Social media never sleep

If I was a company I would have to recognize a certain failure in my social media strategy right now. My trip to Europe destabilized my regularity on social media sites and I haven't been a very active blogger lately. One of the most important mantras to keep in mind when trying to achieve a successful social media marketing is REGULARITY. Social media never sleep. There is no such thing as not having time, being sick, having to pick up the kids from school, lack of inspiration or quality time with the family. A successful social media presence implies spending quality time with other community members on social media sites, not your family. However, even if we do have a life there is still hope for social media success.

Just as just we schedule our personal meetings throughout the day, we should also schedule our social media appointments

We shouldn't publish everything all the time, but we should be consequently present and publish regularly

Luckily I am not a company but the social media mantra is now also my mantra: Consistency and Regularity. See you soon. 

Personal vs Professional in Social Media

I am back home after having spent two long summer months in Europe. I have been embarrassingly disconnected, but my social media reflections haven't been completely switched off though. For example, even if I would have wanted, I couldn't have missed the Facebook scandal that filled the media for a couple of days when I was in Sweden.

In Sweden EVERYONE is on Facebook. And so are the employees at the National Immigration Office. The scandal was about an employee that had published a "what's on your mind"-update with a racist undertone. This was seen by another employee at the immigration office, communicated to the direction, and the racist-accused employee was now threatened to lose his job. The man said in interviews that he did not understand why the phrase was experienced as racist. He was also shocked over all this attention that this little meaningless text got.

Well,

1. Things are not longer what they are, they are what they seem
   
2. One person does not get to chose what's meaningless and what's not. Loads of people chose together what they find interesting and meaningless
   
3. And at last, times have changed and our private and professional persona has merged.

How to add value in social media networks II

A common imperative amongst social media experts is: “Add value!” To be able to create active communities and a strong social media presence, we have to contribute with “valuable content”. Okay, but how..?

I have been doing some research and found some points that might guide us when we try to “add value”. In my last post I wrote about how we can add value in our own created communities on sites like Facebook, Twitter and Myspace, but working with a strong social media strategy in the performing arts we also need to be present in forums, blogs and other social media sites. Here are some thoughts that we should have in mind when “visiting others”: How we can add valuable content and contribute in a way that will be noticed by the community members.

How to add value in social media networks I

To be able to create and maintain an active community in social media networks, we need to add valuable content. "Add value" is often an imperative used by social media experts. Our social media messages should be transferable, clickable and sharable and give an urge to answer, discuss and participate within the community. How can we add value in the performing arts?

As representatives of performing arts organizations, we can add value (1) in our own community networks, (2) when visiting other sites, blogs and communities and (3) by creating longer, qualitative information in blogs. Here are some thoughts of how we can create value in our own community networks. 

How to Create a Community in Social Networks

Let's take a look at our Facebook fan pages. Do we see lively discussions, pictures, links and community participation? Or do we see our own publications, and publications, and publications … followed by silence and thousands of friends in the left corner? If we see the later we need to reconsider our social networking efforts!

We have to think community, when approaching social media in a marketing perspective:

• Social media sites are built on collaborative activities
  
• The users of social networking sites must feel that they take part in an active community
  
• The sense of belonging will make them participate further in the development of the community.
  

If we fail in building an active community, we fail social media marketing. If our Facebook sites lack interaction, nobody will take the content further, and we fail to reach new audiences. We can post message after message about interesting events, but the effect will be an "email-effect": some of our "fans" will read our message, some might come to our event, but most people will not pay any attention. We need people to click, to tag, to share, to like and to tweet, and to bring the discussion further to reach the full potential of social media marketing.

So, how do we create an active social network community for our theater?

No Marketing in Social Media Marketing

I think I am going to close this "policy week" (that I am quite happy to leave behind for a while) with a cool thing I read in Rebecca Krause-Hardie's blog archive. I was looking around for policy posts and found an interview that Rebecca made with Jo Johnson, Digital Marketing Manager at the London Symphony Orchestra. Read the whole post because it is an interesting interview with a serious and obviously very skillful social media manager. Here I just want to underline what caught my "policy eye".

The LSO has successfully built a social media communication with over 13000 Facebook fans and more than 10.000 followers on Twitter. When Rebecca in the interview asks Jo if they have a policy or a strategy for their social media marketing at the LSO, Jo answers that after having started without a policy she and a colleague wrote down

what social media was, how they were using it and what benefits it had, to answer the questions that the bosses had started asking.

When they then were writing some rules for themselves and the people involved, they came up with something like:

"…remember that you are the LSO and everything you say will be viewed as official', 'no swearing or nudity', 'don't drink and tweet' and 'NO MARKETING!!". 

Social Media Policy for the Performing Arts sector II

Yesterday I started to examine Social Media Policy by listing some thoughts for the Performing Arts sector to consider. Today, I have been doing some screening and looking at different companies' social media policies. Here are some policy points that can be useful for the performing arts sector:

Before writing our Social Media Policy we should consider that:

• There is a big circulation of people in the performing arts sector. The policy has to take that into account.
  
• Many performing arts professionals are depending on their personal brands. Don't make a policy that prevents them from developing their own brands in their own network activities; they are depending on them for future engagements.
  
• When we decide to implement a social media strategy in our organization we strive for a viral effect and want our information to travel beyond our websites. We have to accept that we will not be able to control everything that is said about us. A policy is not about restrictions, but guidelines!