Conan O’Brien has more than 1.7 million followers on Twitter. Jay Leno has fewer than 100,000. To say that Conan has a younger audience–and therefore an audience more likely to use Twitter–would be an understatement, as well as a path well-beaten. Nonetheless, Conan’s use of social media to rev up the hype around his new show on TBS has been impressive. Using the name Team Coco, O’Brien has dived head first, reports Fast Company, and “dominated…the digital age.”
Starting with the website TeamCoco.com–“[t]he source of all things Conan”–O’Brien has used all the tools at his disposal for promotion: Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Tumblr, Google Maps (to track his large blimp around the country), and YouTube to promote his new show. By creating web videos for announcements–which are then promoted via Twitter, et al.–like the name of his new show (“Conan” or “Conaw”?) and whether or not Andy Richter would be joining him on TBS, O’Brien has created a place for viewers to get all the information they needed while he was away from their TV screens.
Never mind the self-promotion and all that, though. What makes Conan O’Brien popular in these new venues is what has always made him popular: He’s hilarious. Just read some of these Tweets:
After 9 hours driving from drug store to drug store, it hit me: no one sells Columbus Day decorations.
The Nobel Prize in Science has gone to scientists who created an ultra-thin carbon. Actually it’s normal thickness, but wearing stripes.
David Hasselhoff was kicked off of “Dancing With the Stars.” He should stick to singing. I mean acting. I mean…
Of course, those could have been posted by writers or assistants. But there’s no substitute for O’Brien’s delivery, which is on full display in his YouTube videos.
Right now Utne is just shy of 12,000 followers on Twitter. At 1.7 million, Coco’s got us beat…for now.
Source: Fast Company
