The referral that never happened
It was Saturday and my plans included heading to a health fair at a local church to support one of my clients who was exhibiting there, supporting one of my friends who is an organizer of the event, and giving blood. The event sounds great and is a terrific community event that I expect a lot of people will be interested in.
Those who know me know that I am very "plugged in" and communicate a lot online. So what did I do this morning before heading to the health fair? I went online and planned to spend 30 seconds sharing info about the event on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+ to encourage others to attend. So I Googled the name of the health fair. What did I find? Well, the only listing that came up was an event posted on my client's website with the title of the event because they were exhibiting. While this is a good endorsement for our work at SpinWeb and the fact that we create SEO-friendly websites, unfortunately they had not placed any information about the event online other than the title so I couldn't use that.
So I then just Googled the name of the church thinking that I would find the event listed there. I did find the church's website but when I got there I was pretty disappointed. There was no events section and the health fair was not listed anywhere on the website. At this point I'm thinking "oh well, I tried to promote it" and I gave up.
Now, let's do some math. I have (at the time of writing this blog) 1,034 Facebook friends, 3,158 Twitter followers, 1,200 LinkedIn connections, and I'm in 328 circles on Google+. That's up to 5,719 people that I can talk to online with a single click. A lot of the people I am connected to are based in Indianapolis. If we assume that over 50% of my connections are in Indianapolis (a very conservative assumption) that's a lot of people who might be able to attend this event. Let's add to that the number of people who could have liked, shared, tweeted, and endorsed the event in their networks after I shared it.
Had the church hosting the event structured their website well with event information and socially optimized content, I would have easily clicked, shared, and endorsed the health fair to thousands of people in about 30 seconds. Those people could have then clicked on my link, visited the event landing page, and gotten all the information they need about it. Instead, there was nothing listed online therefore nothing got shared.
Now you're probably wondering why I didn't just post a quick note with info about about the health fair on my own. Yes, I will probably still do that. However, I don't have all the information. All I know is the location, time, and a couple of exhibitors. I don't know the schedule of events, I don't know who will be exhibiting, and I don't have any compelling details to share. The most I can do is say "hey, go to the health fair... here's the location!" which is much weaker than a true event landing page.
I am one person. How many other people would have shared the event had they been given the opportunity and good, informational, online content? I know hundreds of people in Indianapolis who are just as plugged in (if not more so) who could have also been inluencers and shared the event with even more people than I could.
Are you giving your constituents every possible opportunity to help you spread the word about your organization? Are you providing clear, detailed, shareable information online? Do you have a good Content Management System so it's easy to maintain content? Are you making it easy for influencers to share your content?
Online marketing is not "point and shoot" anymore. It's a partnership with an organic system of digital outposts, influencers, and networks. If you think you might be missing opportunities like the one described here, it might be time to evaluate your online presence.
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