Going Viral

My boyfriend Chris works in the social media world. He's very good at his job. One thing I've learned from watching him do his job ... this world of social media? It's a vast ocean of uncharted waters. It's like an untamed beast. Seriously.

One of the things he talks a lot about is something called Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Basically, this means including certain words in your post that you hope will generate traffic to your blog from search engines like Google or Yahoo.

Yesterday, I experienced a little bit of the incredible power of SEO.

See, on Wednesday (the 15th) I randomly posted a video of a woman no one had ever hear of auditioning for a talent contest in Britain. (I had seen a little blurb on some news site about it.) Without thinking about it, I included the words "Britain's Got Talent" in the title of the post.

Then something happened overnight.

It went viral.

On Thursday, you literally could not visit a blog or news site on the internet without seeing the words Susan Boyle. Her video on YouTube has been viewed 20 million times. If you Google the words "Susan Boyle," you get 3,270,000 results. She's booked on Oprah. Her Facebook page has 245,000 fans. And on. And on. And on.

Here's my picture of my blog traffic from the last 30 days...

Crazy, huh? And that's just my tiny little blog.

Compassion is beginning to move into the social media realm. You can find us on MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr and on our blog. (Little shout out ... Chris' team is behind all of this. Woot!)

But as I saw the tsunami that hit Susan Boyle, I started thinking. What if we (the Church) fully embraced the social media world to it's maximum potential?

Just imagine the potential impact.