Last week I ran a couple of posts on the power of networking (The power of networking…1 & The power of networking…2). I’d like to expand on those a little and look at two recent cases where using SoMe (Social Media) networking have had successful outcomes. The first is well documented, the second perhaps less so but it is something that I and some of my SoMe (& now personal real world) friends have been involved in.

The first is the campaign launched by Jon and Tracy Morter to get the Rage against the machine song “Killing in the name” to number one in the UK charts at Christmas 2009. Their campaign was a light-hearted attempt to break the recent monopoly of X-factor winners gaining the Christmas number 1 slot. Their campaign started on Facebook and was fuelled by people tweeting on Twitter.

The second is the campaign launched by Paul Weston (@PaulWeston33) to find new employment. A campaign that has now proved to be successful, Paul secured two offers of employment this week and will be blogging about his choice today (01/04/2010) here. Now the amazing thing about this, is just how many people got behind Paul and the opportunities it presented for Paul; he has been on local radio for an interview, been asked to speak at various events, invited to co-host a radio show and now people are approaching him to share his experience for academic projects and job searches. You can find out a little more about the social media impact by reading Lee Smallwood’s (@LeeSmallwood) post One for your toolbox – Paul Weston.

Both of these examples share some common themes, both were campaigns that the originators believed in, driven by the use of SoMe and both were successful in achieving their objective.

Both involved a lot of people who got involved, in my belief, because they understood the reasons driving the originators and they felt some strong reason to and therefore felt compelled to participate.

You can take this same lesson and apply it to projects or goals you want to achieve. Involving others is one of the ways to assist you to move towards successful goal completion. However, you must have a strong belief or reason why and must consider how you can communicate that to others and give them a strong enough reason to become involved too.