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I remember a time when Twitter was just another fun, web-based communication tool. My follower list consisted of my then girlfriend, my best friend, his girlfriend, and a few other random people. This was the 2007’s though, a time when Myspace was king and Facebook was still reserved for frat houses.
After watching Twitter grow into the hottest, most talked about, social-networky, web-based, communicational tool in the known universe I got to thinking… Shaq is responsible for this!
Shaq posted his first tweet on November 18, 2008. This was way back when celebrities simply did not have Twitter accounts. I remember searching Google for celebrity Twitter accounts just to see if any of them had caught on. The few listings I found were on random, non-Twitter-related blogs and listed about 20 celebrity accounts (most of which were fake).
There is also the infamous story about how Shaq called one of his early skeptics on the phone to prove that it was really him tweeting.
This was before @oprah tweeted or even @IAMDIDDY!!!!!!! (Get it? He likes exclamation points.) Also, you may be surprised the learn that even Ashton Kutcher didn’t post his first tweet until January 16, 2009.
Of course, I also have a graph to back this up.
Shaq paved the way for tweeting celebrities. He didn’t put it in front of millions of people like Oprah, but he stuck with it and gave his fans a way to connect with him in a unique, instantaneous way. Nowadays, Shaq has over 2,000,000 followers and Twitter is enjoying a level of success they may have never dreamed of.
You too can follow Shaq’s lead by providing your fans an unobtrusive way to keep up with your band’s activities. There is real value in your fans receiving your updates right next to the updates of their best friends and/or family. Stop promoting to other bands on Myspace and start establishing a relationship with the people you care most about.
