Photo by Whatleydude

Here’s a quick question – I’d be really grateful for any answers or examples in the comments or on Twitter.

The way I see it, the person(s) in charge of an organisation’s digital/social media profiles (I’m mainly thinking of Twitter, Facebook, Google Analytics, etc) is likely to be one of the first to know about:

• Feedback meant for the rest of the organisation (whether positive, negative or neutral)
• Opportunities for new work, partnerships, funding, events to attend, etc
• Which types of digital content are most popular with others
• Who the organisation’s biggest fans are
• Which of the organisation’s peers could do with help on a particular project (which might involve lending equipment or just answering a quick question)

As well as just hearing what others are getting up to and getting an idea of what’s hot or not in the industry or sector as a whole.

My question is this: how should they feed information back to the rest of the organisation?

I’m really thinking of small to medium sized organisations here – big enough to have different people with different responsibilities but not so big we’re getting into heavyweight internal corporate comms territory.

I’ve come across a few different ways in my time and it differs depending on how serious or time-sensitive something might be:

• Tell everyone in a weekly meeting
• Produce a monthly report or round-up
• Print off tweets/comments/etc and pin them to a noticeboard (see Zane Lowe here)
• Use a piece of software (maybe a ‘listening dashboard‘ everyone has set as their homepage)
• Nothing set in stone – just flag things up as and when (if at all)

I’d love to hear about any processes, tools and habits you use (or have thought about adopting).

Reporting info from social media to others in an organisation

Some answers to a question I asked in this blog post: http://www.chrisunitt.co.uk/2012/05/how-do-you-report-info-from-social-media-to-others/

Storified by Chris Unitt · Wed, May 16 2012 06:47:08

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It’s fascinating to see how far the tech has come on. For example, check out this video with James Zabiela showing off his DJing tech and techniques:

(That video’s just the highlights – the full hour is here)

The basic skill of beatmatching is pretty much redundant now – it’s a mundanity that’s best taken care of by a machine. In fact, the decks themselves are almost an afterthought – James spends most of his time in the video talking about Ableton, 3rd party plugins, his Kaossilator and how he uses his iPad as a midi controller over an ad hoc wifi network. He uses CDJs but doesn’t use CDs in them – “even those are a bit old school now” – the tunes come from an SD card or directly from a laptop.

I showed my Dad Traktor at my parents’ house. I said “Look at this dad, you just push this button and you’ve got four decks and they all play instantly”. And he just looked at me and said, “Isn’t that cheating?” I said “Well yeah, I guess so, but you have to then make up for that”

And that’s the point. As if to illustrate it, there’s a bit where he messes around with the effects unit and Kaossilator, taking a few seconds to improvise a track on the fly using samples. He says of the effects unit, “It was never designed to do that but that’s my sole purpose for using this in my sets”.

Much like I don’t expect the people who came up with the Akai MPC ever expected to see AraabMuzik using one like this to create a live set from Skrillex tracks:

Anyway, the point is, it’s a good example of how creativity responds to the tools available and how technology has (in some cases) given musicians and artists more time to spend on the creative elements of their craft.

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It’s very good

The paper is a case study, not a how to guide, and not all of it will be applicable to the requirements and operations of other organisations. However, it gives a good top-level account of how Tate are going about implementing this part of their digital strategy.

Importantly, the principles, techniques and tools they’re using are well within the reach of most other organisations. That means that the ‘oh well, they’re Tate and have more resources than us’ excuse goes out the window.

On the tools front, they mention Hootsuite, Adwords, Google Analytics, Facebook Insights, their ticketing system and YouTube analytics. They’re not using scary and expensive enterprise stuff, which just emphasises that it’s what you do with it all that counts. To quote from the paper itself:

The information and the tools to capture the required information are widely available, but museums need to take a more mature and outward–looking approach to analytics, one that is led by their genuine wish to delivering an ultimate experience to their users

The thing I liked the most…

…is the fact that they shared this:

If you’ve not come across it before, it’s Stephane Hamel’s online analytics maturity model. That blue area shows Tate’s position in 2010 before they started  working on developing this analytics culture – there was no strategy, no-one taking responsibility for analytics, no dedicated resource and only patchy reporting of top-level web metrics.

In short, they were in exactly the same position as most other arts organisations.

I use the same model when I start working with people on their use of analytics and data (or their digital strategy ore generally). It’s not 100% applicable to financially stretched arts orgs but it’s nonetheless very useful for context – giving an idea of where they stand and how they should be progressing.

Having used it a few times, I can say with some confidence (and without outing any one client) that the situation shown in that diagram is an absolutely typical starting point. It’s also nothing to worry or be ashamed about (as long as plans are being made for improvement). Now that this paper has been published I’ve got something to point to and say ‘Look, see? Tate were in exactly the same position you’re  in’. I’m hugely grateful for their openness.

So why isn’t everyone doing something like this?

Having said that the principles, techniques and tools are within everybody’s grasp, the fact that this stuff isn’t standard practice by now is profoundly frustrating. As someone who dearly wants arts organisations to understand their audiences, make smarter decisions, reach more people and bring in more money (so they can do more and better work) it chews at me a bit.

It’s 2012. This stuff has been around long enough now, so why haven’t people been picking up on it? Well, I go back to the point I always make about the arts sector talking to/about itself too much – a few more ‘outsiders’ speaking at conferences might be a good start.

I also liked this answer from Jason Falls of Social Media Explorer when he was asked who the highest offenders are in social media. He pointed the finger at:

Anyone who is still peddling the “Join the Conversation” spiel without following it up with how to connect all the fluff with business drivers, measurement, and knowing what you’re getting in return

I’m looking beyond just social media with this, but he’s quite right.

Other links

While we’re at it, check out the slides from the Clicks That Count session presented by the Smithsonian’s Brian Alpert. Also,there are quite a few round-ups from Museums and the Web but this one from Claire Ross and this from Robin Dowden at the Walker Art Centre are both good.

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Here’s the Kickstarter video for his latest run of shows by way of introduction.

Arts/digital links

I’m really not sure what to make of The Space yet. I think it’s somewhere between a spectacularly ill-conceived distraction and a rather good thing. Probably it’s both but it’s too early to tell for sure. Either way, here’s an interesting piece about how it was built.

I came across a few arts data-related projects this month, including Cultural Data Project, Space, TRG Arts’ Community Programs and Open Cultuur Data. There are plenty of these things around – arts sectors internationally aren’t short of information, the trick is in making sure useful information is available to the right people at the right time.

This is an interestingly introspective post about the Map the Museum project, posing the question “should you release 5000 records with well produced photographs, and meticulously edited text? Or should you simply dump 50,000 online, warts and all?”

Some other things:

• BOP Consulting have produced a report for the Arts Council called Measuring the economic benefits of arts and culture
• WikiPaintings.org wants to be the most complete and well-structured online repository of fine art.
• All the projects from Culture Hack Day Scotland 2012
• A good piece from the FT about live opera being shown in cinemas and online
• Carl Plant has visualised Foursquare checkin data for UK Theatre venues
• I like Eve Nicol‘s approach to reviewing things via video. Here’s a good example.

Other links

Custom Report Sharing for Google Analytics and The Best Google Analytics Add-Ons. Can you tell what I’ve been working on a lot recently? On a completely different data/stats kick, Dan Hon’s post about data and diabetes was fascinating.

A couple of interesting collaborations from the world of journalism:

• Dutch newspapers plan joint ‘kiosk’ for digital content with readers able to buy articles on-demand or as part of a monthly subscription.
• Condé Nast teams up with Time et al on Android. 32 titles magazines available on Android for $14.99 a month

And while we’re on the subject, Writing in Newspapers and Magazines is worth reading for the George Clooney quote alone.

• Melissa Terras asks ‘Is blogging and tweeting about research papers worth it?‘ and finds that, if you want people to find and read your research, then the answer is ‘yes’.
• Mailchimp’s style guide for anyone writing copy for the company
• Startups, This Is How Design Works by Wells Riley is a handy guide for understanding design
• FAME , which gave people the chance to ‘win Twitter fame for a day’, was interesting while it lasted

Apps/services/etc

• Web: GatherContent, Wiggio, PromptDown, Yahoo! Marketing Dashboard, Pocket
• iPhone: Walking Cycle Bell (because of this video), Tate Quiz Trail, ZX Plectrum, ASIP, The Eatery
• Podcasts: The Dinner Party, Risk, 99% Invisible
• Browser add-ons: Collusion

Finally…

I’ll leave you with the first video in a series by Rui Guerra who interviewed John Stack, Head of Tate Online about Tate’s online strategy and new website. Lots of interesting stuff in there.

See also Rui’s other videos with Rob Stein from the Indianapolis Museum of Art.

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The Drum published some good news about Made Media (the agency I work for) the other day:

Digital creative agency Made Media has announced that it has acquired the assets of Firechaser, which will see the agency add the National Theatre, Southbank Centre and Roundhouse to its client list.

The acquisition will also see King’s Place, Young Vic, Wigmore Hall, Newcastle Theatre Royal and Mace Group work the agency.

The deal came together very quickly but, even still, we had a couple of months of having to keep quiet about it before everything was confirmed – always a painful thing to have to do when you’re excited about something.

That’s not an exhaustive list of our new clients in that article, by the way – there are some really great ones that weren’t mentioned. As far as the UK performing arts sector is concerned, we already had an enviable client list. This deal gives us a critical mass of arts organisations and venues and opens up all sorts of exciting possibilities. Hurrah!

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She said:

As I’m sure is a familiar story for many touring companies, one of our issues is connecting directly with our audiences. Despite the 2005 Audiences UK (was it?) report, we’re still finding almost all venues aren’t set up to share data easily – it depends on the goodwill of the marketing departments to do what they can. The way that they handle collecting data means that we’re classified as a third party, so the audience members aren’t given the option to distinguish between giving data to us, the company whose show they’ve come to see, and any other organisation. I’m sure theatres are very careful as to who they DO share data with but as an audience member I can see why many would choose to say no. For example at one venue recently out of a week’s worth of audiences we only had the opportunity to get in contact with one person afterwards. Most venues are willing in theory to pass on an invitation to audiences to join our mailing list but in practice this quite often doesn’t end up happening – it’s great when it does!

I totally understand why theatres find it difficult to do anything about this on a one off basis for us – box offices have so much information to give and receive and our shows tend to be less straightforward for booking anyway – but it’s frustrating.

What’s the answer?

I know this is a very common problem. For my own part, I’m currently working with a dance organisation that presents work in other organisations’ venues and in non-traditional (occasionally public) spaces. We’re currently working on tactics they can use to capture more audience data.

Has anyone else come up against this problem? If so I’d be interested in hearing more about the situation and what solutions people have come up with (whether they’ve worked or not).

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By way of background, Headlong Theatre have released a short film showcasing their upcoming season:

For added context there’s a piece in The Guardian with quotes from Rupert Goold, the company’s artistic director, and some clarification from Henny Finch, Headlong’s executive producer, in the comments.

As Jake Orr says:

The video has caused quite a stir on Twitter, with a heated debate about whether a theatre company should invest in film-like trailers for their productions. Is it an investment or a waste of money that could go into a production? Is it taking away from theatre as a live element? Is it wrong to call it a trailer – is this too close to film, and thus, what language can we use for when theatre explores theatrical work in new mediums such as videos?

Now, I have to point out that I’m looking at this from the point of view of it being a promotional tool, so I’m mainly interested in its potential to:

• sell tickets to shows
• make more people aware of Headlong Theatre

If we wanted to critique the film as a cinematic work in its own right then different criteria would apply. However, even if it’s taken as purely an artistic work, a lot of what I’m going to cover in this post will still be relevant.

Two more caveats to what I’m saying:

1. I’m presuming that this was produced with a predominantly online audience in mind
2. I don’t have access to the information to be able to say whether or not this can be regarded as a ‘success’ (however that’s to be determined) regardless of my thoughts

The film itself

It’s important to remember the crucial difference between an audience in a cinema and an audience online – if someone is at a computer they can click away whenever they like. In fact, YouTube gives users pretty good stats on audience retention.

This means that from the moment the video starts you’re going to start losing viewers right through until the end. Therefore the last few seconds (which is traditionally where people put the most important information) is the point where there are the least viewers.

At 4mins 48s this video is relatively long. I’m not saying that people won’t sit and watch a video of that length, but typically you’ll get more views and more shares with shorter videos. 30 seconds is good. If Headlong are keen to impart a message with this video then they’re giving viewers all the time in the world to avoid seeing it.

Speaking of the message, if I watched this and didn’t know that Headlong was a theatre company would I be able to work that out? Is there any clue that the words above the actors’ heads relate to plays that I could go and see? Where can I see those plays? When? Can anybody read that URL at the very end?

The video doesn’t give much of a clue to any of this, which isn’t fatal because you can add that stuff in the description area under the video on YouTube…

The film on YouTube

Once you’ve put a video on YouTube you should do your best to make the video as discoverable as possible. Once people have found the video you should give people the chance (or straight up tell them) to find out more.

The thing to remember is that YouTube/Google can’t watch the video and work out what it’s about – you need to help out by providing descriptive titles, descriptions and tags. The better job you do of this, the more likely it is that people will be able to find your video.

In the case of the Headlong film, some steps have been taken but there’s more to do. In short:

• The title could be more descriptive – how about Falling Headlong – Headlong Theatre’s season for 2012/2013
• The first thing in the description should be a link to further information. In this case Headlong have come agonisingly close – it just needs to have the http:// before it to be clickable
• Otherwise, the description is weak. Give me a paragraph on who/what Headlong Theatre is. Tell me the names of the plays, where they’re touring to and when then link to further information. As it is I’m being told more about James Blake than I am about the people who commissioned the film
• The tags are a good start but give me a few more – start with ‘theatre’ and go from there
• How about using YouTube annotations? They’re quick an easy to insert and could mean that the URL at the end of the video is clickable. You could even put a discreet box around each actor linking to info about the respective production page on the Headlong website.

While we’re at it, the description and annotations could remind me to hit ‘like’, leave a comment, subscribe to your channel or share the video with others. I’m more likely to do these things if I’m reminded to (or told to).

Rather than go on at any more length, I’ll link to a recent post from Kissmetrics on YouTube video optimisation. And here’s an annotated screenshot for you:

The film on other websites

The great thing about YouTube videos is they can be embedded on other websites (like this one) as well as on Facebook, Twitter.com and others. That means they’re stripped of the context that YouTube can provide (all that stuff above). That means they need to be able to stand alone as much as possible.

Headlong Theatre on YouTube

I’m not sure whether Headlong are on the YouTube nonprofit partner programme. If they’re not they should be.

Beyond that, Headlong seem to be using YouTube as a video hosting platform, rather than making use of the various social features that it has. That’s fair enough but I’d guess that’s the reason they only have 15 subscribers. I’d quote Maya Gabrielle (digital producer, National Theatre) from an event last year:

If you’ve made a beautiful piece of content but not created an audience for it, you’ve wasted your money

But then there are very few organisations out there that have used YouTube to build an audience for video. For the tactics used by the pros, have a look at what Bo Burnham, Jake & Amir, Jenna Marbles, Hannah Hart and any number of others do.

Conclusions

In case anyone from Headlong happens to read this, I don’t mean to pick on you – this stuff is common to pretty much every arts organisation out there. I usually get paid to provide this kind of advice, so I hope this is of some use.

More generally though, if you’re making trailers to be shown in front of a captive theatre/cinema audience then by all means follow the established conventions for that format.

Otherwise, if you’re making films to be shown online then please recognise that you’re dealing with something rather different and consider how and why your film might work better if it played to the strengths of the format.

UPDATE – there’s been loads written on this subject from others taking all sorts of different perspectives. In particualr, Postcards from the Gods, BURNTarts and both Lyn Gardner and Matt Trueman in the Guardian. Thanks to everyone who linked to this post.

Lyn Gardner

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Chris scrapes the nonsense people like me throw at the wall, examines it to see what it’s for and turns it into something that actually works.

In the hyperbolic world of digital nonsense having someone like Chris around is essential.

I’m terrible at requesting testimonials from people and quite frankly couldn’t have written anything better myself, so thanks, Pete.

There’s actually more, but to read the rest you shoud get Pete’s book. The minimum price is a bargainous $0, but you’ll almost certainly enjoy it more if you hand over a little bit of cash. It’s psychological or something.

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Many times our design solutions fail following that crucial handover point, when we no longer control/curate the direction, and when the idea is too complex or demands too much from whoever is taking it over

He goes on to draw a really interesting analogy with how typefaces have been designed to take account of the way that ink behaves in the printing process. It’s great – well worth a read.

Now, I’m no typography buff so I thought about how I’d go about framing that same idea in the context of handing over a website to a client. I maintain that football’s both simple and complex enough to provide analogies for pretty much anything and this is no exception (although you could probably substitute your team ball sport of choice).

Proper passing

When you’re passing a ball to someone it’s not enough to hoof it in their general direction and let them take things from there. If they lose the ball when played into trouble by a hospital pass then it’s your fault, not theirs.

To pass a ball to someone properly you should take into account:

• Where they are
• The direction they’re moving (or the direction you think they should be moving in)
• Whether they’re left or right-footed
• Their level of skill, which will affect how likely they are to be able to control a firmly hit or airborne ball
• What their next move might be, and
• Whether they’re paying sufficient attention.

It’s not always easy. It requires vision, anticipation, empathy, good decision making and sufficient ability in execution in order to do it well. That’s what you see when Barcelona are knocking the ball around.

So that got me thinking about how digital projects are handed over to clients. At the most basic level it’s about making something that’s absolutely fit for purpose, providing some scope for future development (which may include scaling up or scaling back), taking account of the level of internal resource required and providing upfront and ongoing training and support as and when it’s needed.

So there you go. Football. I realise I’ve alienated most of the people who might be reading this but sod it. If it helps, here’s xkcd on the same subject.

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I didn’t do the course, I saw a tweet for the Young Writers Festival and had completed a draft that I would’ve been happy to go into rehearsals with, so I sent it in for the festival to see what they said

See also:

• How coldcalling Deadmau5 on Twitter earned one artist his big break
• How One Response to a Reddit Query Became a Big-Budget Flick

That’s three examples of people who’ve received their first big opportunities in their chosen field and in each case social media played a part. Not the main part, of course – the story isn’t that these people were ‘good’ at Twitter or Reddit or Soundcloud or whatever and that’s what landed them the gig. The most important thing was that they:

1. had put in the time and effort to become bloody good at something; and
2. had the wherewithal (and were able) to act on an opportunity that was presented.

Social media deserves some attribution though. The question, for someone in my position, is how much? And that’s very tricky.

Measuring value

Y’see we’re getting to the point where, if you know your stuff and are willing/able to put in the effort, the value of social media for straightforward acquisition and transactions can be measured reasonably well. Not quite perfectly, and it depends on exactly what it is your doing and how you’re able to get around or accept the (many and various) limitations, but then the same could be said for most other things.

However, there are various areas of the big, messy social media landscape that don’t lend themselves quite so well to measurement. For instance, much as I’d dearly love to, it’s difficult to put a value on (let alone predict) the opportunities that might be thrown up by connections made via social media.

I think this may be one reason why it’s easier for organisations to give responsibility for social media to marketing teams (or sometimes customer services). From a day-to-day point of view, the budgets are easier to rationalise there.

This is why it’s important, when social media is looked after by one individual, department or 3rd party, that they’re able to spot what an opportunity might look like and pass it on to someone who might be able to take advantage of it. Otherwise that’s a whole heap of value that’s being missed.

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