What about our future!

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/22/nyregion/bloomberg-says-social-media-can-hurt-governing.html?_r=1&ref=technology

While this article focuses on social media hurting government, the same could also be about social media hurting nonprofit arts organizations.  This article is in line with my previous post regarding people’s attention spans, or lack thereof.

In the article, it is stated that :

‘The immediacy of social media, he has found, creates both opportunities — for information-sharing and for citizen empowerment — and challenges, for governments, for businesses, for media, to see beyond the next tweet, or the next blog post,” Howard Wolfson, a deputy mayor, said in an interview.

“It’s more about planning for the next 20 years as opposed to the next 20 minutes,” Mr. Wolfson added.”

As we provide more and more instant information to our patrons, how can we keep them captivated long enough to focus on our future?  As managers, we need to focus on sustainability, and how to achieve it.  While we are crafting our strategic plans and looking forward to capital campaigns, it is imperative that we be careful not to create an impatient audience that will loose focus if our tweets take a vacation.

As social media is the ‘it’ in advertising and communication strategy this decade, we can't forget that this technology could also have a not-so-desirable effect on our future.