You can love or hate Shaq, but these days, he is hard to avoid! Shaq is quickly becoming an online celebrity via a clever combination of posts on Twitter (he has now more than 200.000 followers) and Video appearance on Youtube.  So what is the secret of his celebrity?

First of all, Shaq is Shaq. He is a big man, sometimes funny, sometimes stupid but always himself. Let’s have a look at the video of Shaq dancing at the 2009 All Star Game:

He is not a great dancer. But he obviously likes to dance. He is good at entertaining people. It’s not all about performance, it is also about fun. This video turned to be an incredible viral video, producing lots of conversation online and offline. You can only start conversation if you are close to your fans. In one of his message on Twitter, Shaq said “To all twitterers , if u c me n public come say hi, we r not the same we r from twitteronia, we connect.” He actually did meet people via Twitter. One fan, Jesse Bearden recounts on his “A foot and half blog” how he and his friend had an encounter with Shaquille O’Neal after a discussion over the micro-blogging social network.

This guy knows how to leverage social media to his advantage. In my next posts, I will attempt to demonstrate why stakeholders in the sport industry should get involved with social media.

More on Shaq & Social Media at “John’s Pick for Best Celeb Twitter User: Shaquille O’Neal“

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