Social Media Fire & Brimstone vs. Creative Social Media

Guest-blog by Big Thought President/CEO, Gigi Antoni

I’m somewhat of a newbie at the social media thing, but it seems that when most experts talk about it, they take on the characteristics of a southern preacher. At conferences and in newsletters, techies and marketing gurus scrunch their faces and point their fingers to demand, “You have to be using social media at your organization. You just have to. You’ll be lost in the crowd without it.”

The gist of the social media message has thus far been fire and brimstone. If you don’t have X followers on Twitter and don’t have a large enough Facebook presence (presence sounds so extraterrestrial, doesn’t it?) your organization is doomed to social media limbo, always missing out on would-be donors or volunteer hopefuls.

In this way, social media has become exactly what it never was intended to be; a tool that makes your life harder. For personal use, the purpose of social media was to connect people, provide venues for them to express ideas, thoughts and to share them with the world. With social media came extraordinary videos, fascinating exchange and millions of blogs powered by everyday Joes who wanted to write about life, network TV or any other topic under the sun.

But more importantly, for those of us in the creative world, the arts became something, well … cool, thanks to social media tools like YouTube. Instead of audiences of hundreds who watched a symphony, an unbelievable multitude of millions were wowed by the creativity of bands, dancers, and even string players who became memes of extraordinary popularity by merging innovation with creativity.

As artistic and creative nonprofits, we tout the importance of innovation all the time in connection with the arts. We convince non-arts lovers of its importance in the lives of our young ones because it means that they will be able to thrive in a new world with new challenges. Unfortunately, we can say it until we’re blue in the face but until people see it, hear it, read it or live it, the prospect of creativity falls decidedly short in the minds of our constituency.

This is where social media comes in. Far from being an obligatory process of routine tweets, relationship-less exchanges or a begrudging step into the 21st century, its very existence provides us the opportunity to show the world what creativity can mean. And this doesn’t always mean posting videos of a program or writing newsletters about our work. It could simply be a young virtuoso on the piano. It could be a TED video which would spark conversation. Or it could be tweets from our staff about what instrument they played or creative activity they take part in with their friends or family.

Social media doesn’t have to make our lives harder. It can make our lives incredibly easy. We only have to leverage what people have already shown that they love … creativity and innovation. These are the open doors that will draw people into our work in arts and education. All along, we’ve been focusing on the work itself, and ignoring the work’s inherent ability to amaze people and make them say “That’s so cool!” And voila, the would-be volunteers or arts and creative learning supporters are right in the palm of our hands.

Follow us on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter so that you can share the cool and creative videos, songs, organizations, social media ideas and anything else that you are buzzing about. Together we can show the world what creativity looks like in everyday life!

Gigi Antoni
President/CEO, Big Thought