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Twitter and the Oprah Effect

Recently, you probably caught wind of the Twitter “phenomenon” that seemed to culminate with the race between Ashton Kutcher and CNN Breaking News to a million followers. Ashton won.

It hit its hype peak when Ev Williams appeared on Oprah to discuss the service with Aston on via Skype. Oprah was using Twitter live and is now on Twitter.

Mashable tried to pinpoint the public awareness of twitter:

“It’s hard to define, exactly, when Twitter entered the public conscience: perhaps the Hudson plane crash, where the first real photo of the event appeared on Twitter before reaching the mainstream outlets. Perhaps it was earlier, in September 2008, when we noted that CNN was actively promoting its Twitter feed on air. Perhaps it was March 2009, when Twitter co-founder Evan Williams was interviewed by Charlie Rose…or perhaps fellow co-founder Biz Stone’s hilarious Stephen Colbert interview was the moment Twitter tipped. Or maybe all those declarations of a breakthrough were premature: perhaps a starring role on Oprah, hours from now, is the true mark of mainstream success.”

I know it was none of those things. It was Oprah.

She started using Twitter on April 17, 2009 at 10:17 am.

As of this writing (May 27, 2009) she has 1,194,181 followers and  14 Following but that is what you should expect from a celebrity account that is just starting out (following people they know personally at first) but I want you to focus on the fact that she got almost 1.2 million people on her account – in a month.

President Barack Obama started using Twitter for his campaign and election on April 29, 2007 at 3:04 pm. Over two years and he has 1,254,269 Followers which means that Oprah can do in a month what took the President of the United States two years to do and with Ashton Kutcher appearing on Oprah her show he is now at  1,925,154 Followers

Those extra 925,000 followers? THAT IS THE OPRAH EFFECT.

Think about it. Whenever an author or guru of something appears on her show, they bascially get the seal of approval that what is good for Oprah is good for you. It is so powerful that in 2007 General Motors gave away 276 Pontiac G6 sedans to the studio audience that day. The press buzz was amazing and millions of people took a second look at the G6 based on Oprah’s recommendation and future sales were positively impacted by this small example.

It is funny that I was working on a draft of this blog post when I came across an article that will be airing the CNBC special “The Oprah Effect” on Thursday, May 28th at 9PM ET & 10PM PT. According to the CNBC web site, “The Oprah Effect,” an original CNBC special hosted by CNBC’s Carl Quintanilla that goes inside businesses to explain Oprah’s unparalleled impact on their bottom line, their secrets to getting on her show and how the Oprah Effect continues to translate her brand and others into big business and big dollars.

How do you find your Oprah?

Well, we all can’t be on Oprah but what we can learn from this is that all of us should connect with the influencers in our focus area and engage them. If you are lucky you might even engage them to be a mentor that will connect you with their network. So engage your social networks (online and offline) as well as doing some web searches for those influencers and reach out. If there is one thing I have learned this year in my life is that it never hurts to ask for it cause the worst they can say is ‘no’ and many times they will say ‘yes’.

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