Every other month there seems to be a new social cause arising on social networking sites, such as Facebook or Twitter. With little things such as changing their profile picture or forwarding a status update, countless individuals have been exercising their support for these frequent trending causes.

However, despite the recent controversy with creator Jason Russel, the newly established KONY 2012 video has been making waves in the public and in the media, attracting over 70+ million views (on Youtube and Vimeo), in only three weeks.

For the most part, the media attention has interestingly not primarily been about Joseph Kony himself;  Kony, the man, is only half of the story. Much of the concentration in the media has largely focused on the KONY 2012 campaign’s recent viral success. What began as a simple yet effective video campaign based on spreading awareness of a certain cause has quickly developed into a media narrative on its social networking success - it has become a viral trend about a trend.

Kenneth C. Wisnefski,of the The Washington Post,elucidates that the, “[KONY 2010 video] is now becoming more than a trend — viral is, in large part, the future of marketing”.

So what has made KONY 2012 rise above most of all other contemporary social trends in terms of awareness?  Corporations, individuals, and social causes are now beginning to recognize the exceptional power that ‘the viral’ can have on establishing significant marketing practices.

There certainly are lessons that can me learned from such a polarizing campaign. Social Media specialists have dissected and studied the video to determine some of these important lessons, in this FORBES article:

12 Lessons from KONY 2012 from Social Media Power Users

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