Congratulations to local team AFC Wimbledon! After a tense penalty shoot-out, you’ve been promoted to the Football League. You’ve caused great excitement in this living room and far beyond that. In fact, right now, you’re trending on Twitter worldwide. Thousands of people are talking about you. Oh, and your website has crashed.
My husband was checking it out just after the game, and got the following error message.
We then went looking for the AFC Wimbledon Twitter account. There’s @AFCWimbledon but that hasn’t been updated since November 8. There’s also the much more active @WimbledonAFC, which is run by a fan and a member of the Trust. There’s an AFC Wimbledon page on Facebook, but the default view is the events tab – where you get a message saying ‘You have no upcoming events’.
Some people will know enough about Facebook to clic
k through to wall tab of course and leave a message for this fantastic team.
A lot of people will continue to talk about the victory even if there’s no updates from an official voice.
Some may even come back to the website later and see if it’s back up and running.
But to some extent, the ability to fully capitalise on the moment of victory may already have been lost.
I think there’s a lesson in there for all organisations. Are you ready for your big moment? Will your website cop with the sudden influx of traffic? Are your e-commerce systems in place? Will you be joining in the discussion? Will you be able to take advantage of your seconds in the spotlight, and use your new following to take your organisation to the next level?
We’ve just found @AFCWNews, which is the official Twitter page. Unfortunately it’s currently got a lot less followers than the other two.
Good point – it’s important to be prepared for success no matter how unexpected. Something about the confidence we have in our own campaigns there!
In unexpected campaign success and in those days when the news agenda suddenly swings our way. A good example was seven year-old Charlie’s bike ride around the park for UNICEF. It’s important that both the technology and the people in the organisation are ready, or at least be able to adapt in the moment.