How do you report info from social media to others?

Tweets, in print

Photo by Whatleydude

Here’s a quick question – I’d be really grateful for any answers or examples in the comments or on Twitter.

The way I see it, the person(s) in charge of an organisation’s digital/social media profiles (I’m mainly thinking of Twitter, Facebook, Google Analytics, etc) is likely to be one of the first to know about:

  • Feedback meant for the rest of the organisation (whether positive, negative or neutral)
  • Opportunities for new work, partnerships, funding, events to attend, etc
  • Which types of digital content are most popular with others
  • Who the organisation’s biggest fans are
  • Which of the organisation’s peers could do with help on a particular project (which might involve lending equipment or just answering a quick question)

As well as just hearing what others are getting up to and getting an idea of what’s hot or not in the industry or sector as a whole.

My question is this: how should they feed information back to the rest of the organisation?

I’m really thinking of small to medium sized organisations here – big enough to have different people with different responsibilities but not so big we’re getting into heavyweight internal corporate comms territory.

I’ve come across a few different ways in my time and it differs depending on how serious or time-sensitive something might be:

  • Tell everyone in a weekly meeting
  • Produce a monthly report or round-up
  • Print off tweets/comments/etc and pin them to a noticeboard (see Zane Lowe here)
  • Use a piece of software (maybe a ‘listening dashboard‘ everyone has set as their homepage)
  • Nothing set in stone – just flag things up as and when (if at all)

I’d love to hear about any processes, tools and habits you use (or have thought about adopting).

Reporting info from social media to others in an organisation

Some answers to a question I asked in this blog post: http://www.chrisunitt.co.uk/2012/05/how-do-you-report-info-from-social-media-to-others/

Storified by Chris Unitt · Wed, May 16 2012 06:47:08

@ChrisUnitt Like the listening dashboard idea. I do monthly reports, a twitter/FB noticeboard with interesting comments & ad hoc emailsJan McQuillan
@ChrisUnitt Mostly verbal updates, plus an SEO-for-laymen presentation I nicked off @SusanHallam.Clare Lovell
@ChrisUnitt Ppl tend to glaze over at the actual numbers, so I use things like search terms and klout categories to make it friendlierClare Lovell
@ChrisUnitt I generally just tell people e.g. "We have 50 more followers after that campaign", and bring graphs/stats to team meetings.Taras Young
@ChrisUnitt Mainly just how much traffic we’ve had from each SM platform each month.Victoria Thompson

Falling Headlong: a theatre trailer case study

I’ve talked about trailers for theatre before but a post about The rise of the ‘digital theatre’ over on A Younger Theatre has prodded me into getting all specific.

By way of background, Headlong Theatre have released a short film showcasing their upcoming season:

For added context there’s a piece in The Guardian with quotes from Rupert Goold, the company’s artistic director, and some clarification from Henny Finch, Headlong’s executive producer, in the comments.

As Jake Orr says:

The video has caused quite a stir on Twitter, with a heated debate about whether a theatre company should invest in film-like trailers for their productions. Is it an investment or a waste of money that could go into a production? Is it taking away from theatre as a live element? Is it wrong to call it a trailer – is this too close to film, and thus, what language can we use for when theatre explores theatrical work in new mediums such as videos?

Now, I have to point out that I’m looking at this from the point of view of it being a promotional tool, so I’m mainly interested in its potential to:

  • sell tickets to shows
  • make more people aware of Headlong Theatre

If we wanted to critique the film as a cinematic work in its own right then different criteria would apply. However, even if it’s taken as purely an artistic work, a lot of what I’m going to cover in this post will still be relevant.

Two more caveats to what I’m saying:

  1. I’m presuming that this was produced with a predominantly online audience in mind
  2. I don’t have access to the information to be able to say whether or not this can be regarded as a ‘success’ (however that’s to be determined) regardless of my thoughts

The film itself

It’s important to remember the crucial difference between an audience in a cinema and an audience online – if someone is at a computer they can click away whenever they like. In fact, YouTube gives users pretty good stats on audience retention.

This means that from the moment the video starts you’re going to start losing viewers right through until the end. Therefore the last few seconds (which is traditionally where people put the most important information) is the point where there are the least viewers.

At 4mins 48s this video is relatively long. I’m not saying that people won’t sit and watch a video of that length, but typically you’ll get more views and more shares with shorter videos. 30 seconds is good. If Headlong are keen to impart a message with this video then they’re giving viewers all the time in the world to avoid seeing it.

Speaking of the message, if I watched this and didn’t know that Headlong was a theatre company would I be able to work that out? Is there any clue that the words above the actors’ heads relate to plays that I could go and see? Where can I see those plays? When? Can anybody read that URL at the very end?

The video doesn’t give much of a clue to any of this, which isn’t fatal because you can add that stuff in the description area under the video on YouTube…

The film on YouTube

Once you’ve put a video on YouTube you should do your best to make the video as discoverable as possible. Once people have found the video you should give people the chance (or straight up tell them) to find out more.

The thing to remember is that YouTube/Google can’t watch the video and work out what it’s about – you need to help out by providing descriptive titles, descriptions and tags. The better job you do of this, the more likely it is that people will be able to find your video.

In the case of the Headlong film, some steps have been taken but there’s more to do. In short:

  • The title could be more descriptive – how about Falling Headlong – Headlong Theatre’s season for 2012/2013
  • The first thing in the description should be a link to further information. In this case Headlong have come agonisingly close – it just needs to have the http:// before it to be clickable
  • Otherwise, the description is weak. Give me a paragraph on who/what Headlong Theatre is. Tell me the names of the plays, where they’re touring to and when then link to further information. As it is I’m being told more about James Blake than I am about the people who commissioned the film
  • The tags are a good start but give me a few more – start with ‘theatre’ and go from there
  • How about using YouTube annotations? They’re quick an easy to insert and could mean that the URL at the end of the video is clickable. You could even put a discreet box around each actor linking to info about the respective production page on the Headlong website.

While we’re at it, the description and annotations could remind me to hit ‘like’, leave a comment, subscribe to your channel or share the video with others. I’m more likely to do these things if I’m reminded to (or told to).

Rather than go on at any more length, I’ll link to a recent post from Kissmetrics on YouTube video optimisation. And here’s an annotated screenshot for you:

Falling Headlong annotated

The film on other websites

The great thing about YouTube videos is they can be embedded on other websites (like this one) as well as on Facebook, Twitter.com and others. That means they’re stripped of the context that YouTube can provide (all that stuff above). That means they need to be able to stand alone as much as possible.

Headlong Theatre on YouTube

I’m not sure whether Headlong are on the YouTube nonprofit partner programme. If they’re not they should be.

Beyond that, Headlong seem to be using YouTube as a video hosting platform, rather than making use of the various social features that it has. That’s fair enough but I’d guess that’s the reason they only have 15 subscribers. I’d quote Maya Gabrielle (digital producer, National Theatre) from an event last year:

If you’ve made a beautiful piece of content but not created an audience for it, you’ve wasted your money

But then there are very few organisations out there that have used YouTube to build an audience for video. For the tactics used by the pros, have a look at what Bo Burnham, Jake & Amir, Jenna Marbles, Hannah Hart and any number of others do.

Conclusions

In case anyone from Headlong happens to read this, I don’t mean to pick on you – this stuff is common to pretty much every arts organisation out there. I usually get paid to provide this kind of advice, so I hope this is of some use.

More generally though, if you’re making trailers to be shown in front of a captive theatre/cinema audience then by all means follow the established conventions for that format.

Otherwise, if you’re making films to be shown online then please recognise that you’re dealing with something rather different and consider how and why your film might work better if it played to the strengths of the format.

UPDATE – there’s been loads written on this subject from others taking all sorts of different perspectives. In particualr, Postcards from the Gods, BURNTarts and both Lyn Gardner and Matt Trueman in the Guardian. Thanks to everyone who linked to this post.

Lyn Gardner

The value of opportunity

Hayley Squires, currently at the Royal Court Theatre with her first play was asked the other day about how she came to have her play put on at the theatre, specifically whether is was through involvement with the Young Writers Programme. She said:

I didn’t do the course, I saw a tweet for the Young Writers Festival and had completed a draft that I would’ve been happy to go into rehearsals with, so I sent it in for the festival to see what they said

See also:

That’s three examples of people who’ve received their first big opportunities in their chosen field and in each case social media played a part. Not the main part, of course – the story isn’t that these people were ‘good’ at Twitter or Reddit or Soundcloud or whatever and that’s what landed them the gig. The most important thing was that they:

  1. had put in the time and effort to become bloody good at something; and
  2. had the wherewithal (and were able) to act on an opportunity that was presented.

Social media deserves some attribution though. The question, for someone in my position, is how much? And that’s very tricky.

Measuring value

Y’see we’re getting to the point where, if you know your stuff and are willing/able to put in the effort, the value of social media for straightforward acquisition and transactions can be measured reasonably well. Not quite perfectly, and it depends on exactly what it is your doing and how you’re able to get around or accept the (many and various) limitations, but then the same could be said for most other things.

However, there are various areas of the big, messy social media landscape that don’t lend themselves quite so well to measurement. For instance, much as I’d dearly love to, it’s difficult to put a value on (let alone predict) the opportunities that might be thrown up by connections made via social media.

I think this may be one reason why it’s easier for organisations to give responsibility for social media to marketing teams (or sometimes customer services). From a day-to-day point of view, the budgets are easier to rationalise there.

This is why it’s important, when social media is looked after by one individual, department or 3rd party, that they’re able to spot what an opportunity might look like and pass it on to someone who might be able to take advantage of it. Otherwise that’s a whole heap of value that’s being missed.

Bits to Blogs: Putting Digital First

A couple of weeks ago I was in Newcastle to give a talk at an event called Bits to Blogs at the Great North Museum:

Bits 2 Blogs is the regional e-learning event for museum, library and archive professionals in the North East. It provides a varied day of presentations and workshops that:

  • Showcase the ways in which digital technologies and social media are being used to support and enhance educational programmes in the cultural heritage sector
  • Demonstrate how social media can be used to build engaging relationships with our audiences
  • Provide practical demonstrations of technologies that are relevant and affordable to the sector
  • Demand no prior experience. Bits 2 Blogs is specifically designed to inspire and appeal to all!

The slides from my talk are at the bottom of this post. As is often the way with these things, they don’t make quite so much sense without me talking over them (and you’re missing out on some fancy transitions) so I’ll start with some explanation and links. Feel free to skip on to the pretty pictures if you must.

I’d quite like to give this talk again at some point (*hint*).

Putting Digital First

The first part of my talk was called ‘Putting Digital First’ and it was about how arts and heritage organisations could and should approach digital projects.

More to the point, it was about how, in some cases, arts and heritage organisations are being beaten at their own game (or at least challenged) by people armed with little more than a laptop and an internet connection. I wanted to talk about why that might be the case and what could be done about it.

There are many examples of people punching well above their supposed weight online. I pointed to Bo Burnham, Digital Photography School, Swiss Miss and Boiler Room but the list could go on. I also talked about how a few notable artists, organisations and brands have been transferring their efforts across to digital – Radiohead, Louis CK, The Atlantic and Transformers: Autocracy being ones that seem to be succeeding and/or trying new things. Again, the list could’ve gone on.

[A quick side note - if I'd had longer I might've talked about some attempts that haven't worked so well].

I also quoted Nick Poole’s talk at Bits to Blogs 2011, the conclusion of Bill Thompson’s talk at OpenCulture, Steve Yelvington’s post on getting ‘digital first’ right in the ‘newsroom’ and this from an article about how The Atlantic made the move to digital first:

We decided to prioritize digital over everything else. We were no longer going to be ‘The Atlantic, which happens to do digital.’ We were going to be a digital media company that also published The Atlantic magazine.

I’m planning to expand on this topic at some point and I might also talk about how some of this thinking applies to my recent work with the Royal Court theatre on their Young Writer’s Festival website.

You’ll know you ‘get it’ when…

I really dislike the way people talk about those who ‘get it’ and those who don’t, but that’s a rant for another time. The second part of my talk was really a list of ten traits of good digital projects. It’s not comprehensive and not intended to be prescriptive – I’m quite happy to accept exceptions and I’d be even happier to hear your suggestions.

Here’s my 10:

  1. Project names are search engine-friendly (also, NameChk is your friend)
  2. You work with people with large online networks
  3. There are bloggers on your VIP lists
  4. Each project builds an audience/contacts for the next
  5. People do your marketing for you
  6. You can tell (and/or have a framework for testing) whether new platforms are for you
  7. Test your assumptions online first
  8. You think and act like one of many
  9. Your income comes online
  10. Your audience is online

In this part of the talk I referred to Breathe The Beat, my own YouTube antics for Birmingham Hippodrome, John Willshire’s fireworks and bonfires analogy, Mike Skinner’s thoughts on social media from this interview, The Next Web‘s use of Spread.us, the idea of the lean startup and this post about how to test a project idea from the founder of Buffer.

Thanks again to Rob and John for having me speak at their event and thanks also to everyone who asked good questions in the Q&A section and said kind things afterwords.

Crowdsurfing

This blog post from Birmingham Opera Company has a lot to recommend it:

  • It’s on Tumblr, which means I can subscribe to get more updates, either by RSS or by hitting the ‘follow’ button. There are links to Twitter and Facebook accounts too if I’m interested in following along.
  • It’s clearly a message from a human, not just a regurgitated press release. Also, Jean’s left her initials at the end of the post, to show which human wrote it.
  • There’s a link to information about buying tickets. That’s good to see.
  • The video is an interesting little behind-the-scenes glimpse and only 99 seconds long. If you didn’t know what BOC’s productions were like you might not expect to see a mix of people in an old warehouse all having a laugh together.
  • The film has been shot on small handheld camera – maybe a phone, maybe a Flip. It might have been topped and tailed, but there’s no other editing going on and so fewer reasons not to get the thing online nice and quickly.

All of which is very nice.

However, the actual best thing about this post is that the video is of their Artistic Director, Graham Vick CBE, crowdsurfing the opera’s chorus. That’s just gold, that is.

Content is king, as they say.

Birmingham Opera Company

Analysis vs Reckoning

This post is a follow-up to my previous one and is about using data from social media to improve decision-making in marketing. Don’t say you weren’t warned.

First up, an example (with apologies to anyone who feels like I’m picking on them).

A poor assumption

I’d not come across The Les Mis Contract before – it’s a comedy skit featuring Matt Lucas, Cameron Mackintosh and Alfie Boe and is the 7th most popular of the 62 videos on the official Les Miserables YouTube account. At the Twespians event on Friday it was held up as an example of a more interesting approach to online theatre marketing. So far, so fair enough.

Someone in the audience asked how many views it had racked up – the answer at the time of typing being 38,874 over 11 months. The general muttered reaction in the room was ‘that’s not very good’, as reflected in this tweet:

Twitter @twespians

Presumably the thinking went like this – 40k people is barely enough to fill a West End theatre for a fortnight and you can bet not everyone who saw the video bought a ticket. Also, 40k views is nothing compared to what some videos on YouTube get. #FAIL.

The thing is, we need to know so much more before deciding whether or not that video worked. For instance:

  • How much did the video cost to produce?
  • How many people rang the box office number, entered the URL from the video or clicked the URL in the video’s description? (Assuming these things were being tracked properly).
  • How many tickets did each of those people book and at what price?
  • How many of the website visitors or tickets buyers were new ones?
  • Once a person has bought tickets and handed over their contact details, what’s that person’s lifetime value likely to be?
  • Was there any increase in organic search traffic around related keywords – for example, those that included ‘Matt Lucas’?
  • Did the video create any additional PR value? Did it lead to Les Mis being mentioned at more events and on more blogs?

And so on… you see what I’m getting at? The number of views tells us nothing. Just to hammer the point home:

  • If that video cost £1,500, took a couple of days to pull together, drove £10,000 of sales, added new contact details to the company’s email lists and was featured on a few theatre blogs then I’d call it a success.
  • If it cost £10,000, tied up resources for a fortnight and drove £1,500 of sales, with all but one customer already being on the company’s mailing list then I’d be chalking it up to experience.

The point is…

Far too many reports, articles and discussions about the effectiveness of social media marketing (especially in the arts and culture sector) are hampered by assumptions based on poor information. Just because some stats (followers, fans, subscribers, views, etc) are publicly available doesn’t mean they tell us anything conclusive.

I think all of this is caused by two things. The first is that although good, actionable data is there to be collected and analysed, it’s rarely made available to third parties (and nor would I expect it to be). However, people seem to enjoy talking about social media and so the vacuum is filled by people’s reckoning instead.

Secondly, I think there’s a big skills gap here and the landscape it constantly evolving. Web analytics aren’t part of the standard marketing syllabus and most arts organisations don’t have the resources to employ a specialist web analyst. The few that are out there aren’t especially vocal. As a result, most others don’t know what they’re missing out on and there’s nobody to pick up on any mistakes.

On that note, a couple of corrections…

There were a couple of things in Sven’s thesis that I’d like to bring up. It’ll be my last word on it, I swear, but I think it illustrates my point.

In the Recommendations section (on p40) there’s a SWOT analysis. The following are listed under ‘Weaknesses’:

6. Few people indicate social media marketing has influenced their buying decision. Then again, this is impossible to measure, just as it is impossible to determine which outdoor billboard influenced a persons buying decision

It’s not impossible to measure! That’s what Google Analytics, ecommerce tracking and a sensible approach to campaign URLs were all invented for. We’re not even limited to last click attribution – there’s fun to be had with the rest of the sales cycle too.

7. Measurement is available, but it usually comes at a high price. Even the most sophisticated measurement tools are not able to link a specific ticket sale to a message one posted on social networks. Twitter and Facebook do not allow tracking of that data

Wrong on the first two counts (but right on the last point). Google Analytics is a free service, awe.sm won’t exactly break the bank (although I’ve yet to have a proper play with it) and I’m sure there are other options out there too. Maybe the costly bit is in hiring a full-time analyst or getting someone like me in to do some training (and I’m a bargain, really). Meanwhile, see above regarding social media attribution.

Let’s push things forward

This is the kind of stuff that I pick through when I’m looking at social media strategies and measurement for clients (it’s not all lolcats in my job, y’know) so I know full well that it’s not glamorous and it can be difficult and frustrating.

However, it’s the kind of thing that can help arts organisations work smarter, increase sales and reduce costs. That’s why I think we should all talk about it more and encourage people to build the right skills and share what they know with each other.

I was chuffed to see SOLT‘s Katherine Wood commenting on my previous post to say that they’re interested in hosting round tables and panel discussions in the future as well as providing opportunities to share case studies. More of that kind of thing would be useful.

What I’d love to see is some top ecommerce managers from the commercial sector being invited to speak at arts marketing events. Although frankly I’m not sure whether that would be more likely to scare people rigid or send them to sleep.

Collaboration, whether you like it or not

From a Creative Generalist post titled ‘What Specifically Do Generalists Do?‘:

As incredibly useful as social networking tools are, they are limited because they are used voluntarily and by the self-aware. There are many instances where organizations are not, in their processes, motivated to function horizontally or outside of their traditional bounds, and there are many talented individuals locked in the tunnel vision of their pursuits, blindly unaware that collaboration could be the best move they make.

See also what Trendwatching call idle sourcing:

most consumers – while they might want to contribute – find that it’s too difficult or too much hassle. Which is why you can expect to see more IDLE SOURCING initiatives in 2012: products and services that make it downright simple (if not effortless) to contribute to anything, from pinpointing roads in need of repairs to finding signs of extraterrestrial life.

Worth thinking about.

Listening to the celebs

I have an odd habit – I collect snippets of celebrities’ musings about social media. For instance, this from Mike Skinner:

one of the things I’ve come to lately is that social media isn’t really for content providers, it’s for the people and if you place something on the internet, that’s all your social media done….

That’s social object talk, that is. Also, more recently, Drake’s worries about the Tumblr generation:

Instead of kids going out and making their own moments, they’re just taking these images and living vicariously through other people’s moments. It just kills me. Then you’ll meet them and they’re just the biggest turkey in the world. They don’t actually embody any of those things. They just emulate. It’s scary man, simulation life that we’re living. It scares me.

Not that I always agree with what they have to say, but their perspective can sometimes be quite interesting. Probably because their view of interaction via social media is quite different to yer average. After all, whereas many people are concerned with getting someone (anyone!) to notice them online, celebrities have a surfeit of attention to deal with.

A few years back there was a Twitter search tool (I can’t find it now) that allowed you to swap your keyword for another in the results that were returned. Putting your name in place of @ladygaga and seeing the flood of messages (not all of them pleasant) was eye-opening.

With social media you can’t check into a hotel under a fake name for a bit of respite. The fans are always there, screaming outside the window.

Where are the stars of Facebook?

Just a quick one.

A few years back there were stories in the papers (accurate or not) about people/bands/whatever coming to wider prominence having built an audience via their Myspace accounts (think Lily Allen, Arctic Monkeys, Tila Tequila and so on).

Meanwhile on Wikipedia there’s a whole list of YouTube personalities featuring plenty of people who have used the platform to find fame and, in some cases, fortune. There are comedians, actors, musicians, beauty experts and people selling blenders.

So what about Facebook? There have been plenty of causes and campaigns that have gained traction there, but I can’t think of any individuals (or bands) who’ve translated big followings into recording contracts, book deals or TV series. Have I missed something?

More about theatre trailers: finding alternative influences

When I wrote that post about trailers in the theatre I searched around to find any discussion on the topic elsewhere. I couldn’t find much and what I could see was concerned with how bad they are.

I also had a search around some theatres’ YouTube accounts and it occurred to me that there might be a more fundamental problem here. In fact Rachel Coldicutt preempted this post in a good comment on that previous one, saying:

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about why theatre isn’t very good at being cinema. And it’s because, I think, cinema is already amazing at being cinema and the theatre is pretty damn good at being the theatre.

What happens

I’m going to generalise a bit here, but bear with me because (give or take a few exceptions) I think this holds broadly true:

  • Cinematic trailers are made to be shown on TV and in the cinema. They’re then also put online.
  • Theatre trailers often mimic cinematic trailers. However, they aren’t shown on TV or in the cinema (nor in the theatre, for that matter). They just go online where, for the most part, nobody sees them.

An alternative approach

These videos are going to be shown almost exclusively online – on YouTube, on the company or venue’s main website’s event info page and maybe (hopefully) on some blogs. The key thing is that audience here isn’t captive – it’s prone to clicking away within fractions of a second.

As such, it would surely be better to take inspiration from successful YouTube videos, rather than going toe-to-toe with the cinematic trailers that have been made for very different viewing conditions. I’m not necessarily saying that adorable kittens should feature in every video (although…) but, depending on what you’re looking to achieve (and that’s the most important thing to bear in mind), there are ways to play to the strengths/mitigate the weaknesses of the medium:

  • be brief and try to get the key information in early – remember you’re losing viewers with each passing second
  • make use of clickable annotations, adding links to further info/tickets
  • in fact, just watch this video (NB: some of it’s outdated and I really wouldn’t endorse everything the guy says)

Something I would endorse is the point about making an effort to nurture your online audience. As Maya Gabrielle (National Theatre) says in this talk:

If you’ve made a beautiful piece of content but not created an audience for it, you’ve wasted your money

It’s not quite as easy as all that though, is it?

Of course, there are things that a respectable arts organisation won’t be able to get away with and that may well prove to be a hinderance. For instance, yesterday I was mighty amused to read a post by Kingsley Jayasekera from Sadler’s Wells.

He pointed out that a month ago, one of their videos was downloaded and then reposted to someone else’s YouTube account. It has since racked up four times as many views as the official video in a fraction of the time.

It’s exactly the same video, so why has this one scored so many views? Well, it can be hard to tell exactly how/why these things come to be spread around more widely, but looking at the differences between the two:

  • The official video has a descriptive title, is tagged and contains a short description – all of which will help it to be more easily discoverable by people who know what they’re searching for. However, it’s also age-restricted (over 18s only)
  • The cheeky re-up has none of these attributes. What it does have is a snappier, more amusing title which may well have helped its chances of being posted around websites, blogs and forums. (Screenshot).

Of course, Sadler’s are unlikely to be able to describe a trailer in those kinds of terms. The brand perception that serves them so well in other areas would preclude it.

Still, there are other ways for an organisation to play the YouTube game. ENO deliberately courted an online audience with their ‘Can I be your friend?‘ video for Two Boys (which I notice includes a link to a more traditional trailer) and I helped Birmingham Hippodrome to score an accidental hit with this video.

You could also argue that Sadler’s Wells’ succeeded by putting out a video deemed worthy of reposting (with ident and end card intact). How many others can claim that? After all, if Tim O’Reilly is right then:

Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than piracy