I’m neither a famous actor/celebrity type nor a dictator (although my kids might argue with the second half of that statement). But I use Twitter, and by now I hope you do, as well. There’s really no more effective way for a business to stay in touch with its customers, and thus bring about business change in a constantly evolving world.
Hugo Chavez, the dictator president of Venezuela, agrees. Mr. Chavez turned on his Twitter account less than two weeks ago, and is already has the most-followed account in his country.
This shouldn’t come as a surprise, and given Venezuela’s small size the fact that Hugo Chavez sits at number one with only a couple of hundred thousand followers shouldn’t come as too much of a shock, either. And never mind the ridiculous number of followers that a B-movie actor like Ashton Kutcher or a celebutante like Kim Kardashian can rack up.
What matters is this: social media and social networking work. Invoking my kids again, I’ll point out that they’re shocked to hear how many people follow me in one way or another on social networking and social media sites. I’m just not important, right?
But whether you’re Ashton Kutcher / Kim Kardashian, Hugo Chavez, or just Jeff Yablon / The Answer Guy, you can be using tools like Twitter to get your message out. And the world wants to hear your message . . . or at least some world wants to.
Hugo Chavez has found his world. If you like we’ll help you find yours. But please: if you don’t already have a strategy for social media and social networking, create one. Now.
FOLLOWUP:
It’s less than 48 hours since this posting went live, and while looking at the traffic reports for answerguy.com I notice that we’ve become Google’s second most important site for the search term “what works well in a dictator“.
If you still aren’t sure about the importance of search engine optimization, this should seal it for you.
Now of course, I don’t care about ranking high for the word “dictator”, or more specifically the word dictator in the context of that phrase. But because we drink our own SEO Kool-Aid, we’re there, and we got there fast.
Thank you Hugo Chavez, dictator President of Venezuela. And thank you, Twitter.
