As many of my readers know, I've did brief video interviews at the 2008 NAFSA: Association of International Educators conference and uploaded them to the my YouTube channel for viewing. I've been fortunate to have some interesting interview subjects.
Today, I met a young woman who runs a nonprofit cross-cultural organization that will remain unnamed. She is trying to grow her organization but has neither the money nor ability to have a booth at this year's conference and is relying solely on personal contacts and networking.
I was intrigued by what she told me about her organization and offered her the opportunity to do a brief two to three minute video interview with me. I explained that it would be go up on my YouTube channel (after optimizing it to increase visibility) and that international educators would be told about the site. I walked her through the questions I planned to ask.
The important part of doing the video was to her message across -- authentically and enthusiastically -- to those who would watch it. She would have two minutes to talk directly to her target audience. What a gift -- especially for a young and growing organization!
She agreed to my proposal. The interview was, in my eyes, a successful one. She came across as authentic and excited about what she was doing. As I do with most of my subjects, I showed her a portion of the video so she would get a sense of what had happened. Others around us also thought the she had done a great job.
But once she had seen the video...she changed her mind and asked that I not put it on the web site. Why? She apparently felt that it wasn't "perfect enough".
A classic case of a missed social media opportunity
In essence, she wanted perfection to trump authenticity -- and that is not the point of social media. Her decision was particularly unfortunate because she is the founder and head of her organization and needs to reach her target audience with a clear message as often as possible.
This individual didn't realize how many international educators connect with me through social media and how many would be drawn to her video over the course of the next days, weeks and months. In fact, I imagine that more people would have seen the video over the course of the next couple of years than would ever have stopped by her booth at a conference.
I hope that, in the future, this individual will be more open to these types of opportunities and may even contact me and to give permission to put the interview up -- so I'm going to keep it "in the can"!
In this new day and age of social media, people are being presented with new and interesting ways of getting their message out to a target audience, including more "spontaneous" and informal ways such as YouTube videos. Today's story is an important reminder that seeking perfection in our marketing and public relations efforts may sometimes cost us more than we realize.
Have you ever missed an opportunity because you were too concerned about perfection or because you were perhaps too cautious and hesitant?
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