Reach Out and Touch Someone

Social Media Day

It’s Social Media Day! Are you kidding me? Social Media Day … that’s like dedicating a special Day to celebrate Advertising, Public Relations, Direct Mail or Trade Shows. Do we really need to have another day to sell more Hallmark cards which only leads to killing more trees and destroying the environment? Hey if we’re going to celebrate a special day to social media shouldn’t we be honoring the original technology … the telephone. Remember the first social networking tagline, reach out and touch someone?

The interesting thing about this Social Media Day is that it’s being celebrated in a good old fashioned way. Live events are being staged all over the world bringing people together face-to-face rather than in a virtual computer screen environment. Of course, multiple social networks are promoting these events and will be used to share comments and photos of the actual live events. This day also helps to demonstrate the incredible power, reach and cost efficiency associated with using social media networks.

By now everyone knows how social media has changed the way consumers learn about products, find the best deals, and coupons, share ideas and photos and stay connected to a much larger number of family and friends. For businesses, social media provides a platform and multiple distribution channels to brand, market and promote products in a much more effective and efficient manner. It has also help to established unsurpassed customer services opportunities while generating ongoing research and product development programs to stay better connected to customers and future customers.

Obviously social media has changed our lives and the worldwide pool of untapped creative and technology talent will surely continue to enhance our lives for year to come.

But do we really need an international day of recognition to give people an excuse for getting together. What I find incredibly ironic is social media day is being celebrate as a number of live trade show type events that Mashable is calling Meetups. I guess they’re calling these events Meetups because Hookups was already being used.

Anyway, people are coming to these Meetup events to attend seminars sponsored by technology companies who will be promoting their new software products. Afterwards the attendees will share food and drinks together and discuss what their doing in the social media arena. I now I’ve been around awhile but isn’t that a trade show?

Peter Allen was a great composer and entertainer and he performed a song entitled “Everything Old is New Again.” Why didn’t Mashable just call these events Social Media Trade Show 2.0?

June 30th is the second annual Social Media Day with Meetups established in over 1,300 cities from LA to New York, to Antwerp, Belgium and even Cairo, Egypt. At last count about 24,000 members are expected to attend these Meetups. If you’re planning on attending one of these events please remember to limit your face-to-face conversations to 144 characters or less (unless it’s a Tweet, of course, which is only 140 characters).