How to engage bloggers in Performing Arts Marketing

Public relations and third party ink have always been, and still are, very important for the performing arts industry. The art sector is short of money for advertising and there is almost a silent agreement that performances and other artistic events have the right to media cover and critics. This agreement is supported by the close relations between the performing arts and journalists, and also by the fact that many theater critics are also theater professionals, and vice verse. The journalists have a specialized knowledge; they see theater several times every week and are far from always representative to your audience. And yet, they are the only persons that press and PR agents exclusively target to reach out to their audience through media. But now there are also social media…

A couple of days ago, I wrote about the importance of targeting the influencers when applying a social media strategy. Influencers can be found amongst the people who produce social content, like bloggers. The span of blogs varies from personal diaries to big specialized blogs which can be as important as newspapers. It is impossible to neglect the role that bloggers have and will have for us to gain third party ink in the future, so we'd better get started engaging them in our cause straight away! 

How to engage by using Social Media

Today's word is ENGAGE. The word caught my attention in a slide show from a seminar about social media for art organizations given by Beth Kanter. Beth is the author of Beth's blog, which is specialized in social media for non-profit organizations. Now when I spend a lot of time in front of the computer, going from page to page, checking things that I read somewhere just to find something more interesting that I start to read instead, it is obvious how difficult it is to engage people for your cause. To make them stay and get really engaged

In Beth's seminar slides I read that listening leads to engagement and that we have to work with influencers. The influencers are people who create "the buzz". We do not want "one to a few" communication; we want "one to lots and lots". So finding the right influencers is important. In the olden days, when I started to work… those influencers where the "theater representatives", (primarily) women (mostly teachers), who made group bookings and got discounts and a free ticket for themselves. This is still an effective way of selling tickets for many theaters, because even if we now are cooler, more efficient in our communication and heavily brand oriented, it finally comes down to how many butts there are in the seats. And the (primarily) women (mostly teachers) as a group do sell a lot of tickets. There were always discussions on how to renew this engagement. That was before anyone knew that there would be a Facebook, and a Twitter, and a Myspace… So now the door is open for the new generation to get engaged!

Just like in offline marketing it is important to engage the right people. The people who can engage are the people who create social content. Content that people take part of, and listen to. Stefano Maggi writes in his blog Digital Ingredients that you are looking for people who create buzz, but since the engagement demands a lead (a purchase of tickets for example) it is not just the quantity we're after, but also the quality. We are looking for people with strong interpersonal ties that can speak for our cause. To find them, Stefano Maggi writes, we have to integrate their world, take part of the audience for a while.

Beth's "method is a five step rocket: listen, engagement, social content, general buzz and community building/social networking. Those steps correspond to different social media sites, where Ning, Facebook, Myspace, Twitter etc… turns up in the end of the rocket. When we are already flying.

When I think about all the time that was given to the theater representatives; the special events, the staff working just for them (their own personal contact), all the extra treats… it seems fair to at least have a couple of persons working on social media strategies in a performing arts organization. It takes time to really engage people; get to know them, to make them seen and to find out what compensation that will make them engage. It is not impossible that a lot of organizations start with last step, by building up a network and then stays by that, and that's what makes it feels like "a sophisticated email system". So to engage you have to have time, and to get to know people.