Social Media

Do You Suffer From SOS

by The Meeting Pool
12 years ago
3 min read
Written by The Meeting Pool
Buffer

Social Media for Events

Huh… what the hell is SOS…..

SOS is Shiny Object Syndrome and it affects so many social marketers that it is hard to count, it is near pandemic in the event and conference marketing world. It is getting so bad that I think that the CSMDC (Center for Social Media Disease Control) should open up all emergency units to start letting people in in droves because triage is not working anymore and events, conferences, and meetings are starting to drop like social media flies.

The symptoms of SOS are easy to spot.

You can see the disease’s effects in the failed social and content marketing programs led by people that could not get the program going because they keep tool jumping, platform dropping, and app downloading.

They used to post using TweetDeck but they have stopped because they learned about Buffer and were trying it out when someone swore that HootSuite was kick ass and then they heard about that other social dashboard that allows you to post to Google which that other one didn’t and they spent $10k on that puppy and now their buddy who is the head of marketing at XYZ Fortune 8 billion company is saying to drop it all because there is now an app for that and my God! Did you see, Alpaca Social Inc is announcing a new social dashboard that plugs directly from Google Glass into your BRAIN! Amazing!

Those struggling with SOS swear that once they get the perfect tool for social media, they will be number one. They will be unstoppable because their content is going to rock damn it, they just need the right TOOL.

Meanwhile, that other event has been logging into the actual Twitter website every morning and putting out some great links… later in the day; they pull out the Facebook app on their phone and open that clunky thing to post a cool picture of one of their attendees hanging with an awesome sponsor. They even put a link to the sponsor’s website. Later in the week, they used the actual Flickr interface to load 300 images from their keynote sessions… social proof that everyone was laughing and having an awesome time… and while they SOS sufferer waits, something funny is happening to their competition.

Their attendees saw their posts and they shared them with their followers, friends, and they even shared the heck out of that one crazy picture that had that attendee with milk coming out her nose. And then another crazy thing happened… they got new followers, new likes, and new attendees because everyone who caught their posts loved them because they were genuine and they were fun and they stuck to the message of “if you come to this conference, you will be educated, entertained, and it will be worth your TIME”.

Sure. They may move to a new dashboard or get that wicked awesome new app that might be coming out but they really don’t have the time to research it today… they are too busy interviewing attendees with that old handycam that they will upload raw to YouTube this afternoon.

If you suffer from SOS and are in denial, go ahead; keep telling yourself that the perfect tool will make you a content master. While you are busy searching for your white whale, your competition will be having the time of their life.

Image: Shiny Object by Nicole Hanusek 

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