Guest blog by Matthew Phillips
On the 1st November, nestled away in an interestingly diverse part of Leeds, The Round Foundry Media Centre held the all day event, Web Changes Everything as part of Leeds Digital Festival – Hosted by social media gurus Mike Chitty and Monica Tailor the day was dedicated to exploring how to make the best use of social media tools such as Twitter, Facebook and Blogging in today’s busy and often confusing media saturated landscape.
The event had a freeform approach as the hosts and attendees bounced ideas off each other allowing the subject matter to develop organically. Although adhering to some key logical principles, such as identifying specific needs using models created by Mike Friedman, Mike was more than happy to play the odd wild card and it was refreshing to hear ideas that went against archaic old school techniques of business and marketing.
If I had to isolate one point to illustrate the energy of the day it would be that there is no one size fits all solution, your solution should be unique to you. The importance of working smartly with the tools available was also underlined. I liked the ‘plucked out of the air’ analogy of two fishermen by a lake. One, who could be termed the aggressive marketer, was kitted out with diving kit and harpoon hastily chasing the fish under the water whilst the other took his time selecting the right bait and casting it at the appropriate time allowing the fish to come directly to them. The analogy with the world of modern communications is obvious and again shows the importance of breaking free of old super aggressive business models in favour of a more savvy, intuitive and holistic approach. The new world of social media is too vast to be tied down to limiting principles and ironically in this technological sea it seems it will take a return to more creative and fluid ways of working in order to become truly successful. Let the tools work for you and don’t be afraid to take a risk or be controversial. The worst place you can be is on the fence, mediocrity and playing it safe will get you nowhere. It’s better to be noticed, even at the risk of being contentious. Listen to what is going on in the blogosphere and in the world of Twitter and ‘drop your bait’ accordingly. A short conversation with the right person at the right time may be far more effective then an exhaustive yet ill judged marketing campaign. We need to ween ourselves away from the old reliance on evidence-based methods and jumping through hoops that are time consuming and often misleading. This is an ever changing and dynamic arena that does not respond well to commandments carved in stone!
This is just scratching the surface of the subjects covered. For me the day was extremely prescient as Huddersfield Students’ Union is currently making the shift into this new way of working. Thanks to all involved!
Matt Phillips is the Multimedia & Website Co-ordinator at Huddersfield Students’ Union