The big idea

Social media has increasingly become part of the marketing and programming toolkits of many creative and cultural businesses. It is not necessarily a given that it is right for your business but it may be something that you want to give serious consideration. Social media consists of a number of online media which share some or all of the following (Mayfield, 2008):

• Participation
• Openness
• Conversation
• Community
• Connectedness

The different types of social media include:

• Social networks – the biggest social networks are MySpace, Facebook and Bebo
• Blogs
• Wikis – the best-known wiki is Wikipedia, the online encyclopaedia
• Podcasts
• Forums
• Content communities, such as Flickr, del.icio.us and YouTube
• Microblogging – Twitteris the clear leader in this field

Purpose

The purpose of this tool is to help you look at social media and consider whether it is the right approach for you. It encourages you to consider what you want to achieve, whether it is right for your customers or audiences and how you might go about a social media campaign. Like any project, you need to consider the business case for adopting social media and whether it is right to dedicate scarce resources to this approach.

The Tool

This tool has ten key questions with a number of prompts to help you make decisions about your social media strategy. Work through the following questions to determine the approach that is right for you. The tool can be used by any form of business at any scale. You can work through it on your own or with a group and should probably allow at least an hour to reflect on the prompts in depth.