Fast Company wanted to show that they could make anything go viral, so they got together with Mekanism. Mekanism is “a creative company that builds digital audiences.” They also guaranteed Fast Company that anything they do will go viral. Okay, I can believe you can do something so out there, so outrageous, that it can go viral – and with the backing of Fast Company (Fast Company did put it out in their e-mail newsletter, online and in their print publication) I buy that. But what does it prove and what does it gain you. So together they launched the Influence Project.

So what happened with the Influence Project (which was launched the first week in July), in the first week 13,000 people signed up. I admit, I was one of them. Funny thing is, since then (another 3 weeks) only 7,000 people signed up. What went wrong. Easy, it was ill conceived. How you ask. Lots of ego and little planning.

Web sites are for people, not for going viral. The Influence Project web site was created all in Flash 10. You don’t have Flash 10 you can’t get in. Rule out iPhones and iPads (okay, most of them have computers at home). Now let’s talk about corporate users (you know, Fortune 500 companies and the like), they control what applications are on the computers and trust me, they are not all on Flash 10 – I know, those people can wait till they get home. It is just that you made the site more difficult to use.

Okay, everyone is at home using their modern computer with Flash 10. Let’s hope they all have broadband, because this puppy is slow to load (about 20 seconds on my Uverse account)! You load up the link your friend sent you. But the instructions on the page are really poor (although it appears they recently changed them (perhaps from criticism from the crowds). When you went to the site it said nothing. Now it tells you to click on the picture to show influence, but in actuality you have more influence if they sign up, no one got that from the site. No one. Everyone called me and asked me what to do.

News flash. Good site design does not require phone support to navigate. Presently I am ranked 2,183 out of 20,076. I sent out one tweet and posted it once on my personal Facebook page (and I am not a big FB user and have limited friends). Two of my friends signed up, two. Guy Kawaski (big name got 56 people to sign up. Mari Smith managed to get 304 people to sign up. These are not big viral numbers people.

Mekanism and Fast Company want you to think that 20,000 people joining the Influence project is “viral”, I’m here to tell you 20,000 people is nothing. While I would love for 20,000 people to subscribe to my blog or follow me on Twitter. Put the number in perspective, Fast Company has a subscriber base of 723,230. So out of their subscriber base (which doesn’t include all the people who read their online magazine or subscribe to their e-mail newsletter, follow them on Twitter, etc.) they were able to get 20,000 people to sign on. Oh, and the people that signed on tweeted about it to their connections, so it went to people who might not follow Fast Company.

Fast Company might think this was a great success, but I think it was a great dud. They started building this up with an article about viral campaigns and Mekanism in their May issue of the magazine. What they didn’t mention is a lot of viral campaigns don’t bring in a return on investment (luckily, online campaigns often are inexpensive). Take Burger King’s Subservient Chicken, even Burger King admits they only had a minor bump in sales (9%) for a campaign that got them millions of hits online.

Viral campaigns sound great, but are you reaching actual potential clients or are you just reaching “people”. Keep your eye on the ball, which is growing your business. You want to reach those people that can and will use your products and services. Going viral is great, growing your business is better.