Face Book Blast

So I don't like junk mail, ok *no one* likes junk mail, but sometimes the best way to contact a group of people in order to advertise an event is just to tick everyone in your address book and fire of an email in the hope that some of them will read it and only a handful will decide to block you for good.


As part of my role here seems to be trying to recruit volunteers and tourists I figured that the best place to start was my friends. Also the fact that I would quite like to hang out with them out here was just as a significant factor if not more important. I fired of an invitation to an event on facebook to 178 of my friends and contacts there. I was tempted just to tick everyone but I knew those with young families probably wouldn't be able to come and didn't want to pester more people then was necessary (probably not a good attitude if I'm hoping to get into fundraising or publicity where you to pester everyone possible, but oh well.)

The event is an invitation to come out to Peru sometime between May and June 2010 as that’s probably the best time, both for the climate and price here, but also it gives people a few months to start thinking about if it's something they would be interested in doing. Other times are possible to of course but I felt it was a good idea to give people a specific time frame.

I'm not sure yet what, if anything, will come of this approach. I know myself all too often when I get this type of invitation I delete it with out reading. But even if only a few friends come out I think it'll be worth doing as it will be a great chance to catch up with people as many of my fb friends are people I haven’t seen for years and would like to catch up with.


As it stand I currently have 4 yeses (although two of them came immediately without any other communication and one is me)There are however 19 maybes and its this group that is important as hopefully they're people who would seriously like to come and need but want to give it some thought. But after all, that’s why I sent out the invitation 6 months in advance. As long as people start deciding yes or no by the New Year they can think on it till then. (For the record there are 50 'no's' and I'm still waiting on 110 people to reply.)

The group can be found here http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/event.php?eid=152511233186&ref=mf It's open invite and if you're interested in coming out just let me know. I just used facebook as it seemed the most straight forward way for me at the moment.