Can Social Media Optimization and SEM help American Idol contestants win?

Posted on March 28, 2007
Filed Under American Idol, SMO, SEM, Social Media, Social Media Optimization, Digg, Stumble Upon, Squidoo, MySpace |

I believe the answer is YES! For those that have followed this season of American Idol, you have seen the (overly dramatic) judges in jaw-dropping awe as the American public continues to vote off people who can sing – either due to being tone deaf, or forgetting that American Idol is a singing contest (as Simon so eloquently continues to point out), or maybe its just a popularity contest? I mean, they are all reasonably good if they make it to the round where America votes, right?

We all know that voting is all about popularity, not necessarily skill or qualification (think politics). SO – that leads me to the web. I can take pretty much any conversation and turn it to the web (or try and start an online business – or at least a blog), and this is no different.

If American Idol contestants really wanted to win, could they just use some “SEM / SMO Magic” and become “popular” enough to win. Here are a few examples of how this could work:

Go Social - There are certainly some contestants that I dig, and therefore might Digg if given the opportunity and I wouldn’t resist the opportunity to StumbleUpon some of my favorite contestants either. Don’t forget Squidoo and MySpace where they could make pages pretty simply and foster more support.

How about PPC? Of course its costly, but a record deal and a singing career can be lucrative, right? They could bid on “all things Idol” and create lading pages to program the viewers with messages to vote for them.

How about the affiliate marketing route (always filled with hype) – They could do a “pre-launch”. You know get lots of hype leading up to the announcement that they are going to be on American Idol.

Lastly, there is the Viral Marketing Route. They could give away “American Idol white papers” to build an email list, and reinforce their message of “vote for me!” through the power of auto-responders.

This was clearly done for fun, but I am sure it has some merit. Now if anyone in the SEO community can sing and wants to test my theory, keep me in mind when you get that record deal.