At HelloCulture11 in Birmingham (17/11/11), it was a day for celebrating relationships. 

Huddled into a chilly converted Victorian library hall, a hundred assorted social media geeks, techies, marketing wonks, and policy prima donnas engaged their higher selves to unlock the secrets of social media and user generated content. Our topic was ‘enabling digital collaboration: cross the digital divide’. Did we make it across the Grand technological Canyon?

Sort of, but in a figurative sense. Never mind the geekery and trendy jargon, it all seemed to come down to doing the things that every good partner or friend should do: listen, respect, seek to understand, have trust and genuinely want to be close.

It was ‘digital entrepreneur’ and social media panelist, Steff Aquarone who said ‘if you want to truly understand your audiences you have to ask them about themselves – but you also have to give them very good reasons to tell you’. I tweeted that, and it got retweeted. You see? People are listening.

Managers wanting to ‘develop’ and ‘engage’ cultural audiences (how I hate all those words) have long embraced the concept of relationship marketing, even if they didn’t recognize it at such. It’s the idea that customers become more valuable the longer they spend with you, that building loyalty is the principal business strategy that underpins all successful organizations. Susan Fournier says that brands are like friends to consumers: they occupy a special place in their lives because they offer rewards of a psychological and social nature. They make us feel like we belong, and that we are valued.

Cultural institutions are rich with loyal customers who feel special. The trouble is they are very often affluent, well educated and getting old. Our challenge is to reach out to a wider group. And to do that we have to commit themselves fully to embracing those new audiences, now and forever.  It’s hard work, and resource heavy, and frustrating as results are slow to show, fragile and unpredictable. Dorothy Wilson, director of Birmingham's MAC arts centre calls it a journey (see her talk). Start with the first step. Get them to tell you what you’re doing for them - or not.

The speakers at HelloCulture all evangelized social media as a relationship building panacea, a means to allow customers and publics to enter into creative, productive dialogues with cultural consumers. I reflected that perhaps finally digital technology has caught up with Leonard Berry’s big idea in 1983, that marketing isn’t about one-night stands but lasting relationships.

Some of the audience went away frustrated: we don’t have the time and money to do this stuff – we’re just too busy they said. Social media is hard! The answer? Stop doing things and start doing others. Give up paper publicity, move over to digital. Allow your audiences to tell you what they think, like or hate. Trust them. Invest in your relationships. Fly baby fly.

Photo New York Times