The power of the web never ceases to amaze me. Over the last several years, I find myself constantly awestruck at how things that could have happened during my teen years without anyone even blinking an eye, now attract hundreds of thousands, if not millions of followers, likes, comments, tags, posts, blogs, and whatever else those 3 w’s have to offer.
As I am sure most of you have heard, James Tate is indeed going to his senior prom! The Shelton (CT) High School student has made appearances on The Today Show and Jimmy Kimmel Live. He has also gained national popularity over Twitter as Team Tate quickly became a trending topic this week. A facebook fan page entitled Let James Tate Go to the Prom has attracted over 185,000 likes thus far, with that number sure to grow. Of course, all of this prom stir up will be gone as fast as it came up, but had it happened when I was 18, it would not have reached outside of the high school walls, let alone the town lines.
The point of all of this is not to give the story more attention, but to shine light on how creating an online presence is everything. Nothing mentioned above would have happened if a classmate of Tate did not to stir the pot. I can’t say for sure, but if I were a betting man, I would say it was nothing more than a single tweet or facebook status that started this whole social media blitz.
I’ve spent days and weeks on end working with companies to strategize what Tate’s classmates have accomplished in 3-4 days. In the world of business, it of course, has to be done in a much more structured format. There are trademarks, regulations and compliance issues that we all need to be aware of. They change from company to company, but terms like blog, tweet, status and podcast have taken commonplace in marketing meetings throughout the world. These days the creation of buzz around what a company offers begins in cyber space. As ironic as it sounds…if it’s not on the web, it doesn’t exist!