Having a Social Media presence is work. In an age where everything is public, and the term viral is considered digitally before it’s considered pathologically, it can be hard to remember that these things don’t have a life of their own.
In the case of Social Media, it seems that there are two kinds of viral: that which is happenstance and that which is designed. I would venture to say that it’s the incidental we remember the most.
The brightest minds of the day could spend countless hours of research and planning and not have the same success as the darling couple in this video. What is important to remember is that Social Media is merely a medium and thus the messenger. But it is not the message, nor is it necessarily an audience.
Knowing who you want to reach with your message and planning how you will reach them is as important as the message itself. In the case of Social Media with tools such as Facebook and Twitter, this means being able to rely on a few key communicators to who will help spread your message. And that translates into attracting those people by showing them that you have something that is both interesting and worth sharing.
Simply having the tools: a blog, a Facebook Group, a Twitter account, a Tumblr; is not enough to create a social media campaign. You also have to have a clear compelling message and a process in place that gets that message to the people on the other side of that equation.
