Rebecca Krause-Hardie

Who has the most Facebook Fans? A few stats.

I saw a tweet yesterday from @kanter (Beth Kanter) retweeting a question from @farra (Farra Trompeter) asking how to find out how many facebook fans a NPO has...

I was curious myself, and so did a little google search and found that this link would list the NPO's  in order of number of fans (mostly in order). Then I wondered about which arts groups have the most fans. Maybe there is an easier way, but I found myself clicking 'next' for page after page, sort of like putting nickels into a slot machine.... who was going to win.  It was addictive. 

I think the first arts group showed up on page 76 of the search in the Non-Profit category.  It occurred to me that some fan pages got started before the 'non-profit' option was set up, and others might simply have chosen other ways to describe themselves. 

So I did further searches, on 'orchestra', 'symphony', 'museums' and finally 'places'

....and the Unofficial results are in!  

Fans as of 11:30 PM Nov 20, 2009  (I know I should have been sleeping not clicking)

Museum Types

Museum of Modern Art             190,421     (WOW!)
Metropolitan Museum Art          89,896
Le Louvre                                 58,071
Design Museum                         49,405
Guggenheim                             38,335
Monterey Bay Aquarium            36,880
Smithsonian                              34,890
Art Institute Chicago                 23,650 
City Museum of St. Louis           22,948
Tennessee Aquarium                  21,370
Getty                                       18,850
Salvidor Dali Museum                17,134
Victoria & Albert                      16,867
Tate                                         15,743
SFMoma                                    14,543
DIA                                           14,001
Whitney                                    13,470                                             
MFA, Boston                              12,140
Amer Museum Natural History    11,941
Louisiana Museum Modern Art    11,720
Brooklyn Museum                        9,485
Children's Museum                       9,010

Performing Arts Types

Metropolitan Opera                   26,142
Berlin Philharmonic                   23,835
Sydney Opera House                  20,010
Royal Opera House                    18,115
Chicago Symphony                    14,107
New York Philharmonic              12,292
New York City Ballet                  10,301
London Symphony                       9,298
Stratford Shakespeare                 8,892
Oregon Shakespeare                    8,462
Vienna Philharmonic                    5,078
Boston Symphony                        4,870
San Francisco Symphony              4,073

There is a good possibility I may have missed someone, as I was getting a bit click happy, but interesting results never-the-less.

BUT WHAT DOES IT MEAN?

I can see that I have my next interviews lining up - lots of questions to ask.

• Does more fans mean anything?
• Does more fans translate into greater attendance, dollars raised, participation?
• Can little organizations have lots of fans?
• What's better - more fans, or deeper connections with fewer fans?

What other questions should I ask when I interview all these amazing people in these orgs?

For example,

• Le Louvre has ZERO updates from them listed on their page. Build it and they will come?
• Do places like the Sydney Opera House have so many fans just because its a cool building or because they are doing something special to engage with their audience?

PS -  Great post from Geoff Livingston about "What 100K followers [fans] gets you".

In the meanwhile we have one little baseline stat for the arts. Where do you fit in?

London Symphony 'Secrets' from Jo Johnson

 

Wow! You have over 9000 FB fans!  How did you do that?  What's the secret sauce?

"First thing to say is that being the LSO is our greatest strength! We're lucky to already have a big profile all over the world, what we call the Star Wars Effect - it's amazing how many people know us just through that! We've been on The Simpsons and Family Guy, which I think is proof that we've made it in the world of popular culture. And we do an awful lot of touring, which takes our name out of the teeny island of Great Britain much more than lots of other orchestras.

So when it comes to social networking we're not really starting from scratch. People talk about us a lot online (recordings they like, concerts they've been to), and it's just a short step for people to find us within the now all-pervasive Facebook. At the beginning we did a little promotion for it among our existing web audiences, but after that we've let it grow itself. Facebook is really geared towards that anyway, since whenever you join something it's published in your friends' news feeds, and that creates the viral effect.

I think the key (your 'secret sauce'!) to its continuing success - we have a very active page and that in itself makes it an attractive page to join - is that we've made a very clear decision to NOT use it for marketing. We consider that to be a massive turn off. People do not use social sites to be marketed at, they use them for friendship and keeping in touch. Yes we occasionally throw in a bit of promotion for a concert or CD, but largely we simply let people know about what we are doing and where. We're never short of things to say, since the LSO is never ever (or very rarely) not working in some capacity! And lastly, we try to reply to every post we get, and to do so within a couple of hours at the most. No point in doing social networking if you're not going to network with those interested in you, is there!"

Why do you use twitter? 

" Twitter is our newest effort in the social networking area. We joined in January at a time when there was a sudden huge upsurge in usage, which helped us grow our followers (we just passed 6000 a day or two ago) quite quickly. We were unsure at first how best to use it - there were all sorts of experiments around using it during concerts - but what has emerged it that it is simply a tool for conversing with our followers and opening up our world by posting photos and links.

Like Facebook, our strategy is to NOT use it for marketing. I see so many arts organisations just tweeting about their next concert, mostly in corporate language, with a link to buy tickets - that's just very dull. And they are ignoring the fact that most of their followers are most likely not in their vicinity to be able to come to their concerts! What Twitter is good for is slightly quirky, informal conversations. Interesting photos, snippets of backstage news, discussing recordings or soloists with the very people that buy the tickets or CDs... then the occasional piece of promotion doesn't seem quite so offensive!

Then the overall feel of our presence to those following us is relaxed, open, friendly, approachable - that we're an orchestra of passionate individuals that want to engage with people and who appreciate the people who buy the tickets to enable us to keep putting on our high quality concerts."


How much time do you and other staff put into your social media activities?

"Probably a bit more than I should! Not really in office time - I have a wide-ranging role which includes looking after our main website, e-marketing, text messaging, film-making and general marketing duties which takes up a lot of time - so I tend to find myself tweeting and Facebooking from home, which is probably really unhealthy! It's addictive, I love chatting to people who are so interested and passionate about the LSO.

In the office I usually start the day with a round of updating each site (we're in Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and YouTube), and then occasionally drop in throughout the day for 5 mins at a time to check any responses and answer them. I also keep an eye on others' activity on Twitter in case there's something I want to respond to or a conversation I want us to take part in. I'd say that during the day I would spend a total of 30-40 mins on social networks.

My colleague Gavin, who works in our record label LSO Live, is also involved in our social network presences, and there's a few players that get involved, mostly when they're out on tour or when they remember!"

Do you have a strategy or plan or policy (written or otherwise?)     

"We started out without anything official written down - Facebook was the first, and it was a bit of an experiment. When it started to grow and Gavin came on board with me, we sat down together and talked about what we were doing and how we should try and make it a little more official to satisfy our bosses, who were starting to ask about what we were up to (we didn't ask in the first place... they'd have probably said no!). We wrote a paper on what social media was, how we were using it now and what benefits it has for us. And we set down a few ground rules for ourselves and the players who we were going to ask to take part - like 'remember that you are the LSO and everything you say will be viewed as official', 'no swearing or nudity', 'don't drink and tweet' and 'NO MARKETING!!'."


How much of the success is personality driven? What if a development or finance person was doing this... would it still work?

Ah now, what you're suggesting here is that development and finance people don't have personalities! ;-)

Yes, a lot of the success is down to the personality we've managed to create for the LSO online. But to be honest, that wasn't hard! When Gavin and I are doing the updating from the office we imagine ourselves as the orchestra. What would we say if we were an LSO player and in a rehearsal or out on tour? Office life is fairly boring, other than really select things, and we think what people want to hear is what the Orchestra is doing. So in theory, anyone from the admin staff could do the updating, as long as they were properly briefed as to what to say and how to say it. There are people that are better at it than others of course, so the key is to pick your participants carefully. For example, Gareth Davies, our Principal Flute, has a fantastic way of writing that works so well on our Tour Blog, but other players having the same experiences as him may not be so good, so I tend not to ask them.

I suspect what you're getting at is whether if development and finance tweeted about their own work, would it be as interesting. Probably not! These departments are an essential part of our organisation of course, but they're not so interesting to the public (sorry guys!). When I see people tweeting for arts orgs under that organisation's name, but writing in the first person as if it were their personal account and with their own opinions, or about boring things like staff meetings or IT problems, I wonder what possesses them! Is that the image they want to project? And why?!"

Can you share some key learnings with us? What was something you thought would be a clear winner, and it flopped? What happened that you didn't expect?  

"We haven't had many abject failures I have to say! We've discovered that the things that work best for getting people to comment and Re-Tweet are the quirky things - like a funny photo or video, a vote for what CD to upload next on our Facebook store, or little news items about personalities at the LSO (for example when we appointed our new 21-year-old just-out-of-music-college Principal Trumpet). Sometimes it's the things you least expect that are popular, you never know what might capture people's imaginations!

Something that we learned quite early was to not get involved in arguments from a personal point of view. There was one incident with our Principal Flute Gareth on Twitter, who joined in a discussion on whether Tweeting during a concert is good or bad. He felt that it was bad, and got into a scrap with Greg Sandow, it got heated and, well, I had to step in and censor it. The problem was not that he had the opinion - he has a right to it! - but that the opinion was being communicated on the LSO's account and to the casual viewer would have looked like it was the Orchestra's official line. Because we are all passionate about the LSO, it can be easy to get drawn in, but the place for that is on a personal account."


Do you use any specific ROI metrics?

"The most difficult thing about doing social networking for a company is tracking the results and trying to find quantifiable results to justify spending staff time on it, since much of the content that is produced is not geared to making the sale immediately. But to rely on just these results is a mistake I think - see the final question for an expanded answer.

The tracking that we are able to do is through our Google Analytics on our main website, tracking direct journeys through from social media sites. This was we are able to see that Facebook is the fifth biggest referrer of visitors by income. Not bad! Twitter is much harder to track because of the large variety of thrid party apps that people use, and that don't show up in Google Analytics. We also use the Bit.ly link shortening service which tracks clicks on the links.

As for specific ROI, there's no monetary investment in social media, so measuring return on it isn't possible."

I just read a study that says that Social Media is a 'waste of time' and that there are little quantifiable results like increases in contributions, attendance, or new volunteers.  What do you think? Are they missing something? [btw, here's the link if you want to read it.... ]

"Oh dear! Like the majority of people who commented on the article, I think it completely misses the point. So they've discovered that it doesn't attract volunteers? That's because this is not the right use for social media! It is not a marketing or fundraising tool, it is a communication tool. They seem to have the beginnings of a positive argument in there:

'For them, and indeed anyone else in the nonprofit space asking how to get value from social technologies, now is the time to take a deep breath and reconsider what social technologies can best be used for and what nonprofit executives can reasonably expect from them.'

People really need to think carefully about what they use it for and recalibrate their (and that of their Board's and CEO's) expectations in terms of hard returns. The article is more about fundraising than the area I'm involved in, but the reason behind the usage is the same - to cultivate relationships with the audience and people interested in you, to open up lines of communication and to make yourself a relevant part of their lives. These days marketing communications is a lot about the cumulative effect - decision-making is influenced by many different things, for example a poster, a press ad, a PR article, a radio ad, a brochure through the post, a piece of news delivered via social media. All or some of these may influence the decision to buy a ticket or a CD or make a donation, generally not one alone, and it may be a little while down the road when the trackability has become completely blurred.

And you have the opportunity to create ambassadors for your cause. Enthusing about a charity or arts org to your friends has never been easier! In a world where more people trust their friends' opinions about products and services, this is incredibly valuable.

I'm kind of intruiged about the assertion that social media is "a surprisingly expensive strategy" - what on earth are people spending money on? If you're spending money on social media, you're doing it very wrong! As one of the commenters said, using social media has zero cost, so any gain from it is a 100% gain, financial, profile or otherwise."

Thanks Jo!  You Rock!

About Jo Johnson

After gaining her Batchelor of Music degree from the University of Hull, Jo spent five years working for the BBC, cutting her teeth on the newly emerging novelty, the orchestra website. After four and a half years at the London Symphony Orchestra, running the main website and all sorts of digital activities such as mobile marketing, email marketing, film making and lately social networks, she just about feels she understands what it's all about! Although as soon as that happens, something new comes along and she has to start all over again. She is in demand as a speaker on the subject of orchestras online and is particularly passionate about debunking the myth that social networks are a waste of time.

In her spare time, Jo enjoys playing the violin and viola in orchestras and show bands, and has recently taken up the ukelele. When not at rehearsal she can generally be found in the swimming pool or at the sushi bar.

San Francisco Symphony's Jean Shirk and their Ning Social Network

 

I recently talked with Jean Shirk, Public Relations Manager of the San Francisco Symphony about their social networking community on Ning.    How did they get started?   Jean says that they had been thinking about social media for a number of years, and wondered about the best way to engage with their audience. The SF Symphony established a YouTube channel in 2006 and had created a Facebook page.  They had organized a very successful blogger night in 2007. They wanted to know more about what their audience was doing on-line. 

Media was in a state of upheaval – arts coverage was declining and a lot less space was being devoted to the symphony in newspaper coverage.  The question was:  

“How do we continue to communicate with people interested in us and new people that want to find out more about us?”  

With the help of SF Symphony board member Matt Cohler (from Facebook), and through some surveying last year, they began to think it out and decided on a community site using NING.   

Partnering with NING

The Symphony partnered with NING to set up their community site. As part of that partnership they were advised about design, what features to include, the optimal layout, and how to get things to be robust looking at the very beginning. 

 

Getting Started - The Schedule

They began talking and planning last fall and began construction in January.  The building process took about 2 1/2 months. They launched on May 6, 2009, and now have over 1400 members.  

Participation

 

Cachet  -  The prestige of the Symphony and its existing relationship with its audience has helped to build the community. As one patron said:

“I never joined a social network before. If the San Francisco Symphony is doing it, it must be okay.” 

Popular Features - The most popular sections of the community site include the home page, the member profiles, the contests for Opening Gala and Final Fantasy concert tickets, photos and videos, and then the blogs and discussions.  

Contests –  For example, a contest was created around the popular iPhone SMULE apps  apps that turn your iPhone into an Ocarina or ‘Leaf Trombone’. Among other prizes, winners received tickets to a sold-out concert at which the San Francisco Symphony performed music from the Final Fantasy video game series. The evening included a class on how to play the Ocarina, and the class played music from Final Fantasy together.         

Rich Media Content -  The symphony has tremendous content that populates the site.  Excerpts from their ‘Keeping Score’ television series with PBS, or their Mahler recordings is a key part of enlivening the community experience.

 Musician Participation –  Musicians are encouraged to join, and a number of have done so including guest artists like Yuja Wang and tenor Alfie Boe, appearing at the Symphony’s New Year’s Eve Masquerade Ball. Concertmaster Alexander Barantschik and new SF Symphony Youth Orchestra Music Director Donato Cabrera have done video Q&As for the social network. Principal Bassoon Stephen Paulson is featured in instructional videos made as part of the YouTube Symphony Orchestra project.  

Personal Profiles – Some interesting discoveries for the symphony

• Many people browse and read but don’t join 
• They thought more people would create content, but in fact most people are browsers
• The personal profiles of many people are very in-depth offering much deeper insights into themselves than could ever be gotten in a survey.
• They are offering themselves up in some detail including their favorite composers and concerts. 
• A key part of this is the implicit trust placed on the community.

Community Management

Jean oversees the care and feeding of the community.  She spends about an hour a day uploading content and monitoring.  Jean reviews the profiles of new members, welcomes them to the site, and highlights people and content.   Other important activities that are part of her day include:

• Listening to the community and responding as needed
• Insuring that the community is a civil place to be
• Tracking and removing spam

   

Some Social Media insights from Jean:

“Social Media touches every department in the organization in a way that more traditional media doesn’t.  For example, when single tickets went on sale, it was a huge day.  One person was having trouble on the website and posted a note on twitter about it.  Because we were monitoring Twitter, we were easily able to address the concerns of the ticket buyer. Sometimes you can’t fix it, but you can show you care and are not a mute institution behind an impenetrable wall.”    In addition to their community site, they use Twitter for listening as well as a news channel. They have a YouTube Channel, a rapidly growing Facebook presence, and of course their ongoing “Keeping Score”project, which encompasses a PBS television series, a public radio series, the website www.keepingscore.org, and a national education program for K-12 teachers that helps them integrate classical music into core subjects.  

Links

SF Symphony Social Network http://community.sfsymphony.org
SF Symphony   www.sfsymphony.org
SF Symphony on Facebook  www.facebook.com/sfsymphony
SF Symphony on Twitter: www.twitter.com/sanfransymphony
Jean Shirk on Twitter: www.twitter.com/bean
SF Symphony on YouTube: www.youtube.com/sfsymphony
Keeping Score www.keepingscore.org and  http://video.pbs.org/video/1295290184/search/keeping%20score
Matt Cohler  http://www.facebook.com/matt