One of the key elements of social media is “the community.” Without a community, there wouldn’t be a social in social media. But what exactly is this community?

In my post on a fictional online community manager position on the Orchestra Revolution blog, Jean Shirk, public relations manager at the San Francisco Symphony, posed some important questions:

Do people actually want to meet and interact with one another online or in person, or do they want to read, watch, and listen online? Do they want to meet new people in person, or are they content with going with friends they already know to the concert hall?

Regardless of these questions, we still tend to define classical music goers in Chicago or San Francisco as a community within the respective cities, and we still define classical music fans gathering on various social networks as communities.

Benedict Anderson, author of Imagined Communities, a seminal theory on nationalism, argues that a nation is just that: imagined. It is imagined because “the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion.”

Classical music communities and online communities in today’s social media environment are not so different. At any given concert, how many patrons know each other? In any online community, how many participants have met other participants face-to-face? Yet a patron feels a bond with his fellow concertgoers, and a Facebook fan of the London Symphony Orchestra feels a bond, however small, with other fans.

When I was in my late teens, I was a member on an R.E.M. fan Web site. This was before the term social media was ever even coined, yet the site was more social than most sites today. While members never really knew most of their fellow-members, let alone met their fellow-members, in the minds of each lived an image of a community, centered on a common interest in the music of a particular band.

Anderson argues that imagining the idea of a nation arose historically after social and scientific discoveries—most notably the emergence of the printing press under a system of capitalism—reduced privileged access to knowledge and paved the way to the vernacularizing of religious communication, which led to democratization, liberalization, and the increasing difficulty of justifying divine and dynastic power. In short, a history-altering change in information dissemination and communication fueled the Reformation and Enlightenment, which “made it possible for rapidly growing numbers of people to think about themselves, and to relate to others, in profoundly new ways.”

The origins of online communities have a similar, although less profound, story. And that’s to be expected; we cannot start to compare the imagining of nations with online communities in terms of impact and stakes. And whereas imagining the nation forever changed worldly, political power, perhaps our current story of online communities is best showcased by the impact it has on business; the increasing difficulty of justifying modern day divine and dynastic power: corporations and institutions.

The discoveries of the computer age paved the way. The Internet greatly reduced privileged access to knowledge and social media vernacularized our communication. Where local languages replaced Latin in religious communication in Anderson’s outlook; authentic conversations, text speak and colloquialism replaces corporate and institutional language in the social media age. The Cluetrain Manifesto speaks of the current homogenized “voice” of business that will “seem as contrived and artificial as the language of the 18th century French court.”

This change in communication liberalized the masses and democratized the playing field. In Anderson’s outlook, kings and emperors were replaced by republics and democracies; in today’s world we see, as the Cluetrain Manifesto once again puts it, networked markets that “are beginning to self-organize faster than the companies that have traditionally served them.”

This self-organization is described in Beth Kanter and Allison Fine’s new book The Networked Nonprofit. The authors talk about the rise of Millennials, or digital natives, those who have grown up in today’s vernacularized, social media world. These Millennials no longer owe allegiance to any particular company or organization; they self-organize as “free agents.”

The R.E.M. fan Web site mentioned earlier was just such as thing. It wasn’t started by the band or the record label. It was started by a devoted, free agent fan. The site and particularly the community weren’t built overnight. It took many people in this imagined community.

And to answer Jean Shirk’s question: did people actually want to meet and interact? Yes! Despite the virtual nature and the scattered geography of its member base, among the very active participants there were meet ups at concerts, offline friendships, and if I remember correctly, even a marriage or two. Not so different from the non-virtual world that also sees varying degrees of involvement in the community.

And through social media, these online imagined communities have real power and they know it. “If [companies] don’t quite see the light,” warn the authors of the Cluetrain Manifesto, “some other outfit will come along that’s more attentive, more interesting, more fun to play with.” Kanter and Fine urge the modern, networked organization to engage these free agents and leverage their social networks.

R.E.M. saw the light and engaged with its free agents and fans online. It is perhaps not entirely coincidentally that the guy who started up the fan site now heads up the emerging technology department at the record label.

So perhaps this is a warning to the big dynastic powers in classical music: the big orchestras and the major opera houses. Extraordinary changes in communication brought down kings and emperors in the past. Another noted historian, Eric Hobsbawm, paraphrases Pierre Vilar in his book Nations and Nationalism since 1780: “what characterized the nation-people as seen from below was precisely that it represented the common interest against particular interests, the common good against privilege.”

You want to be a part of the common interest, the common good and not be defined as a particular interest or a privilege. Does anything indicate more clearly the need to engage with your people, rather than dictating to your people?

Ignore at your own peril. We all know what happened to Marie Antoinette after she uttered the words “Let them eat cake.” *

* Words she in fact never uttered. But she was executed nonetheless.

I just returned from San Francisco, where I presented in a seminar on social media at the annual conference of the Association of California Symphony Orchestras. I was invited by seminar moderator Oliver Theil, public relations director at the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra. My co-presenter was–and I still get goose bumps saying this–the venerable Beth Kanter.

Beth’s new book The Networked Nonprofit provided a framework for the presentation. I tried to provide concrete examples from my Orchestras and Social Media Survey and case studies from the field. I also touched on the orchestra “churn” study in connection to the book Flip the Funnel, which I have written about during the TAFTO month.

Below the embedded presentation follow some of the topics in more detail:

Classical music organizations and free agents

• Beth’s book explains free agents as people who work outside the organization and are enthused by a cause rather than an institution. The job of the organization then becomes to make it “easy for outsiders to come in.” Marcia Adair’s #operaplot is the perfect example of an outsider, a free agent, coming up with a great idea and involving arts organizations in a way that is simple, effortless and risk-free. Read my interview with Marcia here.
• Naturally, I briefly mentioned my very own free agent experiment #floodofsupport. There’s still time to get involved.

Integrated campaign around a viral video

• Perhaps you’ve seen the video: a flashmob (or is it guerilla marketing) opera performance at a market in Valencia, Spain. The video received more than 4 million views. But that wasn’t it. The creative agency behind the video produced several complementing elements: a micro-site; Twitter, Facebook and other social networking profiles; and a print brochure. All for their client Palau de les Arts. The reason why people might not have known about that side of the effort, though, became painfully obvious when I contacted someone at the creative agency. He told me the powers that be at the Palau didn’t believe in the campaign and nixed it, including editing out any branding in the viral video. What a missed opportunity!

Saint Louis Symphony: cross-platform integration

• The Saint Louis Symphony is an example of well-designed cross-platform integration of social media tools. Highlighting their connectedness on the front page with prominent links to Facebook and the orchestra’s blog. A page on the Web site lists all their social media efforts. Facebook or Twitter are not silos of interaction; social media tools work best across platforms and they work best when an organization’s Web site complements the tools, as well as offline complementing online.

Landing pages

• Another page from Saint Louis Symphony’s book. They do a good job with a custom page on student efforts on their Facebook page. That led me to talk about landing pages and welcome tabs, items specifically designed to welcome new fans and call for a specific action. I saw a recent study where having a landing page/welcome tab on your Facebook page increases the “like” conversion from 23% to 47%. I have not yet seen an orchestra with a custom welcome tab.
• Not to mention Twitter landing pages. Why not welcome people from Twitter to your site with a specific message to them? Moreover, if you set up a Twitter landing page on your site with a specific call to action that takes them through a specific path on your web site, you can measure conversion rates through Google Analytics with funnels. You can see where people dropped off, how many and where they went. Keep this in mind, not for just ticket sales, but for newsletter sign ups or other actionable items.

Measuring results

• Due to time shortage, the only point I really wanted to make was that you should look at a social media effort as part of an integrated marketing communications effort, where communications result in behavior change and marketing is the financial value of this behavior. So if you’re measuring, you first have to know what this behavior change is. What are you looking to achieve in the next 5 to 10 years? Those sometimes 150-year-old mission statements can still be a guiding light. The principles don’t change much, the environment does, and that’s what is reflected in the last sentence of the New York Philharmonic’s mission statement, to bring classical music to the community “in any other manner now known or hereafter to be…” Read my series on Evaluating Social Media for Classical Music Organizations.

I’ve been an avid fan of Beth Kanter’s blog for the past few years. It might come as no surprise that I pre-ordered her, and co-author Allison Fine’s, book The Networked Nonprofit. And if you’re a reader of their blogs, it might also come as no surprise that the book fully lived up to its great expectations.

My first reaction, on Twitter no less, was telling Beth that I liked the tone of the book. It doesn’t have the common “social media hippie” talk. You know, the long-haired, world-peace-wishing, tree-hugging, social-media-is-going-to-solve-all-your-problems-and-here-are-the-tools-to-do-it talk.

Good social media books talk less about the tools and more about the concepts and frameworks. That’s what I loved about Flip the Funnel, and that’s what I loved about The Networked Nonprofit. Both define and lay out a framework in which you can apply your own strategy. We all know I’m a big fan of such frameworks.

Sometimes it looks as if the authors are treading the hippie-talk territory. I think this is unavoidable. It’s because nonprofits have been used to doing things in a particular way and a different approach might seem like a fairy tale at times. But the authors never end up actually sounding like our long-haired friends. Many positive, world-peace-wishing, elements are backed up with organizational structure research outside, and predating, the social media realm, and they are often balanced with real-world pitfalls to look out for.

Although the authors provide a core framework, the book is chock full of examples and practical, how-to information. Reading the book will help you answer all those “I’m scared of social media” questions. The reflection questions at the end of each chapter are particularly helpful for a nonprofit manager building a social media strategy.

As the authors write, the book is built on a simple equation: “Social Media Powers Social Networks for Social Change.” The book sets the stage with the rise of Millennials who no longer owe allegiance to any particular organizations, but rather pick out particular causes. Thus, the Networked Nonprofit will engage these “free agents” and leverage their social networks.

As we move through microplanning, crowdsourcing cautions, creating social culture, and making nonprofits simpler, we end up in the final chapter, one of the strongest chapters of the book: Governing Through Networks. It takes a critical look at governance at nonprofits. Again, the directive here is not “they should use social media and all will change for the better,” the concept is working as a Networked Nonprofit in a broad, on as well as offline, sense.

The book is a fast read, but you’ll keep it as source to reference. In that sense, it’s a perfect (hand)book for nonprofit managers that are looking to increase the impact of their organization’s mission statement in a connected world. I am going to be rereading it, and using it, in the months ahead.

Last Wednesday, I had my whirlwind trip to Los Angeles to speak at the Opera America 2010 Conference. I arrived in L.A. Tuesday night—and was amazed at the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra mural during my cab ride to downtown—but I had to leave again shortly after noon on Wednesday. That meant unfortunately missing two of my co-presenters, some exciting performances, Placido Domingo’s address, and of course, all the networking and meeting and greeting.

That said, it was great meeting Ling Chan, Ceci Dadisman and Margo Drakos in person. There’s hope for the arts in social media.

I was on first in the seminar. I delivered a presentation on a framework for social media strategy. I got lots of interesting questions. I’m not sure if I answered some of them satisfactory. Things are usually clearer in my head than coming from my mouth.

Here is the presentation:

The biggest struggle perhaps is gauging the level of knowledge and experience in the room. I was surprised to hear the question “what is Twitter?” in the middle of my presentation. But those questions are good to gain back perspective. I don’t think they really didn’t know what Twitter was, they wanted to know the why and how.

The framework I provided contained perhaps surprisingly few mentions of actual tools. I like to stress social media is not about the tools, it’s about the interaction and community. But people do like to hear about concrete examples and tools, about tips and tricks. It was a good lesson for me.

On the other hand, the reason I didn’t include those concrete examples was because I keep thinking about what they are going to do with those examples. Are they going to replicate them? What works for one company, doesn’t work for another. In Amber Nashlund’s popular post Social media topics that need to die, she writes: “If you’re spending all your time building your cloned safety net based on other people’s situations, you’re already behind the game, and not focused on what your business needs.”

I will need to find a happy intermedium. Illustrative examples, but stress that social media and Web 2.0 are contextual and technological (respectively) frameworks in which you can be creative. We’re in a creative industry after all.

Furthermore, if I had included concrete examples, I would have picked the Vancouver Opera…

I couldn’t be happier then to listen to Ling Chan’s presentation about Vancouver Opera’s social media efforts. I already knew the surface of their efforts, but Ling provided the most creative case study of an opera company’s use of social media. I recognized a lot of the same key points I tried to make from a theoretical point of view in Ling’s practical demonstration. She described her own experience of the presentation on her own blog.

I wasn’t ready to leave, but had to catch the flight back to Chicago without seeing Ceci’s and Margo’s presentations…

Just a couple of days ago, I marked my seven-year anniversary of living in the United States. That is more than a quarter of my life. Nearly five of those seven years, I have been blogging (I launched the first version of Dutch Perspective in September 2005).

The first three years weren’t focused. I hadn’t found my niche yet. But they sure were educational. Now ever since I started blogging with a more defined focus on culture, and orchestras in particular, and social media, beginning with a series in July 2008, I have noticed some gears turning. Not entirely coincidentally, this was paired with more engagement on Twitter.

I admittedly still don’t have an audience of thousands, but I do have a specific audience of cultural managers. Clearly, there was a need for information on orchestras and other cultural institutions and their usage of social media, and when I started filling that need; I started noticing a shift in my blog’s audience and my online network. I came in contact with some great people.

Perhaps a first validation and verification of this shift came in the form of an invitation to speak at the stART.09 Conference in Duisburg, Germany via webcast. Then, in March of this year, further validation was my four-day residency at the University of Missouri Kansas City Conservatory of Music and Dance, where I presented to students, staff and faculty on classical music and social media. That was a tremendous experience.

Symphony Magazine quoted me in an article, due to my survey on how and if orchestras use social media. Drew McManus invited me to write a guest entry for the Take A Friend To the Orchestra project, in which I laid out my learning from the book Flip the Funnel.

And this year seems to be turning into quite the year. I have three more conferences coming up in which I will talk about my findings and writings on classical music and social media.

Opera Conference 2010
June 9 – Los Angeles, CA.
Making an Impact with Social Media and Technology

There are some obvious parallels to my writings on orchestras and social media and the world of opera. But there will also be some interesting subtle differences. I will be one of the seminar speakers along with Ling Chan, Vancouver Opera; Ceci Dadisman, Palm Beach Opera; and Margo Tatgenhorst Drakos, InstantEncore.com. And you know what? I can now forever claim that I spoke at the same conference as Placido Domingo…

Association of California Symphony Orchestras
July 23 – San Francisco, CA.
Contemporary Connectivity: Social Media

I am very excited about speaking at the ACSO Conference. Not only does it directly tie to my writings and experience, I will have the opportunity to speak alongside Beth Kanter. This is also slightly intimidating; Beth is of course the go-to person for nonprofit social media! San Francisco Symphony’s director of public relations, Oliver Theil, will moderate the session. The SFSO is doing some great stuff with social media, so that will be an interesting conversation.

stART.10 Conference
September 10 – Duisburg, Germany
A Framework for Social Media Strategy

This time around, I will actually be in Duisburg in person, so that promises to be a much better experience. I will be one of the key note speakers and will try to summarize all that I have learned over the past years into a framework for social media strategy. I can’t wait to finally meet the organizers of the stART Conference in person; they demonstrate that when it comes to culture and social media, things look very promising outside the English-speaking world. I’ll also be able to visit the family back in the Netherlands, just an hour or so away from Duisburg!

Good things all around and a busy summer and fall. I just hope I can miss my beautiful newborn Elli for those days!

In the last nine steps, I have walked through Are We There Yet? A Communications Evaluation Guide by the Communications Network. It started with figuring out what to evaluate and establishing an overarching goal. The central question was: how are your communications efforts creating a change; more specifically, a change in behavior. The central message was: measure outcomes, not outputs. It ended with figuring out specific tools and establishing a evaluation budget.

Evaluating communications in social media, focused on creating change, is one aspect. I have occasionally offered a brief perspective on evaluating marketing efforts, focused on sales and commerce. And while I wholeheartedly believe social media should be used for sales and commerce purposes—as long as you play by the new rules of social media—and that those efforts should be measured, the first and foremost reason for engaging in social media should come from a mission statement-inspired goal.

I hope the walk through was helpful and insightful. Perhaps you have suggestions or improvements. If so, don’t hesitate to let me know. Likewise, leave a comment if you have an evaluation story to share or if you have any questions on your own evaluation efforts. I’m looking forward to hearing from you.

Happy evaluating!

This is not an estimation of you complete communications plan budget. That said, you should budget for evaluation within your communications plan. The authors advise that a good rule of thumb is that “the evaluation budget should be at least five to seven percent of the total budget of your communication program.”

You should consider: staff time (evaluating does cost time!), external consultant fees (you might need an expert for certain elements), evaluation techniques (are you using any specialized software of service to measure your results?), and dissemination costs (you should share your evaluation with your colleagues, board, and peers in the industry).

You must spend time and money to evaluate your communications efforts. How else can you improve the effectiveness? How else can you allocate your resources sensibly? How else can you respond to a change in the environment?

Tomorrow, a quick final word on the evaluation process.

(Source: Are We There Yet? A Communications Evaluation Guide)

The authors list several evaluation tools, including interviews, focus groups, surveys, observation, quantitative data collection and analysis, and content analysis.

Interviews, focus groups are pretty straightforward qualitative techniques. Surveys can be used to track qualitative, and in a lesser degree quantitative, changes over time. Observation can perhaps best be translated into the listening skill that is so important in social media.

There is perhaps an abundance of quantitative data in the world of social media. Nearly everything can be tracked. Facebook Fan pages have metrics, there are tools for Twitter out there, and of course, Google Analytics can help you drill down into very specific information about your Web site visitors, what they did and where they came from.

In marketing terms, your sales data will be most important, but paired with Web analytics. You can track conversion rates from landing pages and in Google Analytics, you can exactly track your customers through the purchasing process. With funnels, while your patrons are clicking through to purchase tickets, you can track where they are abandoning the process. This is useful for learning about possible tweaks to a purchase process.

Content analysis can offer great insight into attitudes and social norms. You can assess the quality and tone of the online content, blog and social media coverage. How relevant is the content to your organization, and what is the sentiment in the content? What is the conversation index, or ratio between blog posts and comments/trackbacks? How long does your message remain in the environment?

There are many tools available, but as mentioned, your goal and objectives will tell you what kind of information you need.

Tomorrow, we’ll look at step nine: estimating your budget .

(Source: Are We There Yet? A Communications Evaluation Guide)

You should now be clear on what your communications efforts are expected to achieve. You know your goal, objectives, audience, baseline and evaluation questions; the next step is to develop specific metrics to answer your evaluation questions.

The authors introduce milestones at this point of the evaluation. If objectives are intermediate markers toward your goal, milestones demonstrate your progress toward those objectives. Just like objectives, they are not intended to show your activities, your outputs, but rather your results on your way to reach your objective.

Milestones can either be measured quantitatively or qualitatively, or of course, a combination of both. Here are some examples of milestones and some of their possible metrics and measurements put into the context of familiar objectives (keep in mind, the metrics measure the milestone, not the objective per se):

Communications

Objective
“By the end of year one, have established an online community of 25,000 active, engaging members.”
Milestone
“By the end of month six, have solicited one action from 10,000 community members”
Quantitative/qualitative measurements
You have established a rate of interaction of 10% of your total Facebook fans.
You have established a fan base of 20,000 members on Facebook.
…

Objective
“Position your organization as an essential element of your arts community by the end of year two.”
Milestone
“Establish a relationship with bloggers from the 50 most-read arts blogs by the end of year one.”
Quantitative/qualitative measurements
Communication exchanges indicate increased interest by bloggers/creators.
Organization is referenced positively in at least five key blogs.
…

Marketing

Objective
“By the end of year two, increase annual revenue from online referrals from Facebook and Twitter by $50,000.”
Milestone
“By the end of year one, have established Web traffic of 150,000 annual visitors referred from Facebook and Twitter.”
Quantitative/qualitative measurements
You have established a fan base of 100,000 members on Facebook, with an average click-through rate of a posted item on Facebook at 5%
You have established a fan base of 200,000 members on Twitter, with an average click-through rate of a posted item on Twitter at 2%
…

The authors advise to identify three milestones per objective and three metrics or measures per milestone. They advise against tracking too much data; only track what measures whether you are reaching your milestone.

As we have seen in the baseline step, there are many tools out there to collect the data you need. Step eight will delve a little deeper into those tools.

On Monday, we’ll look at step eight: selecting your evaluation techniques.

(Source: Are We There Yet? A Communications Evaluation Guide)

The first question before posing your evaluation questions is: what stage is your communications effort in? The authors make a distinction between early, mid and advanced stages.

Early Stage

The early stage means the development or early implementation of a communications plan, where there is a degree of trial and error. The evaluation at this point helps determine the larger strategic direction.

Questions include: have I tested my messages with a sample group that is representative? Where have my messages first appeared? Are my messages right for the channels I selected? How is the audience responding to my tactics?

This is where a lot of orchestras and classical music organizations are now, whether they have implemented a communications plan or not. A lot of trial and error and determining whether the messages or working. Many organizations have gone about this without a communications plan and have found that the usual marketing and public relations messages don’t translate well in social media. They might get some responses from the audience, but nothing more than a comment or a “like” of their Facebook status. With a clear communications plan, this should get better, and those are the questions to ask.

Mid Stage

The mid course stage means you have a well-established communications plan, identified key influencers and players and have chosen to invest in certain strategies and tactics. The evaluation at this points helps determine whether you are on track toward your objectives.

Questions include: is my audience more engaged with the issue? Are bloggers and creators engaging with the organization? Do I need to change my message or messengers? Are there any environmental changes that require adjustments to objectives and tactics?

Not many organizations will be in this stage. Fewer have gotten to this stage with a clear communications plan, and even fewer will ask these evaluation questions. This should be the point where you can see some early signs of impact, if you are doing it right. Perhaps you find that you need to change your messages or messenger? Perhaps you need to shift away from Friendster because the environment has changed?

Advanced Stage

The advanced stage means you have made several measurable steps toward reaching your goal, but the environment might have seen some changes since starting your communications efforts. The evaluation at this point helps to determine what lessons you have learned from earlier steps and provides an opportunity to sharpen the goal and direction of your plan.

Questions include: are there signs of change in intention or behavior? What have I learned from achieved objectives and what is the organization’s role in the future? Does the data indicate a need to change my strategy or tactics?

Have your supporters started to organize? Are they putting the network in action? You should now be able to have some definite signs that your communications plan is doing its job. On the way, you will have learned some valuable lessons that you can apply to your future efforts and direction. Has your organization’s role changed on your road to achieve your goal? If so, what has changed and why?

And of course, can you claim to have aided and contributed toward reaching your goal? How much of it was due to your communications effort as opposed to other factors? And lastly, you will want to share your findings with colleagues, the board of directors, and even others in the industry.

Tomorrow, we’ll look at step seven: drafting your measurements.

(Source: Are We There Yet? A Communications Evaluation Guide)