White Noise Festival and Social Networking in PR

I went to the first day of an event I'm rather fond of yesterday. This weekend's the weekend of White Noise Festival at The Firebug, a weekend of local post-rock bands/musicians/sound experimenty types, and copious amounts of beer. Blissful.

While I'd found out about it last year through word of mouth, the majority of the friends that accompanied me had heard about it through, Facebook. Well, originally posters, but they pointed to a Facebook group and event.

The Faceboook group gives some information about the festival:

Basic Info

Name:
White Noise Festivals - Leicester
Category:
Music - Live Music
Description:
The White Noise Festivals (White Noise Christmas and White Noise Summer) are twice-yearly events aimed at raising awareness of the best bits of the Leicester Music Scene and raising money for local charities.
Privacy type:
Open: All content is public.
Contact Details
Email:
Office:
Firebug Bar
Location:
Millstone Lane
Leicester, United Kingdom
Recent news

News:
White Noise Christmas is confirmed for the 4th, 5th and 6th of December at Firebug, Leicester.

There will be no day tickets this year - only Weekend passes priced £5. You will still be able to buy in advance or pay on the door on any day.

There is also a wall in which members of the group can discuss all things festival, exchange information and get updates from the organiser of the event. The usual Facebook stuff then; wall, photo gallery, video gallery, bit of information and links to invite others to join.

Such community participation in an event is indeed a very useful thing for public relations. Brian Solis talks about it a fair bit in his Essential Guide to Social Media, discussing the importance of two way dialogue between organisations and their intended audience. In fact, perhaps the word audience is not correct, since the organisation must also listen. I can't think of a better word than audience right now, so I'll stick with it, but it's a worthwhile point.

A two way dialogue engages audiences with the organisation, helping feedback on their campaigns. This can certainly help the evaluatory part of a campaign, in that feedback is instant and accessible. In the case of the White Noise Festival, which is admittedly a more basic message to convey, people can let the organisers know what bands they liked, what they didn't, suggestions for improvements, etc. Perhaps a better example is the Liberal Democrat Facebook page where both positive and negative feedback can be given. For one rather blunt example on the Lib Dem wall: Brian Smith: "this party has lost it join the english democrats".

All in all then, Facebook, despite all its triviality (e.g. Poke), is a fine example of how social networks can be put to use in conveying a message to an "audience", and using feedback from that audience to evaluate it. This is something that arguably benefits both sides of PR, both organisations and the "audience", since the audience are now more able than ever to be listened to, and public relations guys and gals can improve themselves based on feedback. Viva S.M.A.R.T.! Viva Web 2.0.