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I sleep with my mobile phone on my bedside table; it’s my alarm clock! My iPad resides next to my bed too, its holds all the novels I want to read! Yes I do take it to the living room when I watch TV, its easier to answer my e-mails immediately and then I don’t get behind. I am on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Pinterest (yes I know only 18% of the audience is male) and have a little used Google+, YouTube and Reddit account. I know I am over 40 , I am an early adopter.

Facebook has over 800million active users, that is more people than lived on earth just over 200 years ago. One in every five page visits in the US is to Facebook and people spend on average 23 minutes on each visit. Each Facebook user has on average 130 friends, I have 746… just saying, it is not a competition. LinkedIn has 150 million users and Twitter around 127 million. YouTube has 800 million unique visitors per month and 4 billion videos viewed every day, seriously 4 billion.

Venues need to have a Social media presence, of that I have no doubt. It gives us instant connection to our guests and allows for real time communication. At my venue the Forsyth Barr Stadium in Dunedin New Zealand, we too, have a Facebook site and send regular tweets. Our marketing manager manages Social Media; and she adds the personality, competitions and updates to the page. We have just over 12’500 fans about 10% of our cities population.

We use Social Media to promote events, raise awareness and engage with our guests, through competitions, news updates and links.

Social Media has so many advantages as mentioned above and its free marketing reaching an actively engaged audience who are pre qualified buyers, but boy is it hard work. We live in a society that is “always on”. The Always on Generation are supposed to be born after the 1990’s but I think many early technology adopters and maybe those of us trying to retain our youth (read me) are part of the “instant response” clientele. I remember once going with my wife to a fast food chain, they put the wrong sauce on her meal and when she got home she was going to write a letter to complain about the tardy service and her meal. That was 12 years ago and still the letter has never been written, but now via ones mobile phone we can instantly complain of bad service or something we dislike. After sales service training taught us that people who had received bad service told 18 other people about it. Today bad service gets told to my 746 Facebook friends, 450 Twitter followers and on the Facebook page of the business concerned, so anywhere between a further 100 or 25 million followers and it works. I had an 18-month running dispute with my mobile provider, which was resolved in 24 hours after I told them how upset I was on their Facebook site. Fair enough one might say, but for venues that sometimes have little control over the content taking place in their venues, it can be tough. We have been told the hirer plays their music to loud, despite meeting cities requirements around noise control, questioned over the quality of the teams performance despite not actually coaching them and questioned over the price of tickets despite not setting the prices. More importantly no one is prepared to wait 10 working days for an answer, they want it and they want it now. They don’t care if it’s the weekend, a public holiday or the middle of the night. The answer needs to be immediate, it needs to be satisfactory and it needs to resolve the issue, otherwise it opens the door to conversations, which involves, very quickly, another 100 people.

Social Media has put huge pressure on venues to get their acts together very quickly. When one got a letter of complaint, one knew it was serious enough for the person to take the time to write, one had time to respond and more importantly only you and the person complaining knew about the complaint. Now if we not careful everyone knows, and there are unwritten rules about what you can remove from your Facebook page. I think the connected world we live in requires a level of customer service beyond the old. Social Media is about creating conversation, getting guests excited about events and connecting with other potential guests and letting you know where you can improve.

As I sit back and think about this raw misunderstood power I do wonder if this “always on “ era we live in, and those of us over 25 struggle to understand, have forgotten the joy of solitude, the pleasure in doing nothing or having a conversation with a real person. I say this as I pick up my mobile phone to check if someone has liked or commented on my very funny Facebook status I have just posted. The need to be connected and engaged is a natural human need and Social Media gives us a wonderful opportunity embrace our guests and fans.

I do, however, wonder if this connection is enough. They say we live in a connected world and all we want to do is connect, and that connection is one of the requirements of happiness. I do sometimes wonder if all this connection is everything its cracked up to be? Do I just want to connect, or do I in fact want to attach as well. I wonder if there is something a little superficial about only connecting. Do brands want a connection or do they really want attachments. Do we measure our Social Media success by the number of followers we have or are we measuring real engagement, conversations, unique visitors and the number of likes.  We, as venue operators, operate brands and we certainly do want attachment to our buildings, which I define as “loyalty beyond reason connections.” 
Despite my love of all these connections, occasionally, I just want to be left alone.