The main reason Shaqs tweet was so huge is because he reached across the threshold. A celebrity invited us Tweeters into his reality. Even if we knew we couldn’t get to Phoenix in a day much less 20 minutes we still joined the contest by ReTweeting. Shaq became one of us; he transcended his status and reached out to his Tweeple.
It also didn’t hurt that he is Shaq, a super star but the points resonate. Who are the superstars in your organization? They may be supers stars of the city, team, office, home, company etc. How they can reach across the threshold and become one with everybody else. How can this help deliver an important message to stockholders?
And if you represent a celebrity or prominent figure take note of what Shaq did.
Thanks to @The_Real_Shaq and @PhoenixSunsGirl (Director of Digital Media & Research for the Phoenix Suns) I hope there is more where this came from.
I know Shaq's Tweet was important and I cant wait to see how the idea can be used. Why do you think it worked so well? Where could this technique be imployed next?
-MA
Marcus Andrews
@mandrews33