Introducing The Unlibrary (particularly to one Mr Thornton of Thornton’s Budgens, Crouch End)
We have reached the tipping point where open social media platforms, like twitter, are accepted as the future of marketing and communications, and changing many other aspects of life.
Crouch End is one of the most social media saturated areas outside of central London. While working with the twitter account for Haringey Libraries I’ve kept a close eye on the activities of local businesses on twitter.
It’s an interesting scene. The attempts to automate twitter feeds (@tatlersllp) are juxtaposed with a really personable estate agent (@steveatcastles), a very cool @flashbackrecords with lots of friends versus a Rock Around the Clock who would never touch twitter, @momentoprints, @fairwindonline, @synergystudioN8 doing a good job of it, of course a lot of locals talking about all sorts of things.
Two of the most iconic local businesses, @dunnsbakery and @budgens_CE, were always going to be interesting to follow. But the comments about @dunnsbakery was that it was a pure marketing channel, so not really social, and people wouldn’t follow it for this reason. @budgents_CE’s last tweet was 4 July.
Around that time, a lot of people were talking about Budgens Crouch End and it’s famed roof vegetable garden. But none of this was picked up and engaged with, which to me was such a big wasted opportunity. Some of the tweets can still be picked up by using google search.
How much more useful would the twitter account have been if Thornton’s Budgens had interacted with some of the people who were waxing lyrical about this great idea, and used this to build a strong community around itself? This is what twitter is really good at; a great idea, which is being talked about by so many people (as well as being picked up by national media), can really serve to boost followership.
The result is a dedicated group of people, an online community. These people are not just passive consumers but actively engaged in what you do. They feel ownership, because they are part of your success. They will amplify your messages to their followers and thus be your greatest marketing asset.
This is, in essence, how social media works. But many organisations are trying and not many are really succeeding. That’s why I’m really excited to have been given a space to open the Unlibrary inside Hornsey Library in Crouch End.
Sometimes a chat and some encouragement by the right person is all a small business owner needs to get going with something like this – it’s essentially social, it’s not about technology, although technology is obviously needed. Because we have been given this space I can make myself available for local businesses to have regular chats and workshops around this.
The Unlibrary is not funded by Haringey Council, however I think it potentially can be so useful for local businesses that there surely is a way to get a lot of support.
The Unlibrary is such an exciting project also because it brings creative and business uses of digital media together. There are many spaces being developed, giving advice and running workshops around social media, but none of them in a creative space like a library. My partner on the running of the Unlibrary is Chris Meade, another local, who runs if:book, a charity which is looking at the future of the book in the digital age. He used to run the poetry cafe and has a network of writers interested in also learning about amplifying their words on social media.
Apart from this, the interior designers of Studio Tilt who have been working on some of the most inspiring spaces in the new co-working culture have agreed to take the Unlibrary on as a flagship project.
With all of this said, my proposal is very simple. I’d like to help Budgens Crouch End re-start its social media efforts, in a very fruitful way, and I’d love for Budgens to be a long-term partner to the Unlibrary. My project @haringeylibrary (which I proposed to Haringey Council a year ago, ran until May this year and then after doing workshops and a lot of personal discussions, handed over to library staff) is now the most successful libraries twitter account in the UK, and I did this on a few months at one day’s work per week (as this was all the libraries department could afford.)
I’d like to propose to work 5 days with Budgens. The result will be a much better understanding on Budgens’ side of how to engage and pick up interesting conversations, thus build a great and involved community around Budgens Crouch End. The other result will be exposure Budgens would gain as a major partner to the Unlibrary, providing for one of the unlibrarians that month, helping many other locals benefit from it.
To find out more about the unlibrary, follow us on twitter (@theunlibrary) and have a look at our blog with pictures from the unlibrary launch and a 3D twitter map of London.
