Follow Pete Carroll's Lead and Start a Twitter Campaign...

Are you looking for new ways to utilize Twitter and YouTube to your organization's benefit? Are you looking for new ways to leverage athletes and high profile personnel?

Pete Carroll, the University of Southern California's head football coach, recently created a campaign to convince Will Ferrell to join him in the social networking world. In recent days, Carroll has used his Twitter profile and a YouTube viral piece (as shown below) to get others involved in his crusade. The USC football coach (with 6,000+ followers) even reached out to Suns C Shaquille O'Neal (who has 493,000+ followers) to help him encourage others to send notes of encouragement to wewantwillferrellontwitter@gmail.com.

Over the past few years, Pete Carroll and Will Ferrell, a USC alum and die-hard Trojan fan, have become good friends. Their friendship has led to several Ferrell cameo appearances at Trojan camp, sparking a handful of viral pieces that have generated waves of attention online.

Why is Carroll so actively involved in the social networking space? That question remains to be seen. But Carroll's social networking campaign is an extremely smart move because it demonstrates to young HS football stars how well he relates to the younger generation. After all, which 17-year-old wouldn't want to go play for a coach with National Championship wins under his belt and two good friends in Will Ferrell and Shaquille O'Neal?

Check out Carroll's recent YouTube campaign below: