Overnight Social Media Success (in just 2 years!)

I've been tweeting daily for two years now. Over that time I've built up quite a network of interesting contacts, but I've never tested it to see what it could do: until this weekend, I was content to build and maintain, and more than anything to learn and to help others who could use an introduction or whose brilliant blog posts deserve a wider audience, that kind of thing.

Well, something got me going, and Saturday morning I posted a call for CIOs and their direct reports. That something was a simple fact-finding question: do top IT leaders, especially in the largest companies, use Social Media? The person asking this thought not, and I decided to gather some facts.

I set myself a goal of 100 CIOs and vice presidents. I figured 100 IT leaders out of 45,000 or so followers - that's probably about right.

Wow, shows you what I know!

Within minutes, I had not only a collection of several score CIOs who were already following me, but also several links to the lists that others had already compiled. Within two hours, I had gathered more than 750 CIOs and top IT leaders. I took yesterday off, but I'm still pushing 1,000 when last I checked.

Lessons:

1. Your hobby just might bear fruit for you in ways most of us don't even dare to imagine.

2. The power of a robust network goes far beyond the participants in that network themselves. Think about my 45,000-or-so followers. Are two percent of them CIOs? Well, possibly. But more likely, the folks in my network know where to find a lot of CIOs. And that makes me wonder: who else can my network help me find? (Jaguar drivers? Hmn... hear that, Lexus?)

3. You have a network too. Even if it isn't tens of thousands large on Twitter, your network spans the globe in six degrees or less. Prove it with this ultra-cool tool from PeopleMaps.

4. CEOs: if your current Social Media leaders aren't getting you results that prove Social is a must-have investment, you need better leaders. I found my CIOs with very little trouble, and I have never billed myself as a marketeer of any stripe. (Strategist? Yes. Mad Man? Hardly!)

5. As for that last one: I may not be a Mad Man marketing genius, but I sure know plenty. I'm happy to introduce you. Just let me know.

Social Media Monday is a once-weekly focus on some aspect of Social. Subscribe to this blog's RSS feed to have it delivered to your inbox each week.

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And now for something completely different.

If you're a fan of customer service, as I am, or interested in how to run a company much better than best (as in "best practices," which suck), you may already be very familiar with icon-in-hiding Tony Hsei, CEO of Zappos. Either way, you owe yourself the pleasure of reading this article from The New York Times.