Rebecca Krause-Hardie

A Social Media Conversation with Rebecca Coleman

A couple of weeks ago Rebecca Coleman and I met on Skype.  We had a great conversation discovering lots of common interests.  Here's a short interview with Rebecca:

What do you do?

I am a freelance theatre publicist in Vancouver, BC, Canada. I work primarily for independent theatre companies. My job, essentially, is to get my clients editorial coverage in the local newspapers, radio and television. More and more over the past year, that list is growing to include blogs and leveraging social media to get the word out.


What are you most passionate about?  What really gets you going?

I love the arts, and theatre is my greatest passion. I’ve done it all when it comes to theatre, and acting is my greatest love, but I’m on a hiatus right now while I raise my young son.

For many years now, I’ve been helping artists to become better business people. It started many years ago when I facilitated a self-employment program for artists, and continues to this day. The business of being an artist is the topic of my blog, The Art of the Business.


Do you find the same questions or issues coming up with most clients? (if so, what are they?)

“Can I sell out my show if I get on Twitter?”

“If we are on Facebook, what percentage will it drive up our sales?”

I feel like there is a gross misunderstanding out there about social media. It can be a very powerful marketing tool. But you can’t just jump on Twitter and expect that you’ll sell out overnight. It doesn’t work that way: the machine needs time to get up and running.

On a deeper level, social media is about interactivity, and I think a lot of people are still stuck in the mentality that they will lose their privacy, or it will take over their lives, or it’s just about people talking about the boring minutiae of their lives. But if you do it right, and  you manage it, it can be an incredibly powerful tool for connecting with your potential clientele or new collaborators.

What do you think is the biggest obstacle for you and for your clients? 
(Well lets leave money and time out for the moment....)

Ha! I was going to say time and money!

The biggest obstacle for my clients right now is the fact that traditional forms of media are suffering right now. One year ago, we had 6 theatre reviewers in Vancouver. We now have two. A smaller newspaper recently told me their arts section was cut. And I am hearing that story so much—less space for the arts. It’s very challenging. I am turning increasingly to non-traditional forms of media: blogs and social media.

Can you tell me a story about working with a particular client where you or they had a real ‘a ha’ moment?  

If you don’t mind, I’d like to use a personal example.

I have done publicity for our local Greater Vancouver Professional Theatre Alliances’ World Theatre Day Celebrations for the past two years. World Theatre Day is an international event that takes place on March 27 every year. Last year, I got to thinking, what if we made it a truly international celebration? So I created a blog, and assembled a team of international theatre artists (none of whom I have met in person to this day) that I had met through Twitter. We were able to spread the word and raise awareness about WTD and created events in places that had never celebrated WTD before. It was awesome.

What was your learning from that?

Social Networking is a very powerful tool for collaborating, spreading the word, and mobilizing the troops.

Thanks Rebecca Coleman!  

Social Media Study Group!?!

Last week I was speaking with Beth Dunn,  Communications Director of the Arts Foundation of Cape Cod about social media.   We were very excited about the idea of working together to explore and share our learnings about how cultural groups are using social media effectively.

It occurred to us that there were a number of people interested in this topic and we could create a central place for discussion and sharing. 

So the idea of a group blog emerged.  Beth Kanter suggested looking at tools like Tumblr that easily consolidates RSS feeds (or other content) into a single platform.   

So I’d love to get a sense of how much this idea appeals to others and who might be interested in sharing their blog posts and thoughts.

Do you have another idea about how we might approach this idea?

Please post a comment and let me know!

Lets Build a Social Media Research Community

I recently read a post in a blog by Chris Brogan about helping other people to learn about social media. In his blog, he included a number of links to some resources about understanding social media. This is a great little video about blogs and how they work.

Watch this video from Common Craft about blogs:

Working Together

Chris Brogan, as does the video, points out that working together is critical to learning and developing real skills in social media.  Its not about having a blog, but about what people like us do with them that matters. If you're reading this, then there's a good chance that you, like me are interested in how cultural groups can use these tools better.

How can we work together?

Here's 5 ideas..

1) Post blogs about how your arts group is using web 2.0 and social media

2) Tell others about it.  Post comments on their blogs and my blog

3) Give feedback to others about what you read, or how it relates to your organization's experience, or questions it raises that we should try to answer, or how we might do it better

4) Invite me to interview you about your organization

5) What's the fifth idea?   Let me know.

Thanks

Hartford Stage and Social Networking

An Interview with Julie Stapf,at the Hartford Stage

Julie Stapf, Director of Marketing and Sales for the Hartford Stage Theatre describes her view of Social Networking like this.

“It’s a long term audience building project.  It’s kind of like going to parties and networking with folks who are (demographically likely patrons), except doing it on the internet.  You are going around and showing your face and saying ‘Hi’. It gives you the opportunity to make a connection with them and to tell them something about yourself.  Hopefully by building this relationship you are then able to extend an invitation to them to come to the theatre.

These social networking accounts can’t be (must not be) static like our website.  Our website, like most is used pretty much as a tool to buy tickets.  We use Google Analytics, which shows that they come because they already know something about us, they know our web address like they know our phone number, and are coming to buy tickets.  They don’t visit the history page, or the information about every play that’s been done since the beginning of time”.

The Facebook and Myspace sites will just sit there if you put them up and leave them as a static entity.  You don’t get a lot of friends … you have to reach out. Making ‘friends’ is the first action step.

Our interns are going out there as “I am the Hartford Stage”. They are the face of the Hartford Stage, as is the Director, the Front of House Manager, the Group Sales Manager, and the usher that greets you.  It’s the same when they go out on the Internet – they are the face of the institution. We feel so strongly about this idea that it has become the theme for all our new marketing materials this coming year.

The Hartford Stage, through its interns, identified Facebook networks and groups of people who expressed a particular interest in theater. These people were sent invitations for a special offer, and as a result we got over a hundred new friends.  While it’s too early to translate this into tickets, it’s a powerful step in that direction.

Its pretty labor intensive.  I see it as a long term audience building project – similar to group sales.”

In a recent conversation Ms. Stapf had with Donna Walker-Kuhne, author of  Invitation to the Party, Donna said:

“In building a successful program, the common mistake that arts organizations make is thinking in too short a time period.  They say, ‘Hey, I got a two year grant.  I’m going to put together this program in two years.  I’m going to hire somebody, etc. and within two years we’re going to be raking in the dough off of all our community outreach programs’.  In practice, it just doesn’t happen, because two years isn’t enough time.  Five years, in Donna’s mind, is the minimum commitment to building a really strong and successful social networking program. And while I don’t know that it will take 5 years, it is a long term investment in what is another layer of our marketing program.” 

“It doesn’t replace our other activities, but represents another segment, and requires arts groups to be much more sophisticated in how we talk about segmenting.  It’s not just about demographics, but also how they get information, how they consume news.”   

One of the reasons Arts Institutions do not have an alignment around the value of some of these ideas – like social networking, is because of this short term focus.

“This has always been one of the burdens of marketing directors.  We have lots of conversations about marketing best practices and putting things into place that are going to build us longer term as institutions.  But short term when you sit down to do that budget it is so lean, and in non-profits in particular, you don’t have that R&D development.  You literally get to these points where you say. “We could run a couple more radio spots, which I know are going to produce x amount of audience for me more or less, or I can take that money and invest it in social networking which right now is not bringing a lot of money in the door, but which is a significant, self sustaining, viral audience multiplier … down stream.”