Join me for #ArtsMgtChat this Friday

May 10, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Getting back into the blogging and tweeting habit came at the right time. I was invited to guest host a Twitter chat called #ArtsMgtChat this Friday, May 11. This chat is great initiative by Ally Yusuf, a young emerging arts leader, and had its launch on April 27 with a chat about navigating a career in arts management. You can read the transcript here.

This Friday’s chat covers social media strategies for arts organizations, a topic, as you know, that is near and dear to my heart.

My experience with the Ask the Musicians Twitter chats has been that you never quite know in what direction it will be taken, so I’m curious to see where this chat will lead us. I think I’d like to see my role as a guest host to explore those interesting, unexpected areas and, as an analytics and data enthusiast, ask follow up questions that delve deeper into measurement other than “this campaign got us 100,000 page views.”

Join us on Friday! Chat starts at 2 p.m. ET / 1 p.m. CT on Twitter with the hashtag #ArtsMgtChat.

Filed Under: Social Media Tagged With: , , ,

First reflections on #askaconductor

December 9, 2010 By

Wow. That was a whirlwind.

Last night, we finished up the more than 30-hour marathon of #askaconductor. It kicked off at 8:30 am Australian Eastern Standard Time with conductor Warwick Potter answering questions for the Queensland Symphony Orchestra in Brisbane and it more or less ended shortly after midnight Eastern Standard Time in the United States. Between those hours, there were 3,458 tweets with the hashtag #askaconductor (see the transcript – PDF).

More than 60 conductors around the world participated—including former New York Philharmonic music director Lorin Maazel, Vancouver Opera and Duisburg Philharmonic music director Jonathan Darlington, San Francisco Symphony resident conductor Donato Cabrera, and Sydney Symphony Orchestra principal conductor Vladimir Ashkenazy. See the full list of participating conductors here.

Promotion leading up to #askaconductor

Facebook

Although it was a Twitter event, Facebook just edged out Twitter in referring visitors to the askthemusicians.com site. Facebook brought in 15.73% of the traffic (373 visits). Facebook tells me in the search function that 118 people shared a link to the site and a Google search on the facebook.com domain for the term results in a fairly comprehensive list of public Pages that shared the link to their fans (in alphabetical order; fan numbers indicated in parenthesis):

Association of California Symphony Orchestras (221)
Bellevue Philharmonic Orchestra (276)
Beth Kanter (7,178)
Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra (6,309)
Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music (599)
California Arts Council (3,314)
CIM Robinson Music Library (80)
Donato Cabrera (700)
Dutch Perspective (95)
Friends of the Jacksonville Symphony (242)
Georgia Made Georgia Grown (3,018)
League of American Orchestra (2,256)
Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra (830)
Maryland Classics Youth Orchestra (265)
netzwerk junge ohren (322)
Queensland Symphony Orchestra (871)
Sydney Symphony Orchestra (2,801)
Symphony Services International (109)
Technology in the Arts (1,774)
The Cleveland Orchestra (1,984)
The Hub (LAO) (180)
University Musical Society (2,557)
Vancouver Opera (2,135)
Verband Münchener Tonkünstler e.V (107)
Virginia Symphony Orchestra (1,464)
West Australian Symphony Orchestra (1,941)
WOSU Classical Music (127)
Zenph Sound Innovations, Inc. (304)

Twitter

Twitter came in just below Facebook with 14.64% of the traffic (347 visits). I set up a Twilert for the hashtag. According to those tallies, from November 16 through December 6, the hashtag was tweeted 331 times. In addition, I kept track of links from Twitter via backtweets.com. Up to December 8, there were nearly 300 tweets with links back to askthemusicians.com.

Banners

Several sites carried banners that were specifically created for participants. Sites include: Donato Cabrera, American Philharmonic, Stephen P. Brown, Alessandro Crudele. Those brought in 3.92% of the traffic to askthemusicians.com (93 visits).

Newsletters

The largest referrer to askthemusicians.com was the very nondescript “direct traffic.” This includes newsletters from organizations and people e-mailing links to the site to each other (each link opens a new browser window or tab). Newsletters that I have been able to track include:

Association of California Symphony Orchestras
Chorus America
Conductors Guild
League of American Orchestras
Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra
You’ve Cott Mail

Blog posts

More than twenty bloggers posted an item about #askaconductor. Here are the blogs I could track down (in no particular order):

Stephen P. Brown
Art Voice
Ceci Creative
Kultur 2.0
Dutch Perspective
Dutch Perspective
Tucson Symphony
Vancouver Opera
Performing Arts Convention
Adaptistration
Arts Management
Beth Kanter
The Cleveland Orchestra
Duisburg Philharmoniker
Jonathan Darlington
Kitchen and Residential Design
Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra
NPR: Deceptive Cadence
Season Tickets
Sequenza21
Smarts & Culture

Review of the event at Opern Haus

Others

Other mentions of #askaconductor appeared in forums, including Trumpet Herald and Double Reed, as well as news sites, including Buffalo News and xtranews.

#askaconductor on December 8

As mentioned above, the retroactive official start time was 8:30 am Australian Eastern Standard Time. Up until 12 midnight Eastern Standard Time in the United States (that is 30.5 hours later), #askaconductor garnered 3,458 tweets.

You can read the entire transcript of the #askaconductor chat here (PDF).

The site wthashtag.com is a good source of collecting those tweets. It looks back seven days. There are still some #askaconductor tweets trickling in here and there, but in the past seven days we saw 3,797 tweets from 488 contributors. Of those tweets, 31.8% come from the top 10 contributors; 22.7% are retweets; 82.8% are mentions; and 4.0% have multiple hashtags.

The top 10 contributors in the past seven days were:

1. @sashamakila – 357
2. @fergusmacleod – 196
3. @MaestroDSCH – 109
4. @Stephen_P_Brown – 91
5. @marisagreen – 89
6. @batonflipper – 80
7. @askthemusicians – 79
8. @AudienceDevSpec – 70
9. @klassikakzente – 70
10. @Gigmag – 67

Some observations

Although this event was modeled after #askacurator, it seemed to have a little bit of a life of its own. Of course, it was slightly smaller in scale, but the conversations seemed to differ from those I saw in #askacurator as well. At first look, there seemed to be a narrower (even relatively) base of questioners (488 contributors), but they asked more questions. I suppose, with the few exceptions, it seemed more like a #conversewithaconductor than an #askaconductor event. Conductors would also chat amongst themselves.

This was likely partly a result of our guidelines that instructed people to ask general questions to all conductors with the hashtag and optionally direct specific inquiries to their conductor of choice. By allowing these general questions, the event was very inclusive for lesser known conductors, as we saw the specific inquiries go toward the better known conductors, such as Lorin Maazel.

Another difference between #askacurator and #askaconductor was that the latter event focused more on individuals than institutions. Many conductors, more than I had expected, tweeted from their own accounts, rather than an affiliated orchestra or institution. I think this changed the dynamic as well.

It was a different dynamic, not better, not worse. I did very much like the conversational aspect of the event, rather than purely question-and-answer. But if I were to change anything, perhaps for a next event, I would love to find ways to broaden the base just a little bit. To go outside of the classical music scene just a little bit more and include those who might only have a marginal interest in classical music. Busting myths about classical music was one of the things we set out to achieve and we don’t want to be preaching to the choir.

All that said, I cannot forget to write that the event was just plain fun. The reactions from Twitter users, as well as participating conductors, we outstandingly positive. Here are just a few of them:

Trending Topics

It wasn’t an objective. But I admit, it would have been neat to have seen #askaconductor become a trending topic. On the other hand, seeing the spam problems that plagued #askacurator when it became a trending topic, I was glad we stayed clear from those issues.

Looking at the sheer volume, #askaconductor was close to par with some of the trending topics. But in a feat of perfect timing, Twitter offered a little glimpse into the algorithm that determines what topics are trending:

We track the volume of terms mentioned on Twitter on an ongoing basis. Topics break into the Trends list when the volume of Tweets about that topic at a given moment dramatically increases.

Sometimes a topic doesn’t break into the Trends list because its popularity isn’t as widespread as people believe. And, sometimes, popular terms don’t make the Trends list because the velocity of conversation isn’t increasing quickly enough, relative to the baseline level of conversation happening on an average day.

Our #askaconductor effort didn’t see this dramatic increase in number of tweets; it was a regular, sustained amount throughout the day. Of course, trending topics also typically see a broader base with less than 10% of the tweets stemming from the top 10 users, whereas #askaconductor saw a fairly narrow base with more than 30% of the tweets stemming from the top 10 users.

What’s next?

Lacey and I will be planning a next #askthemusicians event soon. We’re thinking of putting the subject of the next event up for a vote. Will it be #askacomposer, #askacellist, or something different altogether? Stay tuned!

These were just some initial thoughts and reflections. I will be gathering a full report on the #askaconductor event as things wind down a little bit. More analytics, more analysis! Do you have any questions, suggestions or comments? Let us know! Leave a comment, send an e-mail (info (at) askthemusicians.com), or, of course, send a tweet (@askthemusicians, or @laceyh and @mcmvanbree)!

Edit: You can now vote until 12/17 on what #askthemusicians topic we should be doing next. Click here to vote on askthemusicians.com.

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

Five random social media things to do for arts organizations

November 22, 2010 By

I had the privilege of speaking at some conferences this year. No matter where I go, people are always asking for case studies, best practices and examples. I can talk about strategy and objectives all I want, but I notice people get most excited about that little tidbit of information that points to something concrete.

I admit, it’s somewhat frustrating. It feels like spelling things out. And why the emphasis on small details when the big picture is often lacking? Besides, we’re in a creative industry, can’t we think of our own innovations and come up with ideas that work for us, rather than copying ideas from case studies?

On the other hand, good ideas are out there. Why should we not use them and make them our own? After all, it was #askacurator that inspired Lacey and me to start askthemusicians.com.

In that spirit, here are five small ideas that can make a big impact if you put them to good use.

1. Don’t publish your news release and marketing copy headlines on Twitter. Use your Twitter account for meaningful interaction. Want to sell tickets? Why not start another account for the hottest deals on your concerts. Take a page from Dell’s book: “Dell Outlet has booked more than $3 million in revenue attributable to its Twitter posts.” Find them at @delloutlet.

2. Optimize your site for Facebook sharing. Sure, you’re using the “like it” button, or the “share this on Facebook” icon. But how does it show up on their pages? St. Louis Symphony’s Dale Fisher has some tips on how to control what shows up.

3. Track your campaigns with Google URL Builder. I’ve been using this amazing tool for a couple of months now. Before, traffic from an e-mail marketing message would be categorized in Google Analytics under “Direct Traffic” because the e-mails would be opened from Outlook and other e-mail clients and open a new browser window or tab. This category is too broad to get usable data. Adding a simple line of code to track individual elements is tremendously helpful. The Technology in the Arts blog has more.

4. Facebook keeps rolling out new features. You’ve maybe heard about Facebook Places? Well, I’ll let John Haydon explain it to you. Got it? Okay, now that you’ve set up your nonprofit on Places, let’s move to the next step: Facebook Deals. Once again, I’ll let John Haydon explain it to you.

5. Mobile is increasingly important. A little while ago, theater social media maven Devon Smith and I wrote an article for the wonderfully collaborative 2AMt blog about the uses for QR codes. Well, it turns out that Vancouver Opera had already put their plans in motion. Read about their use of those little square barcodes here.

I have been struggling to find a workable way of capturing these kinds of tidbits. I have a much-neglected Delicious account, but I can’t seem to turn that into something useful for me. Perhaps I can start posting little blurbs on this blog, but that might get too much. Then it dawned on me that I should maybe be using Tumblr. I know I’m late to that game, but here is Dutch Perspective on Tumblr.

Does anyone have a good method of storing and publishing interesting tidbits? Other than Twitter, of course.

p.s. Don’t forget to check in on askthemusicians.com!

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Join me in #askaconductor on December 8

November 15, 2010 By

A month or two ago, museums and galleries around the world participated in a Twitter event called Ask a Curator. The hash tag #askacurator became a top trending topic on Twitter on the day of the event. I asked some questions myself and was amazed at the speed of response from the Van Gogh Museum.

The event sparked a conversation on Twitter among some classical music people. “Wouldn’t it be cool to do something like that for classical music?” Well, here we are…

Together with Lacey Huszcza, Director of Operations & Promotions at the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, I put together an event called #askaconductor. The accompanying Web site suggests that we can expand the event to other musicians throughout the year. Maybe we can have a #askacomposer or #askacellist in the Spring?

So, #askaconductor is the first #askthemusicians Twitter event. On December 8, 2010, conductors from around the world will come together to engage with fans, first-timers and complete strangers. The concept is simple: conductors make some time available to answer questions; Twitter followers ask their burning questions, and the conductors answer the questions. All in one day.

It is an opportunity for orchestras and the conductors that lead them to connect to their community and share their stories, love and passion, one tweet at a time. And it’s an opportunity to have some fun on Twitter and debunk some of those stubborn classical music myths.

Of course, there are challenges. How many conductors can we sign up? The event requires a little bit more commitment from classical music organizations than say Marcia Adair’s tremendously successful #operaplot event. That’s why we didn’t set any rules for committing time; half an hour would be great, half a day would be even better.

We also reached out to many orchestras to see if their music directors or other resident conductors, or perhaps guest conductors that happened to be in town, would be interested in participating. It’s a great way to promote an orchestra’s Twitter presence and go beyond the cut-and-paste news release headlines streaming from many accounts.

The success of the #askaconductor event will depend on the participation from both orchestras and conductors, as well as the audience asking questions. We’ve already gotten some great responses and we’ll be updating the line up as we confirm conductors. The League of American Orchestras and the Association of California Symphony Orchestras have pledged their support in promoting the event. Bloggers can use these handy banners. It promises to be an exciting event!

If you’re a conductor, or an arts manager that might know a conductor, and you want to play; sign up on the Web site. Or e-mail Lacey or me at info (at) askthemusicians.com.

If you’re on Twitter and have always wondered how a conductor picks the music, or what exactly it means swinging a baton in front of a hundred musicians, save your questions for December 8.

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The aftermath: measuring results from the Twitter list

October 23, 2009 By

I always stress measuring impact and results in social media planning. That’s why I was curious to see what exactly happened this past week. Last Friday, I posted the first list of people and organizations in classical music on Twitter, followed by a Twitter update. I know lists tend to be popular, but this one really took off.

First, the size of the list. The quick, down-and-dirty list I posted contained 138 people and organizations. I gave the option of adding and updating your information, which resulted in nearly 70 responses for people and 37 responses for organizations. Bit.ly counted 116 clicks for people and 65 clicks for organizations. Today, the list contains 259 people and organizations; it nearly doubled in size.

Second, how many people saw the list? Statistics provided by my site’s hosting service show that the original blog post received 2,409 views from 10/16 to 10/23. Bit.ly recorded 1,180 click-throughs from the original bit.ly link I created (this does not include other possible url-shortener links).

Looking at Google Analytics and comparing statistics from 10/16 to 10/23/09 with equivalent sites of the same size, I received more visits than average, but page views were below average or at par. Pages per visit were much lower and bounce rates were much higher than average. New visits were above average. Average time on the specific blog post was 00:05:23, which is double the average of equivalent sites.

Google Analytics tells me that I received a lot of single-focus traffic. People were interested in the list, but left as soon as they were done. The few people that did navigate further mostly went to the featured posts or the main index page. This is hardly surprising, seeing a lot of the traffic came from Twitter. But perhaps it illustrates clearly the need for enticing my audience with other content in a more effective manner.

So this brings me to my third point. Twitter reach. Backtweets indicates that 101 tweets were generated containing the link to the blog post. Looking at Twitter Analyzer, from 10/16 to 10/23, I reached a potential audience of 123,340 people. This, of course, includes the scarce tweets that weren’t related to the list, but it also excludes tweets that contained a link to the list, but neglected to mention my Twitter username.

In terms of influence on Twitter, from 10/12 to 10/23 I moved from a “casual” twitterer to a “connector,” according to Klout. My score increased from 31 to 41, which means an increase in engagement, reach, and network strength. Over the course of the week, I saw a steady increase in followers of 15-20%.

I also saw a modest blog subscriber increase from 145 on 10/16 to 164 on 10/23, according to Feedburner. The blog post generated 28 comments and also spurred the following posts by other bloggers:

Slipped Disc by Norman Lebrecht
Adaptistration by Drew McManus
Café Aman by Anastasia Tsioulcas
A Liberal’s Libretto by James Newman
Monotonous Forest by Bruce Hodges
Mob Sound
Orquestrando by Jefferson Paradello
Mirette’s posterous by Mirette Kanga
Peter’s preposterous by Peter Witte

And I should not forget the dozens of e-mails and direct messages on Twitter, either to add to or update the list, to give me some suggestions, or just to say thanks.

Those are all good examples of metrics and measurement, but I haven’t really described the goal. This is usually done first, but I did not have a clear goal of selling tickets or products. I suppose a broad and generic goal of increasing awareness of my blog (and me?) could be applied. In that aspect, I think the above metrics clearly demonstrate I have achieved a good increase in this awareness. But perhaps more important was the network building and the relationship forging. The dozens of e-mails and direct messages alone proof this achievement.

Lastly, applying the concepts I outlined in my e-book: I measured interest (page views, click-throughs, retweets); I measured attitude (comments, e-mail and direct message reactions, blog posts); and I measured action (people updating information, building relationship).

Overall, a very good exercise in the strength of social media. And all I did was create a list and tweet about it.

Filed Under: Across the board, Social Media Tagged With: ,

Classical music on Twitter

October 16, 2009 By

Last updated: 10/23/2009 – 8:00 a.m. (CST) (Lists moved to new address; update forms changed: see below)

Inspired by Amanda Ameer’s post on classical music publicists on Twitter and Beth Kanter’s query on a list of arts twitterers, I gathered a preliminary list of more than 150 twitterers in the classical music scene.

I intend to create the most inclusive, elaborate list of classical music twitterers. I know I have left many, many people and organizations out. That’s why I have opened up two forms to add or update your information: if you are a person twittering about classical music, please add or update your information here; if you are an organization twittering about classical music, please add or update your information here. Or alternatively, you can leave a comment below.

Any suggestions on categories or changes to the format, please let me know in a comment below or at dutchperspective (at) mcmvanbree.com.

People

The list of people in classical music on Twitter can now be found here: http://mcmvanbree.com/dutchperspective/twitter/people.htm

Add or update your information here

Organizations

The list of organizations in classical music on Twitter can now be found here: http://mcmvanbree.com/dutchperspective/twitter/orgs.htm

Add or update your information here

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

An interview with Miss Mussel of #operaplot fame

May 13, 2009 By

Classical music can go viral too. And you can thank Miss Mussel for that. Who, you ask? Just follow her @missmussel on Twitter and read her blog The Omniscient Mussel. Alternatively, she is known as Marcia Adair, a Canadian freelance classical music journalist.

Marcia started the #operaplot craze, where tweeting opera fans summarize an entire opera in just 140 characters or less, using the hashtag #operaplot. (Search the tag in Twitter)

In its first incarnation, Marcia purchased a $30 gift certificate to give out as a prize. She barely had 50 followers on Twitter, but the word spread around the tweeting classical music world and soon there were about 80 entries.

The buzz continued after the contest and before long a second contest was set up. This time, it went truly viral and even mainstream. Opera star Danielle De Niese signed up as a guest judge, famous opera houses offered tickets for prizes and mainstream media including The Guardian and The Washington Post covered the initiative. After a week of tweeting opera plots, De Niese had more than 500 entries to judge!

I was curious about this phenomenon and Marcia graciously answered a couple of questions:

The big question is, how did you come up with the idea?

#Operaplot started on a whim.  I was writing program notes and tweeted that I was having trouble with word creep….one of those mundane details Twitter disparagers claim not to be interested in.  @pattyoboe, an oboist blogger from California suggested I should tweet the notes.  That seemed impractical but then I thought, what about opera? The irony of compressing the most extravagant of art forms into the smallest possible unit was appealing plus I’m relatively new to opera, so I thought the results might be an easy way to get a handle on what the operas are actually about.

Did most of the “promotion” of the contest come from Twitter? If so, do you have any idea how fast it spread and in what proportion?

It’s difficult to separate out because all the press outlets played off each other.  The original announcement was on Twitter and my website. The story was picked up by the Washington Post and The Guardian, which helped a lot. When the partners were finalized, I sent releases to papers in cities that had participating houses, which caused more people to check it out on Twitter.  Then people started blogging about it, which led to more traditional press and more Twitter and even Facebook.

Did you do any other promotions for the contest? How did the media learn about it?

If I remember correctly, Anne Midgette of the Washington Post was the first on the story, which was then picked up by Charlotte Higgins at The Guardian. Where other people found the story after that, I can’t really say. Everything is so connected, it’s likely they saw it on several sources before writing about it. Once Danielle De Niese got involved, her publicist sent out info to her list as well.

[If you're interested, a full list of press clipping is here]

Did you have any idea it would take off like this?

I hoped it would but I didn’t really think I had the influence to organize the press or the houses.  After talking to arts admin people at various houses, I think the reason for the contest’s success is that it was the right idea at the right time with someone who was willing to put the time in to organize everything.  I think the press was all over it because the story involved Twitter, which is a hot topic, there were a lot of houses involved and the contest is just plain fun.

For the second round, what was the reaction from opera houses when you approached them for the prizes?

The first house I contacted was a disaster.  I called for an email address and ended up having to give my spiel to three different people only I was completely unprepared for it so I didn’t inspire much confidence. Needless to say, I didn’t get the desired result there. I regrouped, wrote a good email and things improved markedly.  Houses were very receptive and took far less convincing than I expected considering no one had heard of me before.  I think the chance to explore the possibilities of Twitter in a no-risk way was appealing. The Washington National Opera was first on board with their monster prize pack, so that helped with my credibility and by the end, when I was calling to follow up, most people had already heard about the competition and were excited to join in.

What kind of audience do you think you reached with this contest?

The contest naturally excludes people who don’t know much about opera because you need at least some knowledge to summarize and a lot more to make jokes. I didn’t look at everyone’s profile but I’m guessing the age range is 25-50.  If I had to make further generalizations, I’d say they are the type of people that are looking for a new kind of relationship with performing arts institutions….one that is more transparent and honest rather than the traditional cursive script, lush images and WE ARE AWESOME AT EVERYTHING attitude.

Are there any lessons for classical music organizations to be drawn from this contest?

The big one is right idea, right time, right audience.  Difficult to predict but if you take the time to know your audience, or at least the one you’d like to attract, you’ll have a better chance.  Lesson two is that people will get excited about something they’re passionate about — harness that and have fun along with them.

Also, when using social media, particularly Twitter, be real.  Take the time to build relationships and put selling to the back of your mind.  Social media is all about saying, “Thought you might like to know that….” relationships rather than “SUPER WORLDCLASS CONCERT TONIGHT WITH FAMOUS PEOPLE – V PRESTIGIOUS (and also we are awesome by association for booking these people)”

I follow a couple of hundred arts organizations and get messages all the time about sales, promotions, the next superfantastic show etc.  The organizations that stand out are those that don’t try so hard and actually post things that might be off message but still interesting. They comment on what other people are doing, encourage their colleagues and contribute to the community.

I could go on at length here but the overall point is relax and enjoy connecting with people.  Your ROI, as it were (ugh), will come in a thousand small and unexpected ways.

Have you seen traffic to your own Web site increase?

Of course, although it remains to be seen how many will stick around after #operaplot fever dies down.

You’re a freelance music writer. What does this contest mean for your own personal “branding”?

In many ways, the contest is an extension of the brand I’ve created with my website, so it hasn’t changed anything as such.  As a PR exercise however, it means a lot for me because I don’t have the advantage of co-opting the brand of the newspaper or magazine at which I might have a staff job. There are loads of excellent freelancers out there but hopefully next time I pitch a publication, my name will resonate a little bit more than it otherwise would have. I live in a small market inside a small market (Canada) and being “that girl that did that competition” can’t hurt.

And lastly, of course, will it continue? Or do you have any other things in mind?

I always have something in mind!  Whether the ideas are viable or not is another story. I hope #operaplot will continue. At the moment, it’s just a matter of sitting down, looking at everything and finding a way to make it work even better.  People are welcome to leave comments about what they would like to see in future contests at http://theomniscientmussel.com/2009/05/operaplot-feedback-form/

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