In SmartCollegeVisit's Social Media Rocket Launch, I described the social media campaign co-executed by Handshake Media and SmartCollegeVisit's founder, Z. Kelly Queijo.  I introduced  SmartCollegeVisit's beginning as "a fascinating case study of a business launch through social media."  I added:

The social media launch of SmartCollegeVisit involved 4 blogs, 3 Twitter accounts, and 2 business Facebook pages.

Extending that number virally and exponentially, wonderful well-wishers tweeted, retweeted, and updated.

And in the flight log of SmartCollegeVisit's launch, that was only Day One.

The rocket trajectory continued.

Unbeknownst to us, that night, Robert Geller wrote Handshake 2.0 Launches Innovative Campaign for SmartCollegeVisit.com on his blog, Flack's Revenge, linking that post to his First College Visit story on Handshake 2.0 and to SmartCollegeVisit.  As he had for our site - which he later dubbed "H20" - Robert Geller provided SmartCollegeVisit's first "link in."

On her ZKQ Blog the next morning, Z. Kelly Queijo posted her own introduction to the First College Visit Series.

On SmartCollegeVisit, she informed site users of SmartCollegeVisit's Twitter account, offering value added information about higher ed hashtags used on Twitter.

Walking the talk of social media, i.e. doing it myself, not just advsing others on what to do, I added to the growing First College Visit series by writing a First College Visit series post.

From the SmartCollegeVisit site, ZKQ introduced my first college visit story as Growing Up Among Towns and Gowns, excerpted it so as not to spam, or give the appearance of attempting to spam, search engines, and linked back to it.

The network of links in that build relevance was growing.

On Monday, November 9, 2009, 7:00 AM EST, I posted this tweet:  "Ten minutes before launch of new #blacksburg enterprise, Twitter followers 8, Facebook fans 2, Site traffic 0 :)"

Today, December 1, 2009, I record these stats: Twitter followers 47, Facebook fans 21. 

In three weeks, that's a 588% increase in Twitter followers and a 1050% increase in Facebook fans.

I could go for stocks with returns like those.

Hey, ZKQ, when's your IPO?

***

I ran the above by Z. Kelly Queijo in an email before posting and she replied:

"Phase one of the SmartCollegeVisit launch: We have ignition and lift-off. Planet IPO is in a distant galaxy, far, far away."

***

Illustration by Daniel Yowell

SmartCollegeVisit is a client of Handshake Media, Incorporated.