Conan O'Brien Does Content Marketing
Conan O'Brien Is A Social Media Star
Whether you are a late night fan of Jay Leno or a raving member of Conan O'Brien's Team Coco, you can immediately distinguish the difference between the two by their use of social media.
When Conan O'Brien was interviewed by talkshow host Piers Morgan at The Cable Show 2012 in Boston the following facts came to light:
With 5.6 Million Twitter followers compared to Leno's 376,000, there is no comparison. Next, take a look at their respective Facebook pages. Conan rocks with 1.86 Million “Likes” to Leno's measly 429,000. So why is there such a difference?
"He's busy. He's got the largest privately owned car collection in the world," O'Brien smirked. "So, he doesn't have time for social media."
During the interview O'Brien was insistent that in 1993 when he began his late-night talkshow career he was a computer Luddite. "The networks felt that it was all about how many viewers you had watching your television show. When I was at NBC, we had a late-night page but it was the same website page a dry cleaner would have."
When O'Brien was asked about how he got into social media he responded:
“I was standing with a foot in traditional broadcast and one in this "brave new world" and I felt I had to make a jump to one or the other. My team and myself had to figure out what it is about this new world we are in and how we could exploit it."
When asked of his strategy O'Brien replied, “I never pretended to know a thing about this. We just knew that we had a following of young Internet savvy fans and we were aggressive about reaching out to them."
It's All About Content
Whether he's blogging, tweeting, posting in Facebook, checking in on Foursquare, posting videos to YouTube, creating a live webcast, posting pictures on Flickr or writing a blog on Tumblr, Conan goes where his fans are.
"At the time this all started happening [Conan's post Tonight Show Tour], I was forced to embrace this world and the first thing I learned was... It's all about content!"
Morgan asked O'Brien whether it upset him that his material can be found in various formats across the Internet to which he replied, “no, not at all." When Will Ferrell unveiled on Conan's television show the date of the new Anchorman 2 movie, (and play the flute), O'Brien's staff chopped that performance up into bit sized pieces and knew exactly how to "get it out there so that's its everywhere."
"When I started, we were taught to not give anything away for free. You teased people so that they would watch."
What O'Brien and team have found out to be true is that it is a different world out there today. You can show them exactly what Will Ferrell did and mass distribute it so there is no surprise. But what happens is that it created a wave of viewers for their 11:00 show. It created conversations on the web and created a curiosity for people to want to watch. Some watched it on TV, some on their DVR a few days later and some are experiencing it in little pieces like from the Huffington Post and other blogs.
So here's what you can learn from Conan:
- It's all about content
- Go where your fans (customers) are
- Post your content EVERYWHERE
- There is no "right way" in the new world
- That was then... and this is now
- Posing with a monkey is good press!
To fully experience the richness of the Conan's insights, take the 20 minutes and watch this interview. Even though Piers Morgan is a bit of a bore.. don't you think?