The social whirl of social media

Dulwich OnView’s own social media guru Yang-May Ooi was star of the show last week at the launch of her new book, International Communications Strategy, which was nominated for the FT Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award 2009.

The book draws on Yang-May’s expertise in all forms of digital media. Indeed, Dulwich OnView was very much her brainchild, and we’ve benefited enormously from her technical and web know-how. So members of the DOV team were out in force for the launch, held at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, in the heart of the City of London.

Yang-May and her co-author Silvia Cambie spoke cogently about the way the online world – blogs like this one, social networking sites like Facebook and photo-sharing sites like Flickr – is challenging business to completely re-think the way products and services are marketed.

We were treated to nibbles from Cafe Spice Namaste, and the wine flowed as we took advantage of networking opportunities – or, as I prefer to call it, a chance to have a drink and a gossip with some interesting people.

Now I’ll hand over to Yang-May to tell you more about the book.

Social media is changing the way we communicate and how we consume news, information and entertainment. In the traditional model of communications that dominated the 20th century, it was generally a one-way broadcast from one (eg the BBC, The Times etc) to many (us ordinary people). The only way to share your views about, say, a news item was to write a Letter to the Editor or submit your thoughts to the BBC’s Point of View. But social media tools like blogs, Twitter and more have enabled us to interact with the news and share our thoughts with the world at the click of a button. For example, you can leave your comments to a news item on The Guardian’s online site; you can blog about issues in the news and you can even report the news (the first photo of the Hudson River plane crash was scooped by a Twitter user who happened to be in the area and snapped the pic on his mobile phone – while the news media were still trying to work out where the plane had crashed.) Ordinary people all over the world have flocked to online social media to communicate with friends and family – and the world: there are around 170 million blogs globally and 340 million blog readers, and counting.

Most of these people are writing and reading blogs, socialising on Facebook and so on in their own time and for personal enjoyment. Many businesses and organisations are interested to tap into this enormous audience of customers and clients but are not sure how to do it. Our book International Communications Strategy examines this vast online culture and suggests that businesses need to approach it as if it is a cross-cultural “country” – if you go to China to do business, you take the time to learn about the business and social etiquette there eg do you shake hands? Bow? What is acceptable conversation, what is not etc. Similarly, when engaging online, you need to understand the culture, values and behaviours that are acceptable there. Giving the hard sell, being pushy about your services and products and using PR spin and gushiness are Out; being yourself, authentic and having an informal, personal touch is In.

Many of the principles that I write about in the book on how to engage using social media are ones that we put into practice in Dulwich OnView. We emphasise a personal voice in our posts and we don’t accept press releases or items written in a corporate/ PR tone – we want to know about real people in our local community, whether they are creative artists, ordinary folk or business people. We give equal weight to posts about Dulwich and South East London residents as well as those about the occasional local celebrity. We love it when our readers leave comments and join the comment discussion threads to our posts. (So please add your comment if you have any thoughts you’d like to share about blogging, Twitter, Facebook etc!)

While Dulwich OnView has an affiliation with the Friends of the Dulwich Picture Gallery and, through that connection, with the Gallery itself, we are interested in covering arts and culture in the wider community of Dulwich and the surrounding area – because if you’re interested in arts and culture, chances are you’re interested in the Gallery AND also what’s going on in terms of music, theatre, books and art within easy reach of Dulwich. We hope to bring together like-minded people by demographics based on shared interests and talents rather than the more traditional demographics based on age, gender, race, income etc.

It used to be that producing a film or creating a radio programme or exhibiting your photographs and paintings required you to go through the “gatekeepers” who control TV, film distribution, the radio airwaves, art and photo galleries. While these institutions still have a strong and influential role, YouTube, podcasting and Flickr enables anyone who enjoys taking part in the creative arts to show their work to a global audience. We’re very lucky at Dulwich OnView to have the volunteer input of professional photographers, film-makers and writers all sharing their time and work for free alongside other contributors who just love writing, taking photos and making videos.

The power of social media is that we can upload this content quickly and virtually for free to create a multi-media magazine which brings alive events at the Gallery as well as around Dulwich. It levels the playing field so that when you search online for goings-on in South London, you’re just as likely to come across an event covered by Dulwich OnView as you are to find something covered by, say, The Guardian or other “mainstream” media.

Looking ahead to the future, blogging and social media are becoming a natural part of the way that we all communicate and before long, The issue facing businesses and organisations will soon no longer be “Should we have a blog?” but rather “How can we make our blog (or other social media engagement) amazing and stand out from the crowd?” Dulwich OnView has had a first mover advantage in the museum and heritage sector. And what we’ve been hearing at sector conferences is that other museums are envious of what we have and want to try their hand at blogging and Twittering. What they have all lacked so far is a bright, keen, talented team of volunteers like we have to launch and run a project like this. But they will no doubt find their own ways of innovating online. As for Dulwich OnView, we will soon be unveiling our new bespoke site re-design which we hope will raise the Wow factor yet again ahead of the others who may be trying to catch up to us.

If you’d like to be part of our multi-media volunteer team, whether you’re a professional creative artist or someone who just loves to produce creative content, we would love to hear from you. We have regular monthly meetings to plan the next month’s coverage – and also just for a get-together and a drink: it’s not called “social” media for nothing! You can check out the current team on the Who We Are page and if you’d like to join us, contact the acting editor by emailing dulwichonview@googlemail.com.

Oh, and if you’d like to find out more about the book, you can listen to the archived audio podcast of the book launch and also checkout the slides from our formal presentation.