Social Media Week

This week (7-11 Feb) is Social Media Week, the third annual celebration of the growing popularity of Social Media. This growth has been phenomenal: if Facebook was a country it would be the world’s third largest, while Twitter is on target to have more than a billion users by next year. With this landscape changing on what, at times, seems an almost weekly basis, it can be a minefield to negotiate. It is a struggle worth persevering with however, offering opportunities to engage with your audience and potential audience that perhaps traditional media can’t.

Forget one-way advertising campaigns; social media is about two-way conversation.
It is in this interactive element that some organisations fall down. They see social media channels as a strictly one-way advertising medium, perhaps scared of the perceived lack of control and potential for brand damage. Consumers, however, are becoming increasingly savvy to the world of PR, becoming suspicious of sanitised news, and actually admiring honesty.

Internet is also becoming increasingly mobile. Devices now offer customers interaction with your organisation instantly. No more waiting to get home, they can comment on your product, venue or customer service immediately.

That’s great if it’s positive but what does it mean if you product has disappointed? Ignore comments and you’ve lost a customer and, potentially, their online contacts. Engage with them and they feel valued and may be willing to give you another go.

Social media is an area that is still developing so any strategy needs to be flexible to adapt to developments. While Social media may seem a quick, and in these financially constrained times, cheap, solution to arts marketing, it can easily swallow time and resource if not planned.

So you do need to plan and ask yourself some basic questions

• What is your online personality?
• How do you/do you want to avoid corporate pr speak?
• Who will man your social media presence?
• How do you encourage conversation rather than just pure promotion?
• Are you culturally ready to enter into discussion with your customers?
• How does your social media presence fit with more traditional media?

As should be expected in such a creative environment, many arts organisations are already trail-blazing innovative uses of social media/ But if your organisation has yet to take the leap, perhaps Social Media Week is the ideal time to consider exactly how to embrace these channels to improved dialogue with your audience.