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All a Flutter over Twitter?
Making sense of the latest way to engage your audiences online and real time
Is your theatre on Twitter? Everyone from Senator John McCain to Shaquille O’Neal to Coldplay to even my Mom is tweeting away their daily activities, uploading photos, plugging their Web sites, and starting conversations with their followers. Twitter is a social media site that asks users a simple question: What are you doing? It is a micro blog allowing only 140 characters of text at a time. The appeal? Well, it is basically like having a constant stream of info, pictures, and updates from your friends, family, celebrities, and favorite organizations throughout the day. Twitter boasts, “Simplicity has played an important role in our success.” Setting up a Twitter account is uncomplicated--all you have to do is enter your name, password, email and info about your theatre and you are up and ready to tweet.
Gregory Crafts of Theatre Unleashed in Los Angeles shares, “We use Twitter to get a relationship going with our followers…create a bond and a community with our patrons using 140 characters at a time.” It’s true that you do get a sense of intimacy with the places, people, businesses you follow that you didn’t have before. You can use Twitter in a variety of ways: the Internet, cell phones, and a deluge of delightful apps for your phone and desktop. Twitterriffic and TwitterFon are popular to use from your iPhone; Twitterberry, the alternative for the BlackBerry. Tweet from your desktop using Tweetdeck. Or tweet directly from Twitter.com.
Twitter is different than blogging or any other social media because of its brevity and its accessibility. Brian Feldman, performance artist of Orlando, puts it best, "Brevity is the soul of Twitter.”
The basics
A few Twitterisms require explanation to the Twitter-illiterate. The Twitter URL for any person is www.Twitter.com/username. Following someone means that you are receiving their Twitter updates. An @ and the person’s name makes your message public so that anyone can view it. People also use an @username when referencing others on Twitter. DM stands for direct message which is private; you can only DM someone who is following you. RT stands for retweet and is used before a message to indicate that you are reposting another person’s Twitter update. You can flag keywords so they can be easily searched.
Why use Twitter?
For any theatre using Twitter there should only be two main reasons for their tweets: 1) entertainment for their fans or potential fans and 2) To spread the word about their theatre and programs. Any other objectives will turn-off your followers and will make your efforts a waste of time and energy. Examine your current marketing plan and determine how Twitter can complement it. Twitter should not replace traditional marketing or other Internet marketing; instead use it to expand what you already have in place.
How does Twitter integrate with other social media?
Twitter can drive your followers to your other social media sites such as Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Flicker, LiveJournal, Digg, Vimeo, blogs, podcasts, and your Web site. Erik Schroeder of Chicago’s Lookingglass Theatre says, “We mostly use Twitter to link patrons to our other Web sites-- like articles or reviews written about Lookingglass or something related to the company, i.e. Lewis Carroll’s birthday, new blog post, or touring productions.”
Another option is to link your Twitter updates to your Facebook account by going to your applications and adding the Twitter application. If you do not want every tweet updating your Facebook account, you can use the Selective Tweets application. Once downloaded, it will only update your Facebook account when you have hash tag fb (#fb) at the end of your tweet. Many theatres already have a large number of Facebook fans, so by doing this, you will add to your Facebook numbers and Twitter followers.
Who’s in charge and how much time does it take?
At the Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington D.C., resident production stage manager Matthew Shiner is the only tweeter for the theatre. He tweets mainly the physical happenings of stage rehearsals, performances, etc. However for the majority of theatres, tweeting falls on the desk of the marketing manager or PR staff. Most theatres tweet between 3-4 times a day on average and more often during special events. Since you are limited to 140 characters the tweets only take a few seconds. Coming up with what to tweet may take more time.
Twitter success stories
Lookingglass’ Schroeder draws a direct correlation between Twitter and ticket sales, “We put out a last-minute discounted ticket offer on all of our social networks,” he says. “We ended up selling 40 tickets on Facebook, 10 tickets through Twitter, and 2 tickets through MySpace. Given the fact that on Facebook we have 1,752 fans, but only 249 followers on Twitter, the result is almost twice as significant for Twitter than Facebook.”
Trisha Panico of Portland Center Stage says, “We used Twitter to help fill a totally empty Halloween house by tweeting a special offer with a post-show costume contest and free beer after the show. And right now, we’re running a promotion on Twitter where anyone whose name is Charlie (lead character in our current show “How to Disappear Completely and Never Be Found”) can get a great deal on a ticket this week.”
Creative offers are not only bringing in results but can also spread the word about your theatre and programs. Rachel Applegate of Arlington’s Signature Theater shares how Twitter got them out of a jam. “During “Les Miserables” we had a huge storm hit DC and a group of 50 couldn’t attend,” recalls Applegate. “Since we didn’t want that gaping hole in the audience we needed to move the tickets the day of the performance. We posted that we had comp tickets for that night’s performance on Twitter. A local reporter picked up the tweet and reposted it on their blog. The phones went crazy and we moved all the seats in about an hour. The reporter posted we had a Twitter account on their blog and we gained about 150 followers that day.”
Twitter phenomena
Brian Feldman, performance artist in Orlando, directs and tweets many of his projects on Twitter. This interview with him was conducted completely on Twitter and as he answered my questions he rushed around Orlando putting up posters for his next performance-art piece “Sleepwalk.” His most famous Twitter project is the “Twitter of the Shrew,” an adaptation of Shakespeare’s “Taming of the Shrew.” The idea was to follow each of the characters of “Taming of the Shrew” and to receive the lines in the play one at a time throughout the day.
In another project, “The txt_show,” the performance was driven by the audience’s tweets and texts. Says Feldman, “’Txt’ was utterly anonymous and uncensored and was quite accurately described as a digital séance, albeit even more out there.”
Twitter Tips
Building a Twitter following is not that different from what you have already built for your theatre. Start our by giving the behind the scenes story of a production by having an actor, actress or crew tweet before, after and at intermission. Portland Center Stage had a Fake Scrooge tweet about current events, cheap deals around town and general humbug messages for their “Christmas Carol” production.
Have Tweet stations in the lobby for before, after and at intermission. Allow people to write about the show. This builds a deeper sense of community between patrons. Gregory Crafts of Theatre Unleashed shared that they were able to get a computer donated and that having live tweeting has increased audience interaction.
“Realize that the number of followers you have directly impacts how effective the medium is,” explains Trisha Pancio of Portland Center Stage. Pancio also recommends searching the followers of the organizations you like and following their followers. Eventually this will build your Twitter audience.
Lastly, do not forget that theatre is about entertainment and about community—reflect that in your theatre’s tweets. If you truly aim to entertain and connect you will reach new patrons and develop closer relationships with your current patrons.
To find other stories on marketing, visit the DramaBiz Magazine Web site at www.dramabiz.com
