Whatever you think of Greta Thunberg, this tweet says it all:
A year ago she was sitting alone outside of the Swedish parliament, and by last Friday millions of students were answering her call to strike for climate action. This could not have happened without social media (which is then picked up and amplified greatly by traditional media). Wikipedia describes it like this: “Thunberg posted her original strike photo on Instagram and Twitter and other social media accounts quickly took up her cause. According to Ingmar Rentzhog, founder of a Swedish climate-focused social media company, We Don’t Have Time (WDHT), her strike began attracting public attention after he turned up with a freelance photographer and then posted Thunberg’s photograph on his Facebook page and Instagram account. He also made a video in English that he posted on the company’s YouTube channel that had almost 88,000 views. A representative of the Finnish bank, Nordea, quoted one of Thunberg’s tweets to more than 200,000 followers. Thunberg’s social media profile attracted local reporters whose stories earned international coverage in little more than a week.”
Maybe only one in a million (or less) posts go viral, and planning on virality is not a strategy, but when it does happen – wow.
