Page 178 - AC/E's Digital Culture Annual Report 2015

Cultural business models on the Internet178should always ask yourself this question. Inthe case of CPN, each piece we publish and project we implement, however minor, is done for our readers, so we ask ourselves: what does the community gain from this? If the gain is nonexistent or very minimal, perhaps we’re not doing it for the right reasons. It’s also a question that can result in improvements to projects and articles.Finding the right toneFinding the right tone for your communityis key. Too much “officialness” and you will appear unapproachable and faceless. Too casual and you might undermine the importance and severity of what you do. There’s no winning formula for what produces a correct tone, so it’s a case of experimenting, adjusting and gaining feedback from your community. The more your converse with users via social media and below the line on comments will also naturally force you to be more chatty and attuned to how your community speaks with you and one another, so do it often.On CPN, we use a more formal tone for tweet- ing and sharing headlines, especially when they cover serious or grave subjects, and adopt a more chatty tone when engaging the community in “what do you think?” features, live webchats and direct responses, all of which require a twoway conversation, a core tenet of what an online community should be.Useful links and resourcesOn the Guardian Culture Professionals NetworkThe Culture Professionals Networkhttp://www.theguardian.com/culture- professionalsnetworkCulture Professionals Network membershiphttps://register.theguardian.com/culture- professionals/The Culture Professionals Network on Twitterhttps://twitter.com/GdnCultureProsThe Culture Professionals Network on Facebookhttps://http://www.facebook.com/GdnCulture- ProsIntroducing #LoveTheatre day (2014)http://www.theguardian.com/cultureprofessionals- network/2014/nov/05/lovetheatredaytwitt erukOn open journalismAlan Rusbridger on open journalism at the Guardian – video (2012) http://www.theguardian.com/media/video/2012/ feb/29/alanrusbridgeropenjournalismguardi anvideoCatherine Shoard on open arts journalism – video (2012) http://www.theguardian.com/media/video/2012/ feb/29/catherineshoardopenartsjournalism videoThe Guardian Culture Professionals Network: a case study in professional community publishing