Do we really need Social Media Week?

10thumb.jpgNext week is Social Media Week in several cities across the world.

Supposedly, it’s seven days when we celebrate logging into Facebook and tweeting. And going on Linked-In and MySpace and running Tumblr blogs. All those activities that you do every day anyway. (Except for MySpace, though I did look at someone’s profile yesterday).

Thing is though, do we really need a week for this kind of thing? Do we need to raise awareness of Facebook? Or encourage people to tweet more? Arguably no. This is a bit like having “desk week” where we celebrate the useful function of desks, or like having “phone week” to raise awareness of phones.

Unnecessary in other words.

Maybe, coughs, we support something that really needs supporting – like the newspaper industry. Should we do Mainstream Media week where everyone buys a newspaper? Just a thought.

See more about Social Media Week

Anna Leach

4 comments

  • Yeah,I really need social media week.In Social Media Week we discuss most important things in social media industry.We shared our experience and talk to each others

  • Your article is very informative and the use of graphics adds to the understanding of the process. I think some of his sentences are too long, and missing commas are minor. One thing I learned, never end a sentence with a preposition.

  • Hi Anna,

    Social Media Week is about more than just celebrating social media within the active social media community, it is about trying to engage new audiences and making clear the benefits of social media to those people that, as of yet, may not be aware.

    Equally, it is about raising awareness of responsible use of social media and promoting those organisations, particularly, I feel, non-profit organisations, that are championing it’s use foor a good cause.

    We are holding an event in London on what social media means for charities and almost our entire attendees list is private sector and non-profit organisations that are eager to learn more about this medium and how it can improve their charitable work.

    Personally, I think this is an entirely laudable event and one that deserves all the hype it is now enjoying.

    George

  • Hi Anna, Ben Scheim from Social Media Week here. I’d encourage you to take a look at the event schedules for some of the cities, and you will see that few if any of these events are about simple rah-rah stuff like reminding folks to use twitter. Instead most of the events are a) business-related in discussing how companies can or are re-shaping their businesses to encompass advances in social and mobile media or b) technology/services related that showcase new platforms and technologies. There are over 150 events–nearly all of which are free of charge–happening in NYC alone–check out the full sched here: http://socialmediaweek.org/newyork/schedule/ . You may still feel it’s not for you, but just wanted to give you a head’s up that SMW is a bit more complex/useful than you’ve suggested.

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