Just had a one hour long staff meeting about Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Delicious.... I was a little overwhelmed and felt like I need to talk to my fellow arts admins. Somewhere inside my brain, a BIG voice keeps rejecting the whole idea of these social networks. Do I have to follow all these? I feel very lost. It’s funny I’ve always avoided marketing and all crazy social networks you’ll never be able to keep up with (oh I believe some people can, I know Eric always can) and it seems to me that I really don’t have a choice any more.
Started in this season, we have three to four interns and part-time pages (everyone excluding me) working on all these sites, since we don’t really have a marketing person. Oh man, being able to working “officially” on Facebook at work is just out of control. I can’t handle it any more, it makes me upset when dishes from greenroom are still lying on the floor, box office reports are still in the envelopes, or the event transcript from three weeks ago is still not done. On our staff meetings, this is all we talk about. No body remembers the auction disaster we had last week, or progress on getting new members, or even the current ticket sale is still very low. I’m not working on any of the sites so I feel left out. But at the same time I think that the marketing isn’t everything (I’m not saying it’s not important, it’s VERY important), I do prefer to do all those detail, nasty, but necessary operational works; I do prefer programming, and even development (funny for me to say this). I’m worried about how are all these sites going to be managed when all these interns and part-time pages left. I’m worrying about loosing our existing audience. I don’t know, there are too many things to think about, and we need a system or a plan to function better, instead of “oh let’s go ahead and do it; it’s fun and everyone’s doing it.” I mean, if an organization doesn’t even have a mission statement and a strategic plan yet, where are all these great marketing ideas going?
Sorry, I’m just complaining. I understand marketing is fun, but I’m just not the person to do it. I understand how important it is to keep up with the technology but CAN WE ever really catch up? do we really need to catch up just because everyone’s doing it and it’s “hip”? (maybe I should put all these in my internship reports) Great, my task for today is to find out how much it is to buy one of those flip cameras Meg brought to one of our marketing class last spring… well I told them in the meeting how much it's going to cost but they were listening. Hey, seriously, I've done the research on this LAST spring!
Oh I miss you all.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
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2 comments:
Sounds like those people just like an excuse to be on facebook. I think one person can handle the basics of social networking without spending gobs of time on the computer.
Don't fret Salina. I support you. The dishes have to be done, and the paperwork has to be processed. You are probably the best thing that's ever happened to them.
I read somewhere recently that it's better for nonprofits with few resources to figure out which one social networking outlet their audience most connects to and to spend time honing their efforts on that one outlet, rather than trying to skim the surface of multiple Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, blogs, etc. etc. etc. Frankly, I think it's more important for arts orgs to understand WHY their audiences are using particular networking sites and reshape their marketing strategies around their audiences' fundamental lifestyle habits, if that makes sense.
Alison LaRosa Montez
AADM'08
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