Social Media: From Monologue To Dialogue

Christian Henner-Fehr

In Mark Twain’s “Tom Sawyer”, there is a scene in which Tom has to whitewash a fence as a punishment. When a friend passing by makes fun of him, he pretends so convincingly that the work is fun and a fabulous project, that in the end one neighbourhood boy after another is willing to give him something in return for being allowed to whitewash part of the fence.

Now, an artistic project is not a punishment, but it is all the more important for us to emphasise the importance of our own work and, in the ideal case, to convince others to join in. While in Mark Twain’s novel, the boy has to pass by the fence in order to notice what Tom is doing, today we have quite different ways of capturing people’s attention. Until the 1990s we had posters, programmes and advertisements.

In the 1990s a new possibility appeared: the individual website. But here the same principle applies as in Mark Twain: if nobody stops by, nobody will find out how wonderful it is to whitewash that fence – or, in our case, to realise an artistic project.

Disseminating our content beyond our individual websites
Nowadays, thanks to Web 2.0, we no longer have to wait until somebody drops by; we can go to the places where we can expect to find most of the people we want to tell about our ideas and projects: to Facebook, Twitter or the various photo and video platforms.
By now, a large number of artists and cultural institutions can be found there. They upload photos onto Flickr and videos onto YouTube and then integrate them into Facebook or their own blogs. For me, this first networking step is the basic prerequisite for activities on the Internet. In fact, one could also say that the various channels provide the infrastructure for my activities.
In order to utilise this infrastructure, I need content. Cultural institutions are privileged in this respect, since they have a great deal of content at their disposal. However, for content to be used on the Internet it has to be properly prepared. This means making it possible for users to share the content, evaluate it and integrate it into other Web pages, since this type of interaction is the basic principle of Web 2.0.
I can, for instance, report on a rehearsal in a blog, but of course I can also take photos or record an interview with the director on video. The content is thus distributed over various channels and, as such, networking occurs at the level of content, which for me is the second level of networking. But ultimately, the objective is always to go beyond the respective format and get people interested in the activities of the cultural institution.

Discussion about content is lacking
This second level is the stage that most cultural institutions have reached with their social media activities. One step is still lacking. We keep talking about communication, but up to now all we have are channels that we use for communication and content that we can communicate. The most important thing is still missing: the people who now ought to be communicating and interacting with one another. It doesn’t always have to be a conversation; often it is sufficient if videos are passed on or evaluated, if photos are tagged or people click the “Like” button on Facebook for them. For me, this is the third step in networking and actually the most important one. I can create a perfect infrastructure and disseminate content through its various channels. But Web 2.0 – or, better, the Social Web – only develops its full potential when the disseminated content triggers discussion or interaction.
This will probably not happen if all I do is advertise my events. It is therefore much more important to present material about specific subject areas. Contemporary painting, the history of opera… I’m sure no cultural institution will be at a loss to find subjects it feels at home with, subjects about which it has an abundance of expert knowledge and which people truly find interesting.
“I’ve already tried that, but nobody reacted,” you may protest. True, but potentially interested people must also be given the opportunity to find out about it. If you just sit and write about something, monologue-style, you make it difficult for people to find you.

Becoming visible in the Social Web with the 1:3 rule
What can you do to change the situation? One thing that might help is the 1:3 rule, which you can apply at two different levels. First of all, in terms of content: after each piece of information about your programme, present three contributions that focus not on you, but on one of your chosen subject areas.
Now you have plenty of content, but nobody knows about it yet. This is where the second part of the 1:3 rule comes in: for each contribution that you publish somewhere in the Social Web, you must interact somewhere else, e.g. in the form of a blog comment, or on someone else’s Facebook profile.
Why should you do this? Josef Herget and Isabella Mader explain it very well in an essay  on the effective use of social software in external corporate communications. (source: Herget, Josef; Mader, Isabella: Social Software in der externen Unternehmenskommunikation - Donau-Universität Krems. Fachartikel. Zeitschrift für Informationswissenschaft & Praxis IWP 04/2009.) They point out that if someone gives us a gift or does us a favour, the wish arises in us to give that person something in return. In addition to this reciprocity aspect, there is also a much more commonplace reason: you’ll become visible in an increasing number of places in the Social Web and thereby increase the chances that someone will notice you and begin to take an interest in your content (and thus in you).
At first, this approach may seem rather arduous and unaccustomed, because for one thing, you have to spend time and effort on your content, and on top of that, you have to find the places in the Social Web where you want to start communicating. If this second point is a challenge for you, then you know that so far you have not really succeeded in networking. But networking is important; otherwise you’ll have to whitewash your fence all by yourself, which is to say that no one will hear about your projects.

Christian Henner-Fehr is a cultural consultant. He maintains a cultural management blog and is the organiser of the stARTconference. Christian Henner-Fehr lives and works in Vienna.