In today's world, social media is becoming more and more intergrated with who we are, what we do and how we express that. This is no different for companies, corporations and not-for-profits. In fact, they have more of an online presence and social responsibility than most indivuduals ever will.
Most organisations will have the basic social media tools; Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram. But a new era of social media is arriving, especially for small businesses and more relevantly, night clubs.
As part of my internship, I have been working closely with the Promo and Communications manager, Ken. It has been our responsibility to fully implement an application for the club. It took a lot of convincing to get the Chief Finicial Officer to approve the funding for this, because it is a new and untested medium for social media. For all we know it could be high cost, low profit.
The idea is simple; an interactive application which has all the events and details that patrons may want to know as well as an incentive and reward program.
Ken and I launched the application last week, but without little fanfare so we could do a limited release to work out some of the kinks. One of the biggest issues was the fact that point system didn't seem to have the lock out once you had accrued the maximum amount of points, so we called the developers only to be told that it was only uploading photos that had the point limit. This meant we had to change our reward scheme.
Who knows if this will work, but it will be interesting to see how it develops and how many other clubs get on board with this. Already in Perth: Metro Freo, Amplifier, Air Nightclub, The Deen and many other competitors are on board; though few seem to have a rewards system.
Here are some details available on the Metro City website.
Another issue to contend with is how we increase the amount of NEW patrons into the club. The application is most likely to be downloaded by regular visitors and though I pointed out that this might not be a bad thing (it seems like a reward system to a regulars) the Chief Executive Officer said that the main idea of the application was to increase the variety in the crowds and pack out our club nights.
I found a link which is useful for my own placement and involvement with their social media and thought it is specified to nightclubs it may also be useful for others who are taking placements in small businesses or even not-for-profit. You can find it here. It has an interesting few points, one of which I used for the title of this blog post - which is think is witty and highly relevant but it also points out a few things that some of us might forget whilst entering the real world.
Whilst I think the progession of social media is a good idea and that following the app trend is a good idea, without substantial proof that it is a worthy investment...I doubt the mangement will be happy to continue forking out $400/month of something which yields little to no returns.
We'll just have to see what happens in the future! (It seems to be catching on - here is a link about a US company giving it a go)
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