---
title: "Are You Using Social Media Creatively?"
date: 2011-09-04
author: "Richard MacManus"
categories:
  - name: "ReadWriteWeb"
    url: "/category/readwriteweb.md"
tags:
  - name: "2011"
    url: "/tag/2011.md"
---

# Are You Using Social Media Creatively?

![](https://web.archive.org/web/20120212011053im_/http://rww.readwriteweb.netdna-cdn.com/images/twitter_art1.jpg)Tate Museum’s [Kirstie Beaven wonders](https://web.archive.org/web/20120212011053/http://blog.tate.org.uk/?p=7899) whether museums are using social media creatively enough. She listed some recent activity by Tate: a Twitter discussion around the hashtag #artfilmtitle, a video dialogue with Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, and a Flickr collaboration. However, complained Beaven, “all of these things are basically one-offs \[and\] perhaps that’s the nature of social media – essentially ephemeral.” She continued that “most of our initiatives \[…\] have really been about finding creativity in our audiences, rather than pushing the creative boundaries of the social networking site as a medium.”

Personally I think Tate is much more innovative than most organizations with social media, but it does raise a broader question for ***all organizations***: is social media being used in a truly creative way? Or is it mostly about self-promotion and – that magic word – “engagement”? Let us know your thoughts, including any good examples of social media creativity.

Here at ReadWriteWeb, we have an active presence on all of the main social networks; including [Facebook](https://web.archive.org/web/20120212011053/http://www.facebook.com/ReadWriteWeb), [Twitter](https://web.archive.org/web/20120212011053/http://twitter.com/#!/RWW) and [LinkedIn](https://web.archive.org/web/20120212011053/http://www.linkedin.com/today/readwriteweb.com). Our Community Manager, [Robyn Tippens](https://web.archive.org/web/20120212011053/http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/author/robyn-tippins.php), does a fantastic job keeping our community thinking and talking about web technology. Plus of course, many of the RWW team are active on various social media channels – including Google Plus (which doesn’t yet have brand pages).

Still, I often wonder whether there’s more that we as an organization can do to foster creativity amongst our community. Although I can give one example, which I’m quite proud of, from RWW. Robyn does a regular ‘Big Question’ post, where she asks our community something about a hot tech topic and then uses [Storify](https://web.archive.org/web/20120212011053/http://storify.com/) to collate the responses from RWW comments, Twitter and Facebook. An example is [this recent Big Question](https://web.archive.org/web/20120212011053/http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/big_question_answered_would_you_buy_an_inferior_ta.php): Would You Buy an Inferior Tablet, Over an iPad, If It Was Priced at Less Than $200?

**Is your organization using social media creatively? If so, we’d love to hear about it in the comments.**

*Image credit: [Twitter Art Project 2011](https://web.archive.org/web/20120212011053/http://www.flickr.com/photos/twitterart2011) (via [Simon Lewis](https://web.archive.org/web/20120212011053/http://www.simonlewis.ie/post/4268221270/twitter-art-project-2011))*

*Originally published on ReadWriteWeb ([archived copy](https://web.archive.org/web/20020204040018/http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/are_you_using_social_media_creatively.php))*