I’ve proposed a SXSWi 2011 panel called, “The Tools Artists Need Geeks to Create.” You should vote for it. Like, now.

But wait, you say, I don’t even know what SXSWi is, other than a bunch of silly letters. South by South West Interactive is a 5 day tech conference [...]]]>

I’ve proposed a SXSWi 2011 panel called, “The Tools Artists Need Geeks to Create.” You should vote for it. Like, now.

But wait, you say, I don’t even know what SXSWi is, other than a bunch of silly letters. South by South West Interactive is a 5 day tech conference in Austin, Texas (where I grew up!) every March. The first year they held SXSWi (the music fest has been around since the 80′s), they gave away the tickets for free. Ten years later, it’s a pretty BFD. Last year was my first time attending the conference in full–from interactive to film to music. I didn’t have a grand to lay down for tickets, so I volunteered (50 hours! During my spring break!), stayed with my parents, and scouted around for as much free food as possible. This year, emboldened by my success at TCG, I decided to make a go of being a conference speaker so I can again score free tix.

Ok. Awesome. Now I know what SXSW is. Why the eff should I care about your panel? A) Because it’ll be cool (I swear!). B) Because we should have having more conversations about building for the future. C) Because I was dismayed last year that there were so few arts-driven panels, and wanted to do my best to change that. D) Because you probably like Chris Ashworth. E) All of the above.

Whatevs. My vote doesn’t even matter. You’ve railed against vote mongering before haven’t you? Yes, yes, this is true. I’m trying to provide you with both useful information, as well as a request for action on your part. I promise not to beg, beleaguer, or badger you into voting. In point of fact, I’m quite fond of SXSWi’s crowdsourcing mechanism. First, we had to get past an initial screen of SXSW staffers. Now, your voting/commentary will only partially account for my potential inclusion into the festival. But your vote totes counts. Rock the vote.

Your panel’s lame. Can I vote for somebody else? Fair enough. Sure. There are some stellar looking panels out there. I’ve only made it through the first 1/3 of categories and given 63 thumbs up (of the 700 or so panels I’ve skimmed), but so far, I’m particularly enamored with these top 10:

• Beyond Word Clouds: Analyzing Trends with Social Media API’s
• Social Ranking: Finding Interesting User Generated Content
• Don’t Jump! Working Aboard a Sinking Ship
• Hacking RSS: Filtering & Processing Obscene Amounts of Information
• Its Nature’s Way: Innovative Tech Design Through Biomimicry
• Lighten Your Load: Successfully Leveraging Volunteers and Interns
• Cracking the Social Contest Code
• Beyond Mafia Wars: The Next Generation of Social Entertainment
• Likes, Favorites, Playlists, Designing Taste Interfaces
• Being Young and Rocking It

I’ll do a follow up post next week after I’ve been able to get through all the categories. There might even be some data involved about what the popularity/obscurity of certain categories might tell us about the future of tech (or at least, the future of SXSW), and some trends in ‘buzz words’ I’m already beginning to see emerge. Until then, for realz, VOTE.

Measuring social media is hard. It’s easy to be overwhelmed by minutia, there’s yet to be a measurement site that even comes close to adequately tracking people & content across social media platforms, and there are no standardized benchmarks to know if 43 (fans, comments, @mentions, whatever) is good, bad, or average. And the [...]]]>

Measuring social media is hard. It’s easy to be overwhelmed by minutia, there’s yet to be a measurement site that even comes close to adequately tracking people & content across social media platforms, and there are no standardized benchmarks to know if 43 (fans, comments, @mentions, whatever) is good, bad, or average. And the truth is, social media is more art than science. Not to mention we’ve become obsessive about measuring this just because we can (or at least, we think we can). Besides, when’s the last time you checked the ROI of that poster you put up, the press release you sent out, or the postcard you mailed?

Let’s talk about a new way.

Putting people front and center in your measurement plan.

What if every day, or week, or whenever, there was a list of people delivered to your inbox. These are the people who commented on your blog, or your facebook comment, or began following you on twitter, or favorited your slideshare presentation. The list would include the actual text of their comment. In v2.0, you could give values to each of these activities. As in, 5 points for an RSS subscriber, 1 point for a facebook like, 2 points for a delicious tag, etc. And the measurement tool would know the network size of each of these people. Total score is a function of the weight of the user’s action, and the size of the user’s influence base. The list delivered to your email inbox would be ordered by descending total score. In v3.0 this is not only an email, but an entire database. Search by comment keyword, by “most influential/engaged facebook fan” or how a user’s score has changed over time. This is as much a customer relationship management tool as a social media measurement tool.

But wait, that’s not all.

How is your content doing online?

You want to care about this for a few reasons:

1. If a piece of content is suddenly doing well, maybe there’s something you could do (like responding to a tweet, taking a photo, adding tags to a YouTube video) to increase the momentum.
2. If you can discern a pattern to the characteristics of the content that is doing well (or for that matter, is doing poorly), maybe you could build on the thing that’s working, or fix the thing that seems to be broken.

This list of content items would be emailed to you. You’re probably going to want to segregate new content items (recently posted) from recurring content items that continue to get pageviews or comments long after you’ve first posted them. In v2.0, you’d be able to tie the size of your network to each content item, so a blog post that you also tweet about to your 10,000 followers would have a higher score than the comment on your flickr photo that gets 4 views a day. In v3.0, if a recurring content item jumps some x% over last week, month, etc, then an emergency email would be sent to you, with the assumption that there’s probably something urgent that needs your attention. Clearly, these emailed lists would also benefit from a database that was searchable, and showed trends over time.

But wait, there’s more.

How did people arrive at your content?

The two big categories here are links and search terms. Within links, you’ve got to consider referrals, direct links, and embedded content you’ve got elsewhere. Within search terms, you’re going to want to know the search terms people used to find your content, the search terms they’re asking for on your site, and the hashtag & list terms they’re associating with you on twitter.

So this is your 3rd email of the day, week, month, etc. At this point, you’re probably asking yourself not how people arrived at your content, but why you should care. For links: having the opportunity to thank, and more generally connect with, the folks that are sending traffic your way. For search terms: to both guide future content creation decisions, and refine any SEO/SEM that you might be doing. And again, with the descending scores, and the searchable database. In v2.0, it would be nice to group similar links, and similar search terms together. In other words, I know that search phrases including the word foursquare drive quite a bit of traffic to my site, as do many different links from Beth’s blog and Ian’s blog. There are some nifty tricks in Google Analytics to combine each of these sets of links & terms, but I want a simpler solution.

Finally we arrive at the place where most folks seem to start.

What’s the size of your  network?

You’ve got your people, your engagement, and your traffic. These are big aggregate numbers that are best tracked over time, and hopefully compared to your competitors.

It’s probably not the case that a subscriber to your slideshare account is ‘worth’ the same as a fan of your delicious tags. So again, it would be nice to be able to give a weight to each of these types of people, engagements, and traffic. And you’re probably going to want to see that “people” score as a total of all platforms, or by several platforms at a time. Like in Google Analytics, it would be nice to attach annotations to these aggregate trends.

It’s impossible to do all of this measurement though right? A total pipe dream. An analytics package that would be impossible to implement? A fools errand to try to connect so many platforms, so many third party tools, with so many divergent goals?

Probably.

But here’s the tools you would need to do it.

True, some of these cost money, and less than half the platforms have open APIs, but let’s at least take a quick gander at each of them. These are, of course, in addition to the many one-off possibilities I’ve mentioned previously.

WordPress Stats Plugin

*You’re going to need to install the plugin to get these stats.

Google Analytics

*GA has a TON of data to dig into. It’s easy to fall down the rabbit hole. I’ve been promising a more in depth post on this for months. It’s still in the works.

Feedburner

*of particular note: check out the publicize tab to know who’s subscribed to your blog via email.

Facebook Page Insights

*Only page admins will get access to this data.

BackType

*of particular note: this is the only way I’ve been able to figure out the amount of Facebook buzz my content gets from folks who aren’t my friends/fans.

Twitter RSS Search Query

This one’s a bit of a hack. You can “subscribe” to an RSS feed for any search term on Twitter (like @yourname). This is a great record of all of the people who mention/retweet you. Google reader will then graph for you the number of “posts” by day of week, time of day, etc.

Bit.ly

*If you haven’t already, please give TweetDeck (or HootSuite, or CoTweet) your bit.ly API, and it will shorten and track all of your links automatically. For added bonus, connect bit.ly > TweetDeck > Packratius > Delicious. More on this soon. It’s magical. You can also stalk other people’s bit.ly link stats by adding a “+” sign to the end of the link.

TweetMeme

*Especially useful to track twitter links that might not mention your name, or anything specific to your brand.

YouTube Insights

*These stats get pretty confusing. Referrals go missing, the numbers don’t add up, totally unpredictable when or how videos will go viral. But work with what you’ve got.

Flickr Stats

*Sadly, only available to (paid) pro account users.

LinkedIn

*Just learned this one last week. If you upgrade to a (paid) pro account, you can see the actual names of the folks viewing your profile.

SlideShare

*Pro (paid) accounts get additional analytics. But I couldn’t find any examples online, so it’s unclear how much more detailed the stats get.

Foursquare Venue Analytics

*You’ll have to claim your venue to get access to this data. Do it now.

Alright, quick review

Measurement is hard. Don’t get distracted by the numbers, and lose sight of the people, content, links, and search terms; in other words, text > numbers.

1. WHO: Focus on active relationships: people engaging direclty with your brand by commenting, liking, joining, etc.
2. WHAT: Keep track of content: especially new items, and recurring items that spike in traffic; search for patterns
3. WHY: Pay attention to passive relationships: people engaging more indirectly with your brand via linking to your content, or searching for your keyword terms.
4. HOW MUCH: Spend the least amount of time on the size of your network: but don’t ignore it completely. Compare your stats over time, and to your competitors.

There’s a plethora of tools. One day someone will integrate them all. Until then..if you’re interested in getting a copy of this prototype document, just send me an email (Google Docs didn’t handle the images & formatting very well, or I would just post online).

Possibly related posts:

1. Theatre & Social Media: TCG 2010
2. Theatre & Social Media in 2009
3. Social Media Curriculum
4. The Social Media Bubble

Last week I offered up a manifesto, book review, and free give away of The Networked Nonprofit.

And the winner is…Lori Hood Lawson! I used excel to build a quick random number generator, and wouldn’t you know, the one commenter who explicitly said she’d rather buy a book [...]]]>

Last week I offered up a manifesto, book review, and free give away of The Networked Nonprofit.

And the winner is…Lori Hood Lawson! I used excel to build a quick random number generator, and wouldn’t you know, the one commenter who explicitly said she’d rather buy a book (other than Beth herself), turned out to be lucky #13 on my list of commenters. Hopefully Lori will still accept the book. Maybe she’ll even give her own review, and give away a 2nd copy to one of her commenters.

I’m a pretty big believer in radical transparency. I’m also totally transfixed whenever Gawker gives insights into how & what they track online. In an effort to do the same (and hope I don’t come off sounding like a boastful jackass) a few interesting stats:

• 18 people commented, way more than my next most previously commented post count of 4. Turns out when you give something away, it gives readers a good excuse (and permission) to contribute to the community.
• There’s an oft-quoted blogging rule of thumb that for every 100 readers you have, about 10 will become subscribers, and of those 10, 1 will become a commenter. In the week that this post has been live, it’s been read by nearly 300 people, and I gained 17 subscribers. Which basically means, I didn’t do a good enough job convincing readers the rest of my content was worthy enough of an RSS sub (yet), but it was more than worth their time to comment.
• There was an average of 1.33 comments per person. In other words, 1 in 3 commenters also responded to someone elses comment. I don’t know a good benchmark, but I’d say that’s a relatively healthy engagement metric.
• This post accounted for just 22% of my pageviews for the week, due in large part to the ongoing organic search popularity of the Foursquare Strategy, and the high profile link love to Twitter Hashtags. Both of those posts have wildly high bounce rates (85%+ of folks who discover my site via those pages don’t click through to any other pages on my blog). Unfortunately, for some mysterious reason Google Analytics decided to stop working all week, so I have no idea how the manifesto compares. But this post now has both high profile link love, and at least second page status in organic search, so we’ll see how things progress from here.
• There were 2 significant spikes in traffic to this post over the week: the first when @kanter and @afine both tweeted about the post (that day accounted for 38% of the post’s weekly traffic), the second when Beth posted a review of the review on her website (that day accounted for 14% of the post’s weekly traffic). 7 days after the post had gone live, traffic had died down to the single digits. Essentially, the “news cycle” of the “story” lasted exactly a week. Whether that’s because of the artificial deadline I put on the give away, or is typical of this kind of post, is unclear.
• Speaking of tweets, 42% of pageviews came via 19 different tweets; not surprising given this is the primary way I promote the blog. In a curious turn of events, my Facebook rant happened to get some twitter traction via a #TechSoup chat about nonprofits & social media on the same day as I  launched the manifesto. I have a strong suspicion that having 2 popular posts happening at the same time increased traffic between the two. Though, again, with Google Analytics broken for the week, I can’t tell for sure.
• I saw my Twitter follower count rise 15% in the past week. That’s a slight jump from 11% growth the prior week. Fortunately, I’ve been on a bit of a roll in getting featured just about every week by other bloggers the past few months. I’m curious to try to figure out if the trend in follower count has more to do with blog/retweet traffic, or if I’ve reached some tipping point where simply having enough followers is a good enough indication of ‘worthiness’ to begat more followers.
• There seems to be much ado about nothing to posting your blog at a certain time of day, or day of week. There has thus far been no correlation between traffic and either time or day, at least for my content. I’m also totally impatient and just want to hit the “Publish” button as soon as I’m done writing.

Some observations:

• The only anonymous comment (and in fact, also the only comment that someone “liked”) was fairly negative. This falls in line with the well researched findings that people tend to be more positive (and even give higher ratings) when either forced, or choose, to use their own name. What made me so curious though was that the comment, though not glowing, wasn’t totally out of line. The commenter wasn’t flame throwing, or particularly disparaging, and in fact made a pretty good point. I didn’t talk much about the art, nor did I explicitly mention the importance of artists, and I probably should have done both. And yet, they didn’t choose to use their real name.
• I was surprised by the number of non-US commenters. I know that about 16% of traffic to my blog comes from outside the US, but I often forget to think about that when I’m writing posts. In fact, nearly 1/3 of commenters are from outside the US, and I’m particularly grateful to Tom Peters and Amy Murphy for enlightening me about what’s going on in Germany and Ireland.
• The links that commenters used to sign in to Disqus to comment (Twitter, WordPress, etc), are such a great resource to find other interesting content & people online. I’ve read what feels like thousands of posts on problogger that recommend new bloggers spend a fair amount of their time commenting on other people’s blogs, because then those bloggers will start paying attention to them (eventually). Turns out, totally true!
• Now that I’ve asked so many folks to comment on my blog, I definitely feel more compelled to comment on others’ blogs.  Socialnomics is a gift economy after all.

Thanks to everybody who commented. You all provided excellent points, insightful feedback, and compelling criticism. If you’re interested in continuing the conversation about networked nonprofits, there’s also an awesome (and under-used) wiki. In the mean time, this book review/give away thing was kind of fun. Look for more in the future.

Possibly related posts:

1. The Networked Nonprofit Theatre: A Manifesto & A Book Review

Last week I attended The Networked Nonprofit book launch in New York City, at this cool little joint called Demos. It was great to see Beth again, and finally meet Allison. I read about a book a week, so just a few hours after this [...]]]>

Last week I attended The Networked Nonprofit book launch in New York City, at this cool little joint called Demos. It was great to see Beth again, and finally meet Allison. I read about a book a week, so just a few hours after this event, I had torn through this one, dog earring most of the pages, scribbling notes in the margins, underlining like mad. In the mean time, I’ve been mulling over what I really thought about the contents, and probably more importantly how I could use it.

Then yesterday I woke up realizing I wanted to write both a manifesto, and a book review, all in one post! So here it goes.

The Networked Nonprofit isn’t a how to book. It doesn’t lay out a ten point plan for how to run your nonprofit, or even update your Facebook page. It doesn’t go into super detail about a particular case study. Because duh, that’s what the blog is for. Instead, The Networked Nonprofit asks a lot of questions, introduces you to a ton of awesome nonprofits each being networked in their own unique ways, and reminds you that social media has infiltrated every pore of our institutions. But I’m writing a manifesto here, not a book, so I’m going to break it down to my

10 Key Action Items.

1. I declare these social media myths to be busted. Our audience is online, but we will strive to meet every one of them face-to-face. We will let social media’s influence seep into everything we do, but we won’t let it suck up all of our time.
2. As a Millenial, I hold these truths to be self evident. “Millenials [are] passionate about causes, but not passionate, necessarily, about nonprofit organizations…[They will] jump from organization to organization as a particular effort moves them…[They are] a powerful new force for social change as free agents.” As such, we’ll stop cultivating Millenials and just focus on engaging them. We won’t bemoan failure when a Millenial only buys a ticket once, or only donates $10. Because every ticket and every dollar counts. And we know that the word of mouth Millenials are spreading are worth so much more than their filthy lucre.
3. We have been endowed by Ward Cunningham with the incredible tools to work wikily. We will work in a hive structure (not a fortress!), engendering our culture with “real conversations intended to persuade people to behave or act in certain ways, not window dressing with an ulterior motive.” We will open our doors, and our website, and our board meetings, and our accounting books to the curious and enthusaistic public.
4. Whenever any fear of social media becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people (be they employee, employer, or constituent) to rebel. We will reveal unfinished plans and projects. We will make typos with abandon. We will graciously accept criticism. We will make staff of all level and manner available to the public. We will encourage employees to establish their own personal brands using social media. We refuse to be overwhelmed by the firehose of information.
5. We assert the unalienable rights of The Intern. We understand that The Intern might be a high school student, an MBA, a retiree, or anyone in between. The Intern will be taken seriously, given real work to do, be respected for their opinion, and will be patiently taught the things they don’t yet know.
6. In light of previous sufferances, repeated injuries and usurpations, we immediately establish Social Media Guidelines. Don’t be stoopid. What you say matters. We trust you.
7. We therefore solemly publish and declare that our planning strategies will be a living roadmap to a sustainable future within our means, with clearly actionable items which our constituents should hold us accountable for.
8. Our fortress ought to be totally dissolved, and that as free and independent people, our constiuents (hereafter named, The Crowd) have full power to levy their honest opinions of us, conclude that their collective wisdom is greater than our singular knowledge, contract with each other to create great art, establish a system of voting to select the best of our potential ideas, and to do anything else which helps us raise the necessary funds to do business. In short, we hereby conclude that a crowd of thousands can do innumerably more and better work than a paid staff of 10.
9. In order to form a more perfect union, we will measure engagement and connections. We will look at trends in data, not just a snapshot in time. We will compare ourselves to others. We will measure things that matter to our mission. We will endeavor to map online engagement to offline actions.
10. We hold it resolved that governance should be by the people, for the people. Not by a closed Board room, nor for the exclusive benefit of the staff. [nb: Ok, here's where you're just going to have to buy the book. The imagined example Beth & Allison used is just too good. It's page 154. It took my breath away.]

I’d work for that networked nonprofit. I’d go see their art. I’d give money to them. I’d sit on their board. I’d advocate for them in my community, IRL, and online. But there’s one quote I left out, that I just couldn’t figure out how or where to fit into the manifesto. Maybe it’s our tagline instead. People are not ATMs.

There was a lot more to the book, but I think this manifesto could use a little work. So here’s the scoop: I bought 2 copies of The Networked Nonprofit. Mine’s a mess, but copy #2 is pristine. I’d like to give it away to someone who was inspired by these ideas. So give me a shout out in the comments below. Put forth a new idea. Make an argument. Ask a question. Just say hello. Do whatever you want. On Friday July 16th I’ll randomly choose a commenter, and I’ll mail you my extra copy. If you ever run into Beth or Allison, they’d probably even sign it for you.

Possibly related posts:

1. Stats, Observations, and a Winner from The Networked Nonprofit

Of all the awesome people I met at the TCG conference, only Kevin Gillese actually asked me what I thought of his theatre’s social media strategy. I couldn’t give him an answer off the top [...]]]>

Of all the awesome people I met at the TCG conference, only Kevin Gillese actually asked me what I thought of his theatre’s social media strategy. I couldn’t give him an answer off the top of my head, but now that I’m finally back from the conference circuit, I thought I’d try to put my thoughts in order on what a digital media audit could look like. You might remember a few months ago I did a social media footprint for Vocalo. In truth, I’m just making these words up. But I hope this new format is a step forward in readability and usability.

If you were the Artistic Director (or really, any staff member) of Dad’s Garage, what questions would you still have after reviewing this presentation?

Possibly related posts:

1. Social Media Strategy Recommendations for 2010
2. Social Media Strategy Presentation

Sometimes I worry that I’ve succomb to the social media bubble. When you spend a lot of time reading, thinking, writing, and talking about social media, and you’ve acquired a handful of friends and colleagues that are doing the same, it can start to seem like the whole world is obsessed. When really, [...]]]>

Sometimes I worry that I’ve succomb to the social media bubble. When you spend a lot of time reading, thinking, writing, and talking about social media, and you’ve acquired a handful of friends and colleagues that are doing the same, it can start to seem like the whole world is obsessed. When really, it’s just you. But if that’s the case, then folks at the Americans for the Arts Half Century Summit have also caught the social media bug. In this 2.5 day long conference, there were 5 break out session opportunities. In each, there was one panel focused on the role of social media in the arts. I did a fair amount of session hopping, but tried to catch the meat of presentation & discussions on the topic. Here are my notes:

Technology’s Impact on the Future of Traditional Arts Delivery Systems

Rich Mintz (of Blue State Digital, who you may remember after my fawning adoration of Teddy Goff) moderated a panel of Elena Park, Assistant Manager of Creative Content for the Met Opera, Tim Svenonius, Producer, Interactive Educational Technologies for SF MOMA, and last minute switch from Reverb Nation, though unfortunately I didn’t catch his name.

• Musicians (at least, those using Reverb Nation) tend to be young, hungry, and desparate for a break. They’re willing to do anything to get noticed. They don’t think twice about all the time they spend online building social media fans. I don’t know of many small theatre companies who think this same way. I wonder what the equivalent of Reverb Nation would look like for the theatre. They also have an awesome implementation of game mechanics which rewards artists (with points! and a leaderboard! and a tweetable score!) for being active on the site.
• Artists tend to have a complicated and mysterious process. Audience wants to get a peek into that world; some artists love the attention, for others it can hurt the art making. Transparency is great, except when it’s not.
• iPhone apps are cool, but if you haven’t optimized your website to display cleanly on a mobile browser, you’re missing the point. And don’t forget that smartphones are less than 20% of the mobile phone market. Along the same lines, make sure the new thing you’re trying works better than the old thing you’re abandoning. Email was revolutionary because it was free, instant, and asynchronous. It still works. You could probably be using it better.
• There seems to be a fear that “social media equals the democratization of authority. That it challenges the curator, and makes them less valuable.” I think just the opposite is true. We have more content available to us than at any point in history, probably in the combined total of historical art. We need better filters, and even smarter curators.
• Even the most technologically savvy institutions will be fortresses. The generation of up-and-coming artists will always rebel against those in “authority.” But an individual artist now has the ability to become famous without those institutions, in large part through their personal relationship with a mass audience via social media and technology.
• I asked how the panel thought that art, the artistic process, or artists themselves were changing based on these new digital delivery systems. Didn’t really get an answer to that one. I’m curious what others think.
• And a final kind of brilliant quote from Rich, “Ten years ago we couldn’t have envisioned what we are doing now. We were scared of the wrong things.” So? Learn everything you can about what’s happening now, and in the near future, but don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Be adaptable.

New Media. Social Media. Interactive Media.

There was a collaborative powerpoint, and a great must reads list (hey! I think I recognize someone listed) by Brian Reich of little m media, Laura Goetsch, of TimeLine Theatre, and Jeff Inscho of the Mattress Factory.

• The standards we judge ourselves against are crazy! Nike got 15 million views in the first 10 days for their Write the Future YouTube video. They weren’t an official sponsor or advertiser for the World Cup, but it’s Nike FTW. But wait, what theatre company would ever think of comparing themselves to Nike? Why not use our own industry benchmarks?
• Sure, there’s a cost to social media. But there’s also the cost of doing nothing. Or the cost of doing the wrong thing.
• Everyone wants to talk about themselves. Organizations, and audiences alike. See the tension? Orgs should spend less time talking about themselves, and give greater power over to their fans. Also, the totality of those fans’ experience at the theatre is YOUR problem. From buying tickets on an affiliate’s website, to parking, to the ushers.
• Brian made a pitch for orgs to stop producing kitchy tote bags with their logo plastered all over them. Depending on the logo, I disagree. Toting a tote with those lowercase npr letter blocks says something about the wearer, and more often than not, that’s exactly why their carrying it. Strand Books does this better than anyone I know. When I see someone using a Strand tote in NYC, it’s old hat, but when I see someone in Texas, my heart swells with pride that I’ve found a like-minded soul. Threadless also does an awesome job of empowering their community to spot their logo in the wild.
• Mattress Factory. Period. Full Stop. Whoa. Jeff was dropping QR Code verbiage, iPhone apps, and a handful of other cool initiatives they’ve deemed Friendship 2.0. Those are all totally cool, but I was so much more impressed with my G20–a platform they created for the community of Pittsburgh to crowdsource cool content in the months leading up to the event last year. They have a tiny logo on the site, otherwise, Mattress Factory simply built a platform for other folks ot use as they please. And it looks damn good. It’s an awe-inspiring example of an arts institution becoming a community resource center. Another cool tidbit Jeff let slip, “We don’t pay for any of our technology, it’s all strategic partnerships with great local companies.”
• There was a question posed by an audience member about how to get found online. The team missed a great opportunity to talk about SEO. It’s not snake oil, it’s not even all that mysterious. It’s like saying if you’re art is good enough, people will just show up. If that were the case, we wouldn’t need marketing departments. Think of SEO as marketing for your marketing. I’ll be talking more about this next week.

The New Arts Critic

Group discussion moderated by Doug McLennan of ArtsJournal. There were many more questions raised than conclusions arrived at during the discussion, mirroring I suppose the typical role of the critic.

• There are new models for supporting arts critics: from a critic in residence, to a collective of arts orgs funding a single critic, to a co-op of critics supporting each other. None solve all of the conflicts of interest/issues of the past.
• Who’s responsibility is it to prepare the audience for the artistic process? Should they need preparation?
• Critics can be filters. Every critic will have a point of view through which they decide to include/exclude certain topics or information. ArtsJournal does this great, specific to traditional (print) media sources. Who’s going to fill this function for the many great arts blogs out there? The more blogs I add to my RSS feed, the more aware I become of the multiple layers of filters on the interwebs. I used to read the NY Times, then I realized that the Daily Beast offered quicker, more diverse summaries of news items; then I realized more often than not Daily Beast is stealing Gawker content and cutting the snark; then I discovered that Gawker was actually sourcing content from BoingBoing, one of the oldest blogs on the internet; and I’m finally starting to pay attention to the folks that feed BoingBoing. Especially with an RSS feed that shows date & time of stories, it’s become fascinating to track stories as they move from the far corners of the web, to the center of traditional media. We need more layers of filters for arts stories. Who’s going to step up to fill the void?
• Doug pointed us all towards a few cool sources for info, the USC Annenberg School Center for the Digital Future, the Indianapolis Arts Museum dashboard of key stats, and the Radically Transparent book.

Arts Bloggers

A panel of Graham Dunstan of Americans for the Arts, Chad Bauman of Arena Stage, Barry Hessenius of Barry’s blog, and Gary Steuer of Philadelphia’s Office of Arts, Culture, and Creative Economy.

• Readers like personal content. But get too personal, and we’re back in the land of LiveJournal. Barry mentioned his most commented on post ever was the unfortunate death of his dog-that he was so touched, but also surprised, at the level of interest that post generated. Ironically, I can’t find it to link to, but we’ll get back to that issue in a moment. But in general, 9 comments per 2,000 readers seems common among the panel.
• Chad moved the Arena Stage blog from the responsibility of the communications office, to the artistic department. Blogging isn’t about pushing out information–it’s about engaging with your community about the topics you and they are most passionate about (hear hear!). He also urged us to think about the ‘deeper conflict’ for every blog post. I wanted to point out this doesn’t exactly apply to every kind of blog, but it’s a good suggestion in theory. Also, better to post irregularly with compelling content, than fluff once a week.
• As has been pointed out by many, numbered lists work well. I’ve tried this two times, neither were particularly effective. As with most strategies, I suppose it’s all contextual.
• Nobody’s measuring their personal blog (basically). I was a little surprised by this, but then, I’m a girl driven by numbers. I agree that pageviews and RSS subs are pretty rough metrics, and I’m the last one to live and die by numbers that don’t mean anything. But there are measures of success that you could track over time, that might give you insight into the folks who land on your site. Like, how did they land there (via organic search? what were the key search terms? via referrals from another site? who are those like minded individuals who are linking to you? should you be reading their blog?), and how much time did they spend there (were they clicking through to other pages, or did they grab & go?), and what’s the balance between new readers discovering your brilliance versus long-time readers compelled by your brilliance to keep returning week after week. On the one hand, there’s as many means to an end as there are end goals. And certainly, if you’re not interested in making changes to your process or your product based on the numbers, then there’s no use wasting your time measuring. And in a world of never-enough-time, by all means, focus more on content than distribution. Just interesting to note the profession, and assertion, that the numbers don’t really matter.
• Finally, there was a plug for more video content, for which I’m still uncertain. Everyone says it drives huge pageviews, this is the way of the future, etc etc. But, I’m a scanner, and I can’t easily scan video. I’m too inpatient for voicemail, I rarely make it through more than the first ten seconds of a video of a talking head. But if video is your thing, then Gary Vaynerchuck is your guy.

Branding Yourself Through Technology and Social Media

And then there was us. Ian and I co-chaired a rotating roundtable discussion for 4 hours. It felt kind of like an oral exam on all things tech-related, so I was fairly exhausted by the end. I was fascinated by the questions folks asked us, like:

• What should we do with social media when working with middle & high school kids?
• How do we promote a short term event?
• What’s the difference between an institutional and a personal voice?
• What’s UStream? What’s RSS? What’s Packratius?
• How do I find a job using social media?
• How do I find creative/technology folks?

So that’s the Half Century Summit. Robert Redford, Arianna Huffington, and Rocco gave keynote speeches. The NYNeoFuturists mocked and entertained us. There was much to tweet about. So are we in the social media bubble? Probably. There’s a lot to talk about. And things change quickly. And it holds great hope for the future. But when will the (interest) bubble burst?

Or so implied Jonah Lehrer (and if you just clicked through, yes, he really was that adorable), at last week’s TCG Conference in Chicago. The NPAC blog recaps Jonah’s story nicely:

In his talk, he shared scientific anecdotes about how certain kinds of complexity and heterogeneity [...]]]>

Or so implied Jonah Lehrer (and if you just clicked through, yes, he really was that adorable), at last week’s TCG Conference in Chicago. The NPAC blog recaps Jonah’s story nicely:

In his talk, he shared scientific anecdotes about how certain kinds of complexity and heterogeneity in systems can lead to unexpected creativity.  One such story was about the invention of the Swiffer disposable mop, which initially started out as an assignment to invent a better floor cleaning liquid.  However, after some “out of the box” research, the design team arrived at the realization that it was the mop itself that was the real problem. He also discussed research that linked the higher than normal percentage of patents generated by the citizens of San Francisco to urban density and how much people bumped into each other on the street.

I’m inclined to totally agree. The TCG conference was great at helping me reconnect with old friends, colleagues, and classmates. And I listened in on some really thoughtful discussions about the theatre education assessment model, what the next generation of theatre makers hopes for the future, and the challenges managing directors were struggling with at their $5 million + theatres. Sure, I was bummed the Art of Pricing didn’t cover nearly as many interesting points of view as the many conversations here, and here, and of course here (although admittedly I had to leave after the first 1.5 hours). But more and more it’s beginning to feel like if we don’t get more folks like Jonah to take part in our industry wide dialogues about how to make real change, we’ll just continue talking in circles. Of course, this isn’t endemic to just theatre conferences; I also had the opportunity to attend SXSWi this year and there were plenty of complaints.  On the other hand, I don’t think unconferences work all that well, nor did the giant combined NPAC conference in 2008, and you’ve already heard some of my frustration about the Twitter echochamber.

So yes, a new mop will be necessary to figure out new sustainable business models for the theatre (because you know there won’t be just one, right?). But that might mean we need a new mop for discussing the possibilities of a new mop too. Confused yet?

I don’t have all the answers, I don’t even have many suggestions. But I know there’s a lot more folks than me doing cool research about the theatre, and its many challenges. I didn’t hear from (m)any of them at the conference. Overall, I wish there were more (quick!) case studies of successes and failures, more outside voices brought in, more teaching and less meandering discussions. Conference 2.0 was a huge leap forward; next year, I hope the conversations start even earlier. Oh yeah, and the next time anyone, anywhere, for any reason, considers hosting a learning event without free wireless internet available, remember that you’re losing out on the awesome power of live blogging which will record key insights (for historical posterity), diversify the voices “in the room” (by opening up the conversation in real time to those who couldn’t pay to be there), and generate great buzz.

We do it for free because we love you, if only you’d give us wifi.

View more presentations from Devon Smith.

On Sunday, I’m leading 3 back to back forty-minute roundtable discussions on personal branding for Career 360 at the Americans for the Arts Half Century Summit. I’m [...]]]>

On Sunday, I’m leading 3 back to back forty-minute roundtable discussions on personal branding for Career 360 at the Americans for the Arts Half Century Summit. I’m not allowed any AV, but since business school taught me to think in PowerPoint (and because it’s nice to be able to point folks in the room towards an on-line take away), I whipped up this little ditty. I decided to focus on the dirty little secrets that social media mavens sometimes sweep under the rug, in hopes that it inspires a good Q&A. What do you think?

The Theatre Communications Group 2010 National Conference wrapped up last night. I heard word it was the largest in the conference’s history, clocking in at just under 1,000 attendees. A sizable chunk of those folks live tweeted several breakout sessions, mostly under the #TCG2010 moniker.  My presentation, Social Media Strategy: [...]]]>

The Theatre Communications Group 2010 National Conference wrapped up last night. I heard word it was the largest in the conference’s history, clocking in at just under 1,000 attendees. A sizable chunk of those folks live tweeted several breakout sessions, mostly under the #TCG2010 moniker.  My presentation, Social Media Strategy: Why ROI Isn’t Enough went quite well. I’ve received so much great input from folks over the past four months about what I should talk about, and was overwhelmed with gratitude from the many good luck emails in the days leading up to my presentation. So without further ado, for those of you who couldn’t be with us in person, and may not have caught the original tweeted link, here goes nothing:

You can also check out the live tweeting commentary. A few folks requested my notes, since I rattled off a bunch more stats.

Shortly after my presentation, my interview podcast with Technology in the Arts also went live! It in, I discuss the most significant findings of my social media research for theatres.

Speaking of, now I’m off to gather my thoughts on speaking at Americans for the Arts next weekend in Baltimore about Branding Yourself Through Social Media with the estimable Ian David Moss.

Possibly related posts:

1. Theatre & Social Media in 2009
2. A Social Media Measurement Plan
3. Social Media Strategy Recommendations for 2010
4. What do YOU want to know about Theatre and Social Media?

I’m putting the final touches on my TCG Conference presentation, and realizing that as usual, I have way too much ground to try to cover in 1.5 hours. Problem is, I fly off for Chicago in T-minus 9 minutes; well, that’s when my cab is arriving to begin my car > train [...]]]>

I’m putting the final touches on my TCG Conference presentation, and realizing that as usual, I have way too much ground to try to cover in 1.5 hours. Problem is, I fly off for Chicago in T-minus 9 minutes; well, that’s when my cab is arriving to begin my car > train > bus > airplane > train > bus journey to the doorstep of About Face Theatre in which I will pick up keys to the apartment I’m staying in this week. Whew.

So here’s the scoop: I need your help in narrowing down what the most important issues are to be addressing in this presentation. Leave a comment on this post, or tweet using the #tcgsocmed tag. The groundrules:

Time: Friday 2:00-3:30pm (CST) including a Q&A (I thought I’d try to leave 20-30 minutes for Q&A, but maybe that’s too aggressive?).

Description: Social Media Strategy: Why ROI Isn’t Enough. You’ve got an active Facebook fan page, a rabid Twitter following, and a kick ass website. Now what? Once you’ve started experimenting, how do you know when you’ve hit upon something that works? How do you measure success? What’s the true impact of your social media strategy? Can you start scaling back other marketing efforts now that you’ve got all of these engaged fans? Why might you want to take social media beyond the marketing department? Where can you find other social media tools and resources on the web? Join us for a practical discussion on framing a robust social media strategy, deciding what to measure, learning about what’s next in this quickly changing field, and sharing with colleagues from across the country about what’s working and what needs a new solution.

Documents: I already shared 3 older reports on the spiffy conference 2.0 website that TCG is rocking. The original LORT & Social Media study that attracted so much attention in the first place, plus the Yale Rep Social Media Strategy presentation, and the Vocalo Social Media Strategy presentation. But of course, who knows how many folks will have read any of those. I’m trying not to repeat most of what I said in those reports, but instead try to pull out the few key highlights.

What I’ve got at my disposal: I’ve collected pretty comprehensive data on all 475 TCG theatres use of Facebook and Twitter. I’ve got some data about YouTube and Foursquare (basically from the original LORT study), but I hope to do a bit of data collection in the next few days.

Here’s the outline of the presentation so far:

1. Social Media: Why it Matters
2. If you do nothing else, do this
3. Facebook
   1. General demographics & recent news
   2. TCG & Facebook
   3. Case study of a theatre using Facebook
   4. Metrics and Tools
4. Twitter
   1. General demographics & recent news
   2. TCG & Twitter
   3. Case study of a theatre using Twitter
   4. Metrics & Tools
5. YouTube
   1. General demographics & recent news
   2. LORT & YouTube
   3. Case study of a theatre using YouTube
   4. Metrics & Tools
6. Foursquare
7. Yelp
8. MySpace
9. Flickr
10. Blogs
11. Staffing for Social Media
12. Resources to use
13. The Future of Social Media

Ok. A horn is honking. I’m off and running. Leave a comment or tweet to your heart’s content (#tcgsocmed) letting me know what I should focus on, what other data I should have collected, what your burning questions are, what you think everyone should know about theatre & social media.

Possibly related posts:

1. Theatre & Social Media: TCG 2010
2. Theatre & Social Media in 2009
3. Social Media Strategy Recommendations for 2010
4. A Social Media Measurement Plan