Are you seduced by social media?

In this morning’s newspaper I read about a really cool event taking place in Philadelphia. The problem is I'm unable to attend. 

Why?

Because it already happened. Yesterday.

Neither the organization that runs it nor its major sponsor, of which I am a customer, marketed in a thorough way. I saw no ads, press coverage, posters, flyers, brochures. I heard nothing about it while shopping, frequently, at the major sponsor’s retail location. Nothing. 

From the low attendance — 3,500 people, which the newspaper implied was a success — I’m betting most people in Philadelphia didn’t either. (About 5 million people live here, so, doing the math, 99.03% of the population did not attend, despite the fact that the event organizers held it in one of Philadelphia’s largest indoor venues.)

Later this morning, I navigated around AppleTV to find a yoga video I like. I noticed the iTunes Festival app and poked around for a few minutes. I am a music fan. I am a very long-time Apple and iTunes customer. How come I haven't heard anything about this year's iTunes Festival?

Seduced by Social Media

Based on how I see many organizations and event producers marketing these days, my suspicion in both of these examples is that they marketed to their social media followers and then called their marketing efforts a wrap. 

Exciting news, everyone! There is a big world out there filled with people who may be interested in your event, cause, organization, city/region, or program. They may not spend every second of their days traversing Twitter, focused on Facebook, or signing up for every email newsletter available. Therefore, you will have to expand beyond your small universe of followers to invite people into your universe. If they don’t know about your event, program, service, destination, cause, etc., they can’t participate. It’s your job to find and tell them.

Too many people are seduced by social media. Too many people are tricked into thinking it’s free and set the default to free. 

Social media can obviously have huge impact — I am not a Luddite! But these media vehicles are only tools, not the be-all and end-all in marketing vehicles. If you are operating without an overall marketing strategy that includes a rationale for using social media — “it’s free” is not a rationale — you are seduced by social media.

And about that idea of “free.” Have you tallied the number of hours your staff spends tweeting, posting, reading, and updating social media? Do you know the cost to your organization of all this activity? Can you measure the return on that investment? Still think it’s free?

Focus on strategy first. Create a framework for meeting measurable business and marketing outcomes and establish a reasonable budget to accomplish your goals. Then determine the best media choices.

I once read about an organization lobbying to create legislation against puppy mills. They went the opposite of “free.”

They raised funds to pay for a billboard near Oprah’s Harpo Productions office, persuading her to put the puppies on the air. She saw the billboard, and within days, her producers were on it. The show became her third most popular show. 

Now that’s a return on investment.