Rebecca Krause-Hardie

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

 

 

Social Media & Emotional Power: The Engagement Machine

I've been thinking a lot about the power of passion, and how emotion and emotional connections act as fuel. I think emotions are the glue that binds everything together.   As Maya Angelou said

"I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel."

Preamble: Connecting to What you Want

Years ago my horn teacher, Martin Smith, told me that the universe has everything I want in it, and it is only a matter of connecting to it.

His approach was this: 

• Be clear about what you want
• Focus only on the essence of it, not specifics   (the universe is way smarter then us)
• Put energy into it every day.
• The energy will act as cogs on a wheel turning things to  bring you and what you are wanting closer together.

The Power of StoryTelling - Remembering Dale Carnegie   

More than 20 years ago (wow!)  I took a couple Dale Carnegie classes.  How to Win Friends, and Influence People, and Public Speaking... or something like that.  I don't remember most of it, except for 3 things.

1. Remember and use peoples names
2. Talk from your direct experience allowing you to tap into your personal emotions and energy
3. Move around and move your body when speaking

I got the message.... here's my pencil - probably for 'most improved'  :>)  P.S.  They were great programs.

Connecting the Dots - Or the cogs on the great machine

Direct personal referrals have a close rate of 75%.  That's why all this brew ha ha about social media and social networks, and and and 

I've tried to create an image that maps this for me....  and this is where I need your help..  does this work?  What am I missing.....

• We create and sustain ways to connect with our most passionate supporters - Super persons
• The emotional energy we help support, turns the cogs on the wheels helping our super people connect with others.
• Through their networks and passion, others are drawn into our circle, and help drive the machine

What do you think?

Leveraging Social Media

On Saturday, I had the great pleasure of doing a presentation with Erin West at the Technology and Arts Conference in Pittsburgh on leveraging Social Media.  We'd never worked together before and weren't quite sure how we were going to merge together all our ideas and content into one presentation.  Amazingly everything seemed to dovetail together with great ease.  Maybe because Erin did that part and her gift for organizing, and getting to the core ideas is fantastic.

I also just wanted to say that Conference organizer, David Dombrosky had the great wisdom to move the conference out of the CMU campus and down to the Hilton hotel.  That move transformed a really bad thing into a really good thing.  Lots of room and space and time for networking, and learning.  As David says, lots of things he'll do differently next year, but he's really on the right track!

So here is our presentation.  Feel to use with attribution.

Leveraging Social Media

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own.

Come Participate in "We Are The Media!"

I am a religious reader of Beth's Blog.  And there is rarely a day that I don't learn something interesting there.  And Beth is one of those amazing people that shares everything she knows with you. 

But this post isn't exactly about Beth, its about the sharing part. I learn something and share it here and with clients. All over the web people are doing amazing things.  Just look at Brooklyn Museum, or the Victoria and Albert Museum, or the Boston Symphony, or the New York Philharmonic  (shameless plug here).   Can we help Beth and NTEN and all our friends in the non-profit community? 

Here's how:

NTEN and the Non-profit community, spear-headed by Beth Kanter are creating:

We Are Media Project:

The Social Media Starter Kit for Nonprofits

There is a hugh amount of expertise in the non-profit community and the goal of the We Are The Media project is to harness that great collective of knowledge and experience and share the love.  This month is focusing on the social media tool box.

As the site header says...

Starting October 6th, WeAreMedia participants are going to unabashedly focus on the tools and collectively build the nonprofit social media tool box. Now that we've laid the strategic framework in the other modules, we can have some fun. So come join us ... it will be easy and quick. And, we'll be awarding special prizes for participation.

Have you experimented with any of these things?

• RSS Feeds
• Social Bookmarking
• Commenting
• Blogs
• Podcasting
• Photo Sharing
• Video Sharing
• Crowd Sourcing
• Lifestreams
• Social Networks
• Fundraising Apps
• Fundraising Widgets

Please go over to We Are The Media, join the group and join the conversation.  Your 2 cents makes a difference!

Persistence - "Just Keep Going" Pays Off

I recently heard this poem again from Rilke.  This part really connects for me:

"Let everything happen to you,
beauty and terror.
Just keep going.
No feeling is final."

Rainer Maria Rilke

There are so many new tools for social media - it seems like I can barely learn one and the next one comes along. Its overwhelming! Invites come for yet another social network..... what might I be missing? 

I stopped writing blog posts for most of a month, with various excuses, some valid and some not. It was just hard to know where to begin.

Many years ago when I was at music school, I was a 'natural' player.  I could play just about anything and it all came so easily. The challenge came when there was something really difficult and I had to develop discipline and learning skills to persist through to the other side.  My horn teacher wisely pointed out that the payoff is not immediate - that results rarely come at the moment of work, but only later. Thus it is sometimes hard to be objective and trusting with delayed gratification.  

I wandered off the professional horn playing path in pursuit of other ideals, and proceeded to watch a dear friend, just keep going, one foot in front of the next with unbelievable discipline until he sat in the chair of one of the top orchestras in the country, and continues to sit there today.  He 'Just Kept Going.' 

So what do we need to do to succeed in the online social world?

Persistence

What else?

I took this picture at one of the scarier points in a trek some years ago and sometimes working with new media can feel this way. 

Social Media Plans

I was thinking about what some of the elements of an effective social media plan were. At its core social media is about the place where technology, content and social interactions meet. And conversations and relationships that were once invisible are now in plain sight. So what does that mean?

Here's four things that came to mind.

1. Community Building -   time consuming but essential -  reaching out to others as much as expressing oneself, and adding to the conversation
   
2. Getting Personal - People connect with people, allowing and encouraging personal voices to be heard rather than just 'institutional' ones
3. Engaging and Authentic Voices -  People are smart -  Its important to be real and authentic
4. Having Conversations -  Communities of people want to be part of a conversation, a two way deal

Now I have 2 questions.

1. What other things are important to the plan?
2. What are some specific examples of how Arts Organizations are using social media plans?

Why I Give: America's Giving Challenge

I just read this great post by Beth Dunn, Reflections on the America's Giving Challenge. The winners of the challenge each get $50,000 in addition to what was donated during the challenge.   She was writing about the results of the Challenge from Parade Magazine and the Case Foundation, and reflecting on why certain 'organizations' did better then others.  Why did Amnesty International fall short?  One of her key points:

...I think it points to the difference between “organizations” trying to mobilize online supporters, and people trying to mobilize other people.

For some reason this really got me thinking about why I got involved. Maybe this is sort of obvious, but if its not personal I don't think I give.  So the question is how does it become personal to me? Then, what motivates me to give, or prevents me from giving?

Here's the process I went through -  probably mostly subconsciously:

• Beth Kanter is doing this challenge
• I like Beth and want to be seen in her eyes as someone worthy.  I want to help her if its not too much of a burden on me. 
• I’d like to do the challenge myself for the cause that is important to me, but it feels overwhelming to me.
• Beth’s cause is a good one...  and more importantly, she is an intense believer in it.   She appears to have absolutely no problem in telling the entire world how great this is.  This is something I wish I could do.
  
• Beth is a winner.  She won last year, so I know she can win this year.  I can be on the winning team.  (hmmm I'm thinking of Beth as the winner here.... when its really an organization wide effort... but I only know Beth.)
  • Why is she a winner?
• I am overwhelmed by the amount of requests I get for giving.  How does this one get to the top of the pile?
  
  • Its been vetted for me already by my friend Beth
    
  • I can leverage my $10 into $50,000
  • Beth will like me.
• The more I am asked to give, the more the personal relevance of the cause increases.
• The barrier of entry for me is low...
  
  • I can afford to give $10.   
  • I trust the mechanism for giving  (Global Giving Website)
  • I have a way to give easily (Credit Card)
• It seems that this process is then repeated down the line with my friends and contacts who have their own set of reasons why something is personal to them.  I'm not sure what those things are.  I started to write down some ideas and felt that I was treading on murky territory.  I wish Beth Kanter would do a survey asking people.  If only one could get the email list from Global Giving.

So what does that all translate into?

1. I give because it is easy
2. Because I get personal satisfaction out of it
3. Its going to a good cause

Not sure if this adds to the conversation, but it really got me thinking.

Why do you give or not?

Tribute to Beth Dunn (or learning about Community)

Okay, so I should know what I'm doing but I don't.  I haven't really gotten clear on how to do the whole community and dialogue thing.  I think I've been thinking web 1.0.   

What am I talking about?   I have this great conversation with Beth Dunn, Communications Director of the Arts Foundation of Cape Cod a couple of weeks ago.  Its about our mutual interests in Social Media.

The Arts Foundation is a private organization that supports local arts groups by providing training and support to local individual artists, and doing collaborative marketing.  Local corporations sponsor an annual Pops by the Sea event featuring the Boston Pops Esplanade orchestra, which generates about 80% of the funds for the foundation.

Beth does training on social media for local artists as part of her job, but hasn't been able to implement some of those great tools for her own organization.  I found it interesting that she hasn't been able to implement a lot of the social media strategies she's so good at, in her job because it seems there is not yet the level of understanding and appreciation yet of these tools.  I think that it's hard in small communities that haven't a broad perspective.

Beth mentioned how difficult it is when someone opens up the local paper and reads about the Internet and Blogs and so on and all they see is stories about children being at risk, and slanderous behavior etc.  They end up completely jaded and not very open to exploring these great tools. 

Vince Ford at the New York Philharmonic suggests spending some time with people on an individual basis getting them online, showing them how to use tools, and doing a little show an tell to move it from an intellectual exercise to something within their experience. 

What else works?

_______________________________
But why is this a Tribute to Beth Dunn?
_______________________________

Beth is really good at building community and interaction between people. 

I just realized that I was 2 weeks delinquent in seeing that I was Tagged by Beth, and that she had written about our conversation and I had sat on my hands, or so it felt. 

So this is what I have learned today from Beth. (Now I knew this intellectually, but somehow it wasn't turning into  reality!)

• Track conversations that include me.  Beth Kanter refers to this as "Ego Search".

I just did this with Google search and found 3 beginnings of conversations to me that I had completely missed somehow.  I still haven't gotten this to show up well in my reader for some reason.

• Respond  immediately and thoughtfully to these conversations.   That could be in either comments, or posts, and with email.

• Use the Blog Reader!   As one of my tai chi teachers said to me "You Know It!  Why you no do it?"

Thanks Beth!

   

Special Opportunity for America's Giving Challenge

Let’s help the Sharing Foundation win the grand prize of $50,000 in the America's Giving Challenge.  The Sharing Foundation is an amazing organization that helps educate and support Cambodian children.  Beth Kanter and Michele Martin have been spearheading this effort.  This is a great cause and...

The contest is over in ten days!

The Sharing Foundation is currently in 1st Place!  And to win we need to keep the donations coming in- just  $10 is all that you need to contribute.   And you can do that here.

Today there is a special challenge. 
Says Beth:

"Global Giving is offering additional incentives to heat up the competition - over the next five days, the organizations that get the most donations in a single 24 hour period will receive an additional $250, plus the largest donation will be matched.   So, if you haven't contributed yet, this would be an excellent time to donate $10!"

I hope you will consider giving if you haven't already, and if you are really inspired to see the effects of this social media experiment, see how many others you can inspire to participate too!

Thanks!

MeetUp with Alan Brown

"We must become expert facilitators of social experiences to be successful as arts organizations" says Alan Brown as part of a recent presentation at APAP.  I had the opportunity to talk more about this with Alan yesterday.

Why must we become expert facilitators of social experiences?  "Because lack of social context is the biggest barrier to attendance." says Alan, a leading research expert. People need "external stimuli to activate demand."   They would go to the symphony or opera or theatre if they had a social group with which to participate.   

If we look at the huge divorce rates and number of people using tools like eHarmony, it becomes clear that these underlying social trends point to opportunity.

Alan's theory is that if you set up groups through tools like MeetUp, then this would help to create that context.  Just on a whim, I did a little search of 'opera' in New York City  and  found this MeetUp Opera Group,  and this New York Philharmonic Group.    Interestingly, the opera group was started by a fan, and the Philharmonic group by the orchestra itself.

These are great opportunities to start building new connections and relationships.  How can organizations build on these groups and support them more?  Alan suggests finding some of these groups and interviewing some of the people in them. Questions might be about their experiences, how well they are supported by their arts groups, and what would make their experience better.  I think that's a great idea.   Also integrating the various tools and channels could be helpful. For example, linking the MeetUp group to the website, and from the MySpace Page, and the FaceBook Page. It seems to me that having many portals that all point to these same groups could help to increase visibility and participation in the groups.

Anybody doing this?

Since I originally posted this, Vince Ford at the New York Philharmonic, notes that they have presences on FaceBook, Meetup and MySpace, all of which are referenced on their special series page. While it is a little buried in the site, it does make the rounds occasionally to the home page or the What's New Section.

So what are the obstacles to participation by arts groups?

Here's a few from Alan's list...

• Perceptual barrier -  Its a challenge to just set up an account.  We don't see the value
• Not recognized way of consuming arts - Until major arts groups use these tools won't be considered important or valid
• Not Scalable -  There is a concern that management of these groups will not be viable.   

In response that last point, Alan reminds me of Malcolm Gladwell's New Yorker article on the Cellular Church which describes how Rick Warren built a church with over twenty thousand members by creating small group 'cells' around all kinds of interest areas.

Gladwell says "...In order to attract newcomers, they must have low barriers to entry. They must be unintimidating, friendly, and compatible with the culture they are a part of. In order to retain their membership, however, they need to have an identity distinct from that culture. They need to give their followers a sense of community...

...to create a church out of a network of lots of little church cells—exclusive, tightly knit groups of six or seven who meet in one another's homes during the week to worship and pray..... The focus was on discussion and interaction—not one person teaching and the others listening—and the remarkable thing about these groups was their power."

How do we translate that for our cultural organizations?

What are other ways to get past these obstacles?

How do we do a better job of demonstrating the benefits? 

Post a comment and join in the discussion!