We love Morrissey in our house, always have, always will and there is nothing anyone can say or do to change it. The great man turned 50 last month and his current tour has been blighted by illness. So much so that our ‘Wall of Mozza‘ seems to have turned into a ‘Still Ill‘ shrine.
He was supposed to play three nights at Brixton Academy last week and when you’ve got tickets in hand, the time off and everything booked for a full weekend in London you want to make sure everything is in place, including the gigs. Now, news of the Thursday night gig getting cancelled came through nice and early, the NME got the story out there good and early. Then it was a case of waiting to see if there was a domino effect and they would all fall. Sure enough, they did but no one knew until the last minute – largely because the media had already moved on but also because Morrissey’s ‘people’ were a bit slow in getting the word out there.
What’s this got to do with social media you ask? Well, it seems the people who look after Morrissey’s website and MySpace page aren’t the best at keeping it up to date, so who do you turn to when you need to know what’s going on? Other people in the same boat as you – tweets, forum posts and discussion boards have been working over time since week making sure that those who needed to know were informed.
Now, people sharing information is fantastic and makes life easier but at the same time, what really would have helped would the powers that be also understanding that getting the message out there quickly and in the most appropriate way – posting a website message at the last minute when most people will have already set off is a little, well last century.
Great content, whether it’s details of a postponed gig, product messaging or just a fantastic news story, won’t work on its own, you need to be pro-active and take the message to the people in the format they want to access it – this is what social media is showing is.
Image: Virgin Media