Did anyone else notice the university get sucked into a wormhole and transported to the Shores of Northrend last week? What was going on?

As it turns out, the university campus was host to Anime Evolution, a three-day event celebrating Japanese animation and Asian pop culture. Ok, so it wasn’t quite World of Warcraft Week, but that isn’t the point.

The point is this.

How could we not know about hundreds of visitors arriving to campus until we were surrounded by storm troopers, Sailor Moon and the FireFox mascot? How come some events get hoards of attention while others fly under the radar?

My answer for you to ponder is one word: Interest.

If you didn’t know about the Anime Evolution happening on campus last week, it’s likely because you aren’t that interested in it. Judging by some of last week’s visitors, I can bet you they knew about it and had plenty of time to get their outfits together. They probably found out about the event through their friends, or maybe through an online discussion board, or maybe via @animeevolution on Twitter, or maybe the Official Anime Evolution Facebook Group or likely every one of these channels.

But how many of those channels had you seen before?

Event promotion through social media works when people are interested in the event. Of course you’ll need to have the infrastructure in place – i.e. your social media channels all set up and running with some regular and healthy usage. But you can have all the social media whiz-bang ready to go and it will be useless unless the message coming through the medium is relevant and of interest to your audience.

The takeaway?

Find the interests of your audience, and find a way to deliver value that speaks directly to those topics of interest.