Orchestra Survey: Monitoring and Measuring

December 17, 2009 By

None of the orchestras indicated they have implemented or established metrics for measuring social media activities. However, the majority of the orchestras (73%) recognized the need to measure social media activities and the remaining 27% were currently planning metrics for measuring social media.

This is one of the findings I found most interesting. In addition, the majority do find the need to measure and two-thirds of the managers rate importance of measuring social media at least a four (out of five). This, I believe, truly indicates that orchestras are at the brink of a strategic use of social media.

But they don’t quite seem to be ready to answer the tough questions. I can’t stress enough to read the wonderful report Are We There Yet? to get yourself ready for those tough questions. In a comment on yesterday’s post, I detailed an example for goals, objectives and milestones that should make measurement clearer.

Back to the survey, it seems contradictory that the question on what exactly managers measure yielded some results. Just over half of the managers claim to measure ticket sales and incoming traffic from blogs and social networking (even though they indicated earlier that they have no established metrics). Perhaps they are tracking these numbers, but have not connected them to a social media goal yet. And I wonder how many managers really do measure ticket sales that stem from social media efforts, or if they rather measure general online ticket sales.

Tracking these measurements then seems to fit more under social media monitoring, rather than measuring. Google Alerts is the main tool of choice for managers to monitor social media. It would have been interesting to see how many use the “comprehensive” alert versus the “news” alert. Obviously, you can’t monitor social media with just a “news” alert. Frequency of monitoring was not surveyed, but it is perhaps an important indicator of how involved the monitoring effort really is.

Just as the engagement question before, the relatively narrow framing doesn’t show the full scope of measuring and monitoring. Qualitative research on the topic, including interviews, would be a welcome addition to find out how managers keep on top of what’s being said in the social media sphere.

For more on social media monitoring (or listening), read Beth Kanter’s wiki on the topic with some great instructional materials.

How do you interpret the results? And how would you go about monitoring and measuring your social media efforts?

Filed Under: Culture, Social Media Tagged With: , , , ,

Orchestra Survey: Activities, Engagement and Goals

December 16, 2009 By

The survey demonstrates a high participation rate among orchestras in the different social media tools. All orchestras in the survey are on Facebook and 80% of the orchestras have a Twitter account. But this just shows that orchestras have set up a presence, not what they are doing with the presence.

That’s where the engagement question can answer some questions. Eighty percent of the orchestras respond to questions and comments on social networking sites. A little more than half (53%) of the orchestras adapt press and marketing materials for social media and 40% actively pitch bloggers, and 20% maintain a separate mailing or pitch list for new media outlets and authors.

There is an obvious problem with such narrow framing: it doesn’t show the full scope of engagement. Furthermore, the interpretation of the question leaves room for different answers.

I was surprised to find that a little more than half claim to adapt materials for social media. Then again, condensing a press release into a tweet and posting a link could be construed as adapting materials. And perhaps instead of “responding to questions and comments,” the question should have included “regularly” or some sense of frequency and a segmentation of platforms (blog comment, Facebook, Twitter etc.).

And what about pitching bloggers? What kind of bloggers are being pitched? Are they just the arts critics from traditional media who maintain a blog? Or do they include blogs like Sequenza21and Opera Chic, or local blogs like Gothamist and Chicagoist, or even local classical music enthusiasts who blog?

Most telling was the question about responses to negative comments. Nearly half of the orchestras said they did respond externally. All orchestras are on Facebook, yet only half respond to possible negative comments. Perhaps this finding tells the truest story about engagement.

The reason I highlight these points, is because I feel the survey findings might reflect an appearance of frequent engagement through social media. This doesn’t completely match up with my own observations, even though there are the obvious exceptions that show both quantity and quality.

I received a comment via e-mail:

What kind of content are these orgs trying to share over social media? I think videos, podcasts and blogs are the main types of content that orgs should be sharing when they get into social media. Perhaps that is part of the problem. Orchestras aren’t creating the kind of content that is popular to interact with, easily shareable with others, etc. Thoughts?

I think this touches on a very important point. Orchestras are just dipping their feet into social media. It seems a lot of organizations have joined to “keep up with the Joneses.” So yes, they’re active on Facebook and Twitter, spending time on social media, and yes, they find it moderately important, but there’s no know-how on communicating in a social media environment, and there’s no strategy or policy behind it. This knowledge and a well-defined goal, along with well-established metrics, is what’s lacking at most organizations.

And talking about goals: driving Web traffic and increasing awareness of programming and the organization are the most important social media goals, according to managers. Although opinions are split on increasing ticket sales, it is only ranked sixth out of eight.

Drew McManus writes:

Certainly, organizations shouldn’t exclusively use social media as an outlet to shill and sell tickets yet there is no way to reasonably separate revenue development from other mission related goals. Simply put, revenue performance and the institution’s mission are not mutually exclusive.

I would suspect that if managers were pressed on why they would want to increase Web traffic, or why they would want to increase awareness, it would all come back to ticket sales.

Then again, not necessarily. I believe social media can be a great tool to advance the orchestras mission of bringing classical music to the community. Although tremendously important for the bottom line, ticket sales is still only one of the components in that mission. That’s where the distinction between goals and objectives is important. Your mission is your goal; ticket sales is an objective toward that goal.

Update: Elliot Harmon at the techsoup blog finds it odd that orchestras focus on Web traffic as “it seems a clumsy proxy for the less transparent goals of awareness and education.”

What do you think?

Filed Under: Culture, Social Media Tagged With: , , ,

Orchestra Survey: Budgets, Responsibilities and Time

December 15, 2009 By

This is the first post in a series to provide a more in-depth look at the orchestras and social media survey findings. I made the full report available yesterday, to give people the opportunity to take a complete look at the findings in hopes of a better discussion.

Others have chimed in already:
Drew McManus: Adaptistration
Christian Henner-Fehr: Das Kulturmanagement Blog
Guest post on Beth’s Blog

First, I would like to take the opportunity again to express the informative nature of the report, rather than an authoritative nature. The sample is small and must consequently allow for a large margin of error.

In the report, I occasionally switch from raw numbers to percentages and back. The percentages tell a bigger, clearer story, but the raw numbers are perhaps more credible. I ask you to keep in mind that the percentages are based on a number of 15 respondents, and one respondent represents 7% of the total. How did this look for you?

Furthermore, how much do the institutions that responded look like the ones that did not? It is perhaps reasonable to expect a certain bias toward orchestras that are already engaged in social media. The orchestras that received the survey were roughly the 53 largest budget orchestras in the country. As mentioned in the report, seven of those were Group 1 orchestras, four were Group 2 and four were Group 3. Other than the aforementioned bias, I have no reason to believe some other bias to be in place. I’d be interested to hear any other possible issues in the sample.

In the rest of this post, I’ll be looking at budgets, responsibilities and time commitment.

Budget

Half of the orchestras (53% / 8 out 15) do not have a budget for social media; a little more than a quarter (27% / 4 out 15) spends more than $1,000 annually on social media.

Budgets exclude employee salary and wages, but other than that, there are no particular guidelines to what exactly is or should be included in these budgets. Differences between each orchestra’s take on what goes in to a social media budget should be expected and is not accounted for in this survey.

The next step would be to look at those budgets. What does it mean if one orchestra spends more than $10,000 per year and another spends $500? What are the differences in their efforts, and most importantly, what are the differences in their goals and results?

Additionally, do those orchestras that have placed an ad on a social network account for that spending in a social media budget? Or does the money come from a regular marketing budget. How do those orchestras that do not have a budget account for costs associated with their social media activities? Again, is this covered in a different or general marketing budget?

Keep in mind that if you’re going to effectively measure your performance, you need to know what your efforts cost.

Responsibilities

A majority of orchestras (67% / 10 out 15) divide social media responsibilities among multiple staff members. More than a quarter (27% / 4 out 15) of the orchestras list social media responsibilities as part of an existing staff member’s duties.

Marketing departments are involved in managing social media at an overwhelming majority (87% / 13 out 15) of the orchestras, but at slightly less than half (47% / 7 out 15) of the orchestras it was the marketing department that was solely in charge.

It’s important to formalize the role of social media in the organization. Outside of the implausible hiring of new staff or freelancers, you can update staff positions and job descriptions to incorporate social media. Make it official. Bring these people together, under the auspices of a senior manager who has the strategic oversight and organizational knowledge.

In an earlier article “Social media in a decentralized organizational structure” I offer additional thoughts on how to handle social media responsibilities.

In addition, I received the following comment via e-mail:

For social media to be truly powerful, and for it to change how orgs interact with their “stakeholders,” I think the power in social media has to be better distributed. Conductors, musicians, board members, administrators, etc. – all should be involved. With 87% of the orgs having marketing in charge, that puts marketing in power over of the message. Which is why there is too much “marketing speak” going on with orchestras on Twitter right now.

This touches on a couple of very good points. The first being quality vs. quantity, as I explained in my recommendations: “This survey did intentionally not look at the quality of social media activities by orchestras, yet quality is an important factor in the effectiveness of your social media efforts.”

But also a pressing point I had neglected in the full report: the role of the artistic staff in social media. The London Symphony Orchestra demonstrates the qualitative achievements when musicians get involved in the social media efforts (article by Rebecca Krause-Hardie).

Time commitment

All orchestras spend at least some time on social media per work week. A large majority of the orchestras (80%) spends between 1 and 5 hours per work week on social media.

Clearly, here we see that social media is certainly not a large part of the job, whether scattered among multiple employees or focused on a dedicated staffer.

I received an interesting question via e-mail regarding that specific point and my related recommendation:

You show that only one institution spends as much as 20% of a full-time person on social media, with most spending less than 5% of someone’s time—but then you recommend formalizing social media participation. How do those two go together?

I have to be clear here that formalizing social media participation does not necessarily mean increasing your current efforts. Your time commitment depends on your goal; of course, if you have a lofty goal, you should commit the appropriate time. If you commit 5% of someone’s time, you can only expect a proportionate result.

The same can be said for budgets.

Or do you have some advice for how to formalize an engagement that continues to occupy only a small fraction of anyone’s time?

This, of course, all comes down to efficiency. Formalizing, in my opinion, is all about setting policies, practices and metrics. Those will take a bit of time to develop, but they will increase the efficiency of your social media efforts and operations. For example, a good monitoring system might take a while to set up, but then provides a dashboard of what’s being said about your organization, from where you can direct your engagement with relatively little effort.

Your turn

These are some of the points that came to mind when creating the report. As I explained in the preface, this survey might have raised more questions than answers. And that’s good. But now it’s your turn. What are your thoughts on the findings, on the questions and on the recommendations?

Filed Under: Culture, Social Media Tagged With: , ,

Orchestras and Social Media Survey: Key Findings and Full Report

December 13, 2009 By

Last Friday, I introduced you to the Orchestras and Social Media Survey. Today, the full report is available for download.

You can download the report from my Web site at mcmvanbree.com

In short, the survey found that social media activities, familiarity and usage seem to be widespread among orchestras. Managers find social media important and organizations are generally enthusiastic. However, the efforts are far from organized and strategic. It seems many orchestras are dipping their feet in the social media pool, but do not have the policies, budgets, and metrics in place to effectively use the tools at their disposal, even if they do recognize the need for checks and balances.

The rest of this week will be dedicated to in-depth follow up posts about the different findings, and I will pose some discussion questions. I encourage you to contribute.

Orchestras and Social Media Survey

View more documents from Marc van Bree.


Filed Under: Culture, Featured Posts, Social Media Tagged With: , , , ,

Orchestras and Social Media Survey: Preface

December 11, 2009 By

Nonprofit blogger Beth Kanter recently highlighted two new research studies about nonprofits and the adoption of social media released by Weber Shandwick and Philanthropy Action. These studies yielded some interesting results.

The Weber Shandwick study of 200 nonprofit executives revealed that an overwhelming majority (85%) will use more social media in the next two years. There is extensive experimentation with social media in the nonprofit sector, but only half (51%) are active users. Most nonprofits (52%) do not currently have the infrastructure, staff and expertise necessary to take full advantage of social media’s potential, and ultimately, for most nonprofit executives (79%), the true value of social media has yet to be determined for their organizations.

The Philanthropy Action study questioned the use of social networking for mid-size nonprofits and concluded that ―in terms of fundraising and attracting volunteers, metrics that most nonprofit boards and executive directors highly value, the available evidence suggests that social media is not very effective.

How do orchestras stack up in this environment? What kind of resources do managers commit and how active are orchestras in social media? Do orchestra managers share the opinion that fundraising and attracting volunteers are highly valuable metrics, or do they have different goals and objectives?

Orchestra survey

There has never been a comprehensive, industry-wide look at if and how orchestras are using social media. In order to get a clear and complete picture of what is happening with orchestras and social media around the country, I sent around a survey to 53 orchestra marketing, communications and web managers in October and November, 2009. I received 15 responses and my gratitude goes out to each of the orchestra managers that responded.

The survey was designed to collect details about the state of social media, ranging from budget size and time allotment to attitudes and goals. It was not meant to single out organizations, or show what is good or what is bad. All responses have been tallied to provide a comprehensive, collective report that aims to aid orchestra managers in years to come.

Blog series

Next week, I will kick off the Orchestras and Social Media Survey 2009 series on my blog by publishing the full report, followed by in-depth posts about the different findings.

I am doing this to provide an opportunity for feedback and discussion. I believe, and even hope, the survey results will raise more questions than answers. I am interested in hearing your thoughts on what it all means and how orchestras can use the results to inform a better, more strategic approach to social media.

So if you have any questions or comments about the survey, don’t hesitate to contact me at dutchperspective (at) mcmvanbree.com, and stay tuned to the blog to join the discussion about the survey next week.

Check back for the full report on Monday. (Full report can be found here)

Filed Under: Culture, Social Media Tagged With: , , , ,