Allow me to introduce you to my nephew, Jordan Benker. I know him as Jordy, and he is a very talented young musician.
Why am I writing about Jordan today? Obviously, I care about him and I want to see him succeed.
But I've got another angle. This past week I observed something very interesting happening with Jordan while following his Facebook posts.
There was a discussion saying that his name trended worldwide on Twitter!
I sent a message to him and asked him what happened and how he trended on Twitter.
First of all, you can get to know Jordan a little bit in this video.
Last week, Jordan told his friends that if they would tweet "JBenk" a million times, he'd send them a free song. Turned out his fans were really excited, and they somehow tweeted enough times for it to trend worldwide.
He was shocked that he trended, especially worldwide. So he was true to his word and posted one of his songs on his website for a 24-hour free download.
After that, a bunch of his fans wanted to trend more topics for him. Jordan was happy to encourage this, but he didn't think it likely to happen a second time.
A couple weeks later, Jordan looked at Twitter to see "Jordan Benker and Jordan Witz Tour" trending. He was blown away.
Through no persuasion of his own, his fans were able to trend his full name.
So what does it take to trend on Twitter. I searched Twitter for the second trending term and discovered 369 tweets sent on January 22nd. That's not nearly as many as one would think is necessary to trend. Unless Twitter was not displaying all the tweets with the phrase, the number of close to accurate.
I thought the entire episode was instructive and am sure you can gain inspiration and creativity as a result.
Needless to say, Jordan sees the value in social media as he continues to build his fanbase. You can follow him on Twitter @JordanBenker. His Facebook fan page is at http://www.facebook.com/jtbenkermusic
Want to hear more of Jordan's music? Check out his MySpace page, or pick up his latest CD, Listen Up Baby on iTunes.
Hi Joel.
This is a nice story and I wish your nephew all the success in the world.
Joel,
The web is so cool that there are millions of ways to get noticed and brand yourself. This is another example and I thank you for sharing this.
This is pretty awesome for Jordan too!!! Thanks for sharing!
Scott
Great story on creativity in marketing
nice one for the info joel will look into
it been on twitter now for a while i dont fully understand the power of twitter yet
Great story Joel,
thank you for sharing it.
New way of promoting business...
I smell the next Owl City.
Beyond that, it proves that word-of-mouth is still indeed the most powerful advertising scheme.
If you can start a trickle, with enough flow it can easily flood a room.
Great story! The first thing I thought of was how true the saying is, "You'll never know unless you ask."
So many of us (shall we say a "bit" older than Jordan!) fail to just ask for things we need/want. Then they don't materialize and we're utterly shocked.
This was a great lesson and a perfect reminder. Best of luck to Jordan - he has a lot of talent!
That's actually really cool that is snowballed. Now I wish I had a chance to download his song.
WOW, that's an eye-opener. Exactly as you express, here, you kind of assume it takes millions of x to trend on such huge places. maybe, however, the ways - in which trending happens - are different than we think. lesson learned, here, is: just get your name out there and see what happens.
joel, your apparent nephew is one of the most important people in my life. i'm just a fan, so i know this is weird, but he can cheer me and so many other people up with a tweet. my whole day gets better when he replies something sweet or makes another video. i'm not a stalker like it sounds haha, i just want you to know we think he's great! (i found this page by accident) sarah