Social media: a blessing and a curse

This morning I went to a workshop organised by the Chamber of Commerce here in Brighton. I thought it be a good opportunity to figure out what the Brighton Chamber of Commerce is doing and what they can do for me.  Plus to pick up some new ideas about social media. The workshop this morning was titled: “How to run successful competitions on social media”.

Buying followers is a solution apparently...

Buying followers is a solution apparently...

I guess I did learn something but at the same time I’ve got so many questions about social media in general. For example why do I gain Twitter followers when I’m not posting anything and why is my Instagram account so popular with ‘models’? Don’t get me wrong, I get that my messages have to be relevant and appeal to my ‘audience’. But how come my Instagram followers are posting lingerie pictures when I’m posting pictures about The Brighton Pier? I do wonder how I’ve managed to attract these people. Anyway, there’s still a lot to be discovered for me in the field of social media.

I would love to be a fly on the wall in meetings of digital marketing agencies when they come up with ideas for their clients. Are the ideas always new and creative? Are they following an existing formula? How often are they just making it up as they go? Let’s just assume they know what they’re doing, then how many followers should a digital marketing agency have on, let’s say, Twitter before you can take them seriously: 1,000? 2,000? More?

Oh, so many questions and not one of them is actually helping me. I guess I’ll just plough ahead with what I’m doing. Watch this space though, because soon there will be a competition from The Event Tutor for you to participate in. If you have any good ideas for me for an excellent and engaging competition you can contact me. The person with the best competition idea will win a free online workshop. I also welcome other suggestions for good prizes. Or is this the competition...

Stegman, Stegeman. It's me though...

Stegman, Stegeman. It's me though...

Besides this workshop I went to a PechaKucha event last week. PechaKucha is a presentation format in which presenters have 20 slides and each of these slides is on screen for 20 seconds (20 x 20). Brilliant format as presentations are bite sized and you'll get all the information without the waffling. I’ve delivered a presentation in San Francisco back in June. A great experience and if you have the chance to visit one of the events I would definitely go to one. They’re organized all over the world.

Meanwhile a video from BBC Midlands appeared on my newsfeed this week about the mess left behind by visitors of V-Festival. An estimated 20,000 tents are left behind on site each year. It’s an interesting video to watch. The comments left behind by people who actually went there are equally interesting. “Not enough bins” and “we were told to leave our stuff behind” are just 2 of those comments. I got this information via social media.

I've just finished inputting the data from Bonnaroo festival and one of the questions was "will you re-use your tent?" More or less every participant answered yes to that question. I will check whether the reality matches up with these answers but it looks more promising than the 20,000 tents left behind at V-Festival.