MC Hammer Proves the Power of Social Media

By Paul | Posted February 22, 2009 | 0 Comment(s) | Filed in: Internet Marketing

Success in social media boils down to doing three things well: monitor, participate and publish. On Friday, Feb. 20, while hanging out at HubSpot for their weekly live video podcast, I was lucky enough to witness the power of an effective social media strategy when MC Hammer Dropped by for Camera Time on HubSpot.tv

So how did it happen? Simple really. HubSpot is brilliant at all three phases of social media.

1) Monitoring

HubSpoter and viral marketing scientist Dan Zarrella (@danzarrella) saw on Twitter Friday morning that MC Hammer (@MChammer) was in Boston:

2) Participating

So Dan, who has more than 8,200 followers on Twitter, did what any intelligent inbound marketer would do — he took a chance and reached out to Hammer:

Amazingly Hammer responded. Now keep in mind that Hammer has 106,000+ Twitter followers, so just getting a response was an achievement in itself.

The HubSpot team then went to work with additional tweets reaching out to Hammer, including the one that really caught his attention from HubSpot TV host (and marketing genius) @mvolpe:

3) Publishing

Despite their best efforts, Hammer gave the impression that he would not be making an appearance.

But HubSpot’s team had one more thing working in their favor — they are content marketing machines who aren’t afraid to take risks and invest resources in YouTube videos, blogs, eBooks and live podcasts.

And as you can see from the video below, their commitment to content put them in the position for a memorable moment that will be talked about and viewed for years to come.