Six months ago I got a call from one of my former classmates, Frances Black, asking me to be the project manager for “a social networking site for off Broadway theatre companies in collaboration with [...]]]>

Six months ago I got a call from one of my former classmates, Frances Black, asking me to be the project manager for “a social networking site for off Broadway theatre companies in collaboration with A.R.T./New York and TheaterMania.” That sounded pretty interesting, but I was in the middle of this, so I reluctantly turned the opportunity down. Two months later she called back, “Pretty please?” Ok, ok, who am I to turn a chance like that to actually practice what I preach–social media for the theatre.

And thus began my contract with the New York Theatre Network:

The New York Theatre Network is your hub for what’s happening on New York City stages. From the hot new company you’ve never heard of, to the theatre you’ve been subscribing to for years, NYTN is the place to find out what’s coming up, who’s tweeting ticket discounts, and which theatre company makes the best YouTube videos. Sign in with Facebook to see what recent shows your friends liked. Be in the know.

In the first few months, I had an awesome partner, Meghan Pressman–together we created a marketing strategy plan and an education strategy plan. She did 95% of the heavy lifting for these plans. Which, of course, as soon as the project began, we had to promptly throw out the window.

MARKETING

In the end, we chose 3 print publications, 7 websites, Facebook, and Google, to run an ad campaign over the course of 4 weeks. Each ad has its own tagline, and (we hope!) the graphics tie together the whole campaign. Look out for all the ads on your local newsstands, website browsings, and theatre-lobby-wanderings.

I’m pretty stoked that we have a few weeks to experiment with different Facebook & Google ads. I just wish it were that easy to tailor all those other digital ads. We’ve even tried to space out our print ads to get a better sense of CPA, because the CPM‘s are maddeningly different between publications. And you know what else is maddeningly different? How to submit the dang ads. Digital portals, generic email addresses, account rep’s, messenger service. Somebody should really consolidate that.

We also hired a great PR firm, AMP3 PR who have a background in launching new websites, and an awesome graphic designer, Maggie Elliot, who has a background in coming through FTW on tight deadlines, vague instruction, and no budget (she also does all the creative for Yale Rep). There’s been much debate about whether PRNewswire or PRWeb would be the best venue of choice for our press release. And I learned a valuable lesson in paying for backlinks: the day before our press release went live, the phrase “New York Theatre Network” yielded just 3 results on Google (ouch). The day after: over 15,000. Talk about SEO. And we’ve already begun to generate some great press:

• Clyde Fitch Report, A.R.T./New York Joins Social Media Swim
• Steve on Broadway, The Social Network
• Independent Media Magazine, Theatre Social Networking Site Launching
• Encore Magazine, Theatre Arts in a New Light

And we continue to run a Twitter profile, though not a Facebook page. Both were quite difficult decisions to make; knowing that my time with A.R.T./New York is limited, and there simply aren’t spare minds & hands around the office to take on more work. Ginny Louloudes has been a trouper learning to tweet though! And if wishing made it so, we would have had a Foursquare badge. Theatre Nerd anyone? (maybe like the little guy with the glasses?)

EDUCATION

Surveys are tricky–especially with a finite population and limited response rates. The first survey we did about A.R.T./New York member theatre’s experience with, and comfort with, social media implied they were rolling along their merry way, practically headed towards Foursquare nirvana. I got all freaked out, demanded impossible features from our tech team at TheaterMania for the nytn.org site, and began planning an ambitiously advanced social media curriculum. Then we did another survey about what in particular member theatres wanted to learn about social media, and heard things like, “How do I start a Facebook page?” and “Where can I list my show online?” Hmm…there seems to be a disconnect here. In the end, we tried to plan a mix of workshops & informal discussions to get the ball rolling. And we were lucky to get:

1. Dave Charest to teach Demystifying Social Media
2. Erica McLaughlin to teach Efficiently Using Social Media
3. Sarah Lasley to teach Creating Videos for YouTube
4. Reva Cooper to teach Listings that Work
5. Dennis Baker to teach Increasing Traffic with SEO
6. Me (less lucky, more like stuck with me) to teach Social Media Strategic Planning

And I facilitated weekly round table discussions Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Blogging. Including some nifty new research on them all, where I tried to answer:

• Who’s using this platform?
• What are best practices?
• What works best, based on the research?
• What else could we do, if we’re an advanced user?
• Where can we go for further resources?

About 1/4 of all A.R.T./New York member theatres attended one of these education events, many of them attending multiple events with multiple staff members.We follow up each of the workshops with an online survey asking attendees about:

• What they expected to learn
• What they actually learned
• What they thought of the instructor’s knowledge & engagement
• If they expect to actually use what they learned at their theatre
• Convenience with the logistics
• If their overall expectations were met

We’re also totally grateful for the Flip Video Spotlight for Good program for sponsoring our purchase of technology to video tape the workshops, and lend out the flip cams to member theatres for their own use.

TECHNOLOGY

TheaterMania are the great folks behind the actual nytn.org site design & architecture. Big shout out to Dave Stanke, John Issendorf, and Ed Highfield for putting up with my endless requests for new features, submitting countless bug reports, and general needling about the 20 things that must be fixed right now. It was a huge learning experience for the A.R.T./New York team about the intricacies of launching a new website. We navigated through internal beta to private beta, to our launch of public beta today. I’ve been amazed at our frequent use of off-the-shelf products: the site itself is built on top of a wordpress platform, a Facebook open graph app powers our recommendation engine, a Google form serves as our bug report tracking, and we’ve got a Gmail support email.

We’ve written what feels like reams of website copy. Easy to forget that every single word on a website has to come from somebody’s mind/fingers, and get through the approval process of 2 organizations.

We’ve also been able to generate *tons* of support documentation: from screencasts to PDF’ed tutorials to FAQ’s. And we’ve brainstormed wishlists like:

• What if every theatre could link to as many of their social media profiles as they wanted on their NYTN page?
• What if the NYTN page promoted upcoming shows just like Hulu?
• What if it was as easy to search for a theatre company as it is to scroll through Google Images?
• What if we had faceted search like MenuPages?
• What if we integrated with Talkbackr?
• What if our Dashboard was the best of Postling and Flowtown?

And a whole list too long to enumerate here.

Every week, we track bugs submitted/fixed, member sign ups, and how many of each type of content members are updating. None of this is automated yet, so it’s a lot of me and Rebecca Phillips counting things by hand.

The last tricky thing we’ve yet to solve is WTF should go in our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use. We’ve tried compare/contrasting TheaterMania, HuffingtonPost, IMDB, BoingBoing, and TrustE, to no avail. I’m too stubborn to simply copy & paste someone else’s. I don’t like any of the templates out there. On the one hand, we don’t actually have control over much of the content posted on the NYTN site–it mostly belongs to the member theatres. And we want people to share/repurpose that content at will, and make it as easy/free of legal jargon as possible to allow them to do so. Le sigh.

INTERNAL COMMUNICATION

Out of all of my NYTN responsibilities, this one really snuck up on me. There’s been a pretty steady onslaught of emails to write every:

• Monday: Workshop & roundtable surveys (and then synthesizing the findings, and sending final reports on each to my boss)
• Tuesday: Staff updates (more on these in a moment)
• Wednesday: Promotion of upcoming workshop & roundtable
• Thursday: A.R.T./New York member newsletter updates about NYTN
• Friday: Reminder to A.R.T./New York member theatres who haven’t yet completed their NYTN profile

The staff updates, although admittedly a pain, provided a great opportunity to figure out: what are we measuring?? On Twitter, on our website, on our progress towards a whole set of goals & timelines. Check it out for yourself to see where we landed.

We also made a presentation to the board (and I learned keynote!).

LAUNCH

So that’s it. We’re launched. I’m hanging around for another week or so to try to optimize the digital ad campaigns, get the budget in order, write up a final report, and teach that final workshop. For the past three months, I’ve learned how to be a Product Manager, Brand Manager, Copy Writer, Project Manager, Educator, and Social Media Strategist. I’ve got the financial resources of a nonprofit, the growth goals of a social network, and the manpower of a start up. It’s been a wild ride. And the reason postings have been a little light on 24 Usable Hours. As I pack up to leave for Bangkok, expect postings to return to their regular schedule.

So if you haven’t already, won’t you visit the site?

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; [...]]]>

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

It’s been 44 days since my last post. Oops. After four months of posting about twice a week, suddenly I just dropped off the face of the earth (at least in terms of blogging). Sorry about that.

First there [...]]]>

It’s been 44 days since my last post. Oops. After four months of posting about twice a week, suddenly I just dropped off the face of the earth (at least in terms of blogging). Sorry about that.

First there was spring break:

• I premiered my first (almost full length) play at Yale Cabaret. It’s called Radio Station, it was a hard and heartbreaking and thrilling and terrifying experience. Buy me a beer and I’ll tell you about it sometime.
• I spent a week in LA meeting with senior executives at ABC, NBC, Fox, Warner Bros, Focus Features, Disney, Activision Blizzard, and ICM to talk about the future of the entertainment business. I also needed to catch up with old friends, all trying to “make it big,” or at least make it through next week. They were playwrights, and actors, and directors, and agents, and PAs, and everything in between, and they were all working their ass off in pursuit of great art.
• I spent a week in Peru with my fabulous playwright friend Gonzalo Rodriguez Risco traveling between his hometown of Lima and his favorite vacationing spot Cusco (11,000 feet above sea level). We ate incredible ceviche, went to see Peruvian theatre, hiked ancient Incan ruins, and imbibed way too many Pisco Sours. He was an absolute doll to put up with me for a week, and I can’t wait till Machu Picchu opens back up and I have an excuse to return. I also celebrated visiting my 5th continent in just over a year!
• I spent a week in my hometown of Austin Texas for SXSW. Since I’m a starving student, and apparently a glutton for punishment, I decided to volunteer 50 hours during the music festival so that I could attend the film festival and interactive conference for free.  I went to panels about How to Make a Viral Video (in which we tried to actually make a viral video), Donations 2.0 (and got to finally meet the infamous Beth Kanter), Playing with Place: Location Based Games and Services (where I ran into my old colleague Rob Bole, tirelessly advocating for the future of public media), Rules of Brand Fiction: Twittering MadMen (which was brilliant), Way Cool Maps: Beyond Simple Mashups (where I was in way over my head technically, but had the most awsome down to earth presenter), Design for Big Surfaces (where they showed that those cool scenes from Minority Report are actually viable). I saw luminaries like Ev Williams, Gary Vaynerchuck, Randi Zuckerberg, Pete Cashmore, and Robert Scoble speak. I went to premieres of awsome indie movies like Cherry, The Runaways, and Skateland. I played roadie for Jakob Dylan (that guy Bob’s son), Neko Case, and two dozen other rad artists. I’ve got a few half written posts about the whole experience. Until I get my act together, check out all the SXSW slideshow presentations on Slideshare.

I came home for four days of school, and then off again to the Humana Festival! I fell in love with Fissures (which smacks you in the forehead with a brilliant ending), Ground (which should be in every regional theatre in America), and Heist (best work I’ve ever seen out of the A/I company, and one hell of a night by the inestimable Sean Daniels). And I can’t help but give props to home town heroes, the Rude Mechs. I also snuck in a #2amt tweet up of 2 with the always stellar David Loehr.

That gets us to about ten days ago. I’m exhausted just remembering it all. But I’ve also got a full time job, and a full time course load to pack in there. I’m currently in the middle of:

• Designing a dashboard of key institutional metrics for Yale School of Drama/Yale Repertory Theatre
• Tracking the changing gender trends of managing directors in TCG theatres since 1970
• Creating a regression model that shows cause and effects (or at least correlations) of TCG theatres’ expansion of seating capacity over the past 40 years
• Expanding my original LORT social media study to include all 473 (!) TCG theatres
• Designing and teaching hands-on workshops for the staff of Yale Rep about ‘How to Facebook and Tweet’
• Building a social media strategy for Vocalo (the so-called, ‘YouTube of Radio’)
• Finishing the 9th draft, 3 years later, of my masters thesis: Strategic Priorities in the Effective Use of Technology at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. It’s quite a mouthful.
• Writing a fully functional business plan for opening an employment services agency in Kabul Afghanistan

That last one came out of nowhere, right? Ah, the joys of business school.

And I’m graduating. Classes end in 3 weeks. Graduation is in 41 days. I don’t have a job. So I’ve been grabbing every opportunity possible to get my name out in the field. And the good news is, things are finally coming together.

• I’m presenting my research at the TCG Conference in June!
• The following weekend, I’ll be at the American for the Arts conference, co-leading a roundtable discussion on Branding Yourself through Technology and Social Media with my former classmate Ian Moss, without whom which I probably never would have contemplated blogging in the first place.
• I’ve gotten requests for interviews from both Theater Magazine and Southern Theatre Magazine to discuss the future of social media in the theatre.

There’s also this hilarious/exhausting tradition at SOM called April Foolery in which there is a school wide party planned for every night of April, for all 400 students. We’ve got first year-versus-second year hockey games, a fundraiser auction that pays for all the MBAs working in non profit internships, easter egg hunts, bloody mary brunches, BBQ’s on East Rock Park, and all sorts of messy karayoke and trivia madness.

But on top of all that, I’ve got to

• Lead 2 extracurricular clubs at the School of Management
• Fulfill all of my responsibilities as a teaching fellow for the Innovator course at SOM with 230 first years
• Interview 3 prospective SOM applicants a week for the Admissions office
• Mentor first years pursuing careers in media and entertainment
• Show up to five classes a week prepared to intelligently debate with the best and brightest minds in the country
• Wrap up my job as Director of Research and Analysis at Yale Rep
• Find a freaking job
• Pay all my bills

It’s that last one I’m the worst at. My electricity got shut off this week because I’m two months behind on my bills. Not that I don’t have the cash (although I’m not exactly swimming in that either), but because I haven’t opened my mail in two months. So it might not surprise you that I fell ill this past week and couldn’t get out of bed for 3 days. I’m in full recovery mode now, holed up at my favorite coffee shop, trying to bust through this post, answer the 119 emails I’m behind on, and work on all that other stuff mentioned above.

So, forgive my absence the past month. It’s been a busy one. But I haven’t forgotten about you. In fact, I sat straight up in bed at 6am this morning, knowing that I just HAD to write a post about what Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution can teach us about actively participating in our own communities. I already have the perfect headline: The Naked Artist. Now is that link bait or what?

Possibly related posts:

1. Big News: Devon Gets a Real Job

I recently made a bet with a friend of mine that who ever snags a presenting role at the TED Talks first, has to buy the other one a ticket to the most [...]]]>

I recently made a bet with a friend of mine that who ever snags a presenting role at the TED Talks first, has to buy the other one a ticket to the most expensive conference ever. Ever since I worked for Brian Greene, superstring demigod and frequent TEDster, it’s been my dream to be accomplished enough to get selected as a presenter. TED is all about gathering the brightest minds from across the globe to discuss “ideas worth spreading.” I’m hoping this is the first step towards that goal.

The TCG national conference is coming up in June, and our managing director, Vicki Nolan, has asked me to propose a break out session topic based on my social media strategy research. While I’ve given an endless succession of presentations for work and class (4 degrees and counting), I’ve never presented at a national conference. The theme of this year’s TCG conference is “Ideas into Action,” so I’d like to talk more about the practical application of my somewhat theoretical research. But trying to pitch what I’d be speaking about four months from now in an industry that changes daily is proving to be a challenge. So I need your help! Here’s what I’m thinking:

Session Title: Social Media Strategy: Why ROI Isn’t Enough

Session Description:
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.

Learning Objectives:

1. Best practices for developing a social media strategy.
2. Key benchmarks for who’s doing what in the field.
3. Meaningful metrics and the tools to capture and analyze them.

Following this session, participants should have a new method for crafting a social media strategy, whether in marketing, fundraising, collaboration, or beyond.  They will have the tools to benchmark their peers, analyze the customer segment they’re trying to reach, formulate a strategic plan, and select appropriately measurable outcomes.

Handouts:

1. Social Media in the Theatre, 2009.
2. Social Media Strategy.
3. Additional material from my blog, 24 Usable Hours.

In particular, I plan to update the social media field research to include non-LORT theatres, and hope to bring up the issues and ideas in social media that are most pressing as of June 2010.

Presenter Biography:
Devon Smith is a recent graduate of Yale School of Drama’s Theatre Management MFA, and Yale School of Management’s MBA programs. She has worked for Yale Repertory Theatre as their Director of Research and Analysis, and as the Associate Director of Marketing; with Actors Theatre of Louisville’s Managing Director to help articulate their long range plan, for the World Science Festival’s corporate relations department, for Roundabout Theatre’s major gifts program, and at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, helping to devise a business plan for $500 million in project expenses, as well as for other theatre and dance companies in New York City, Seattle, Los Angeles, and South Carolina.  She regularly blogs about her research on social media in the theatre at 24 Usable Hours.

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Is this a session you’d want to go to? Are there new or different topics I should be addressing? Are you totally bored to tears by my descriptions? I’ve helped you a few times before, right? Now it’s your turn!

via ToniVC's photostream

There’s a few posts I’ve been wanting to write lately…