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Taking Intrinsic Impact to the Next Level

This morning, in You've Cott Mail (which if you aren't subscribed to, you should be!), Thomas Cott highlighted an article from the Guardian UK about some work being done there on measuring the emotional response of audiences to theatre. What was so interesting about the article is that it mirrors some major research we’re about to launch here at Theatre Bay Area and in six cities across the US.

The article is a summary of a new effort in the UK to measure the emotional response of audiences to art. Working with WolfBrown, the research firm that piloted a lot of this intrinsic impact research (as it’s called), we’ll be building a similar survey and doing follow-up research with 25 theatre companies in six cities (San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Chicago, New York, and Charleston). Throughout the 2010/2011 season, we, with arts service organization partners in each city (LA Stage Alliance, Theatre Puget Sound, ART/New York, League of Chicago Theatres, League of Charleston Theatres), will be working with the theatre companies to set intrinsic impact goals for three productions in a season, measure the effect of each of those productions using the survey, and then generate a final report for each company and work through, with the artistic, administrative and marketing staff, the implications of the research and how it matches (or doesn’t match) the company's hoped-for goals.

In addition, as part of this work, we’ll be developing a web-based interface that we hope will eventually allow any theatre across the country access to an affordable, fee-for-service program in intrinsic impact. Companies will be able to produce the survey themselves, learn how to set goals for the various axes of intrinsic impact, and then log the results themselves and see how they stack up. They’ll be able to develop a portfolio of their impact on their audiences, with a lot of possible implications as more companies participate. Over time, by making this an affordable service [which it currently decidedly is not – this research project, with projected generous funding from three national foundations and assorted local foundations (more news on that once the contracts are signed), will have a total budget upwards of $400,000], we hope to provide companies with a new way of measuring the effectiveness of their work on audiences. In addition, we hope these measurements eventually will become an alternative way of demonstrating worth to funders, audiences and trustees.

Our work will begin over the summer as staff from Theatre Bay Area and WolfBrown begin traveling to the partner cities, identifying theatre companies with the partner ASOs, and beginning the induction process. We’re incredibly excited about this new work – especially now that we see that there’s a parallel effort going on in the UK. We expect to be able to report out on this, at least preliminary results, in time for our Annual Conference next spring, and plan on doing final reporting on the project at TCG and NAMP in 2011.

P.S. As some of you know, we did a pilot of this project a few years ago around Free Night. The results of that pilot are available here. It’s the report called "Assessing the Intrinsic Impact of the Bay Area Free Night of Theater Program."

Live Blog! Leveraging Social Media with Beth Kanter

Thank you for joining us for this exciting discussion. If you would like to join the conversation, please do so at the Wiki: http://artssocialmedia.wikispaces.com/

If you have questions about this event, please email Clay@theatrebayarea.org.

Live Blog! Leveraging Social Media with Beth Kanter

Thoughts from the group on Twitter: Usually when you follow someone, they follow you back. If you start on being engaging and getting to know your people, they will tell other people to follow you. Promote to audiences that you can be followed on Twitter. Target your messages.

Listening for Organizations: Monitor, Compile, Distribute, Reflect

What is being said that positive? Negative? Neutral? How does what they say change?

Find the tools that work for your company best that can help you find out what people are saying. Free tools like Google Alerts, Social Mention, or Twitter (or any RSS reader). For pay tools like Radian6 will save time, but costs money. If you are still in the walk/crawl stage then don't use the pay tools, start with the free ones.

Six Steps for Listening:

1. Get your organization ready

2. Use your RSS reader like a rock star (Make it a daily habit)

3. Brainstorming Key words

4. Set up a listening Dashboard

5. Make listening and engaging an ongoing process

6. Build time for reflection

If you find people talking about you, figure out if it's a problem or not a problem. If it's not a problem, find ways to engage those people. If it's a problem, figure out if it's a big problem or a little problem and act swiftly. If you are not present for the conversation, the conversation is happening without you...and this will effect your organization in the physical world. Add value to the conversation, don't be afraid to disagree, keep to the point of the topic, point to the relevant sources if you have more information, watch the conversion develop, humor works, and avoid big brother.

Unbelievably, and yet believably, the Air Force has an incredible blog assessment strategy. Here is one of the versions: http://www.prwatch.org/node/8104

So, interested in the listening experiment: http://artssocialmedia.wikispaces.com/Twitter+Experiment

Live Blog! Leveraging Social Media with Beth Kanter

More on using Twitter:

When you get started ask:

What is your twitter brand? (Do you speak as an institution? Do you speak as a member of an institution? CEO or Artistic Director Brand? The hybrid of these?)

Do basic listening first:

Look at the twitter home page and see what people are saying. Follow people.

Use lists to manage followers. (CJM example: personal lists, privet lists, collaborators, board, regular participants...etc)

Search on different key words (your organizations name, your genra, your city)

Search by hashtag

Ways to engage on twitter:

Be informative, not a sales person

Use hashtags and keywords

Shara and Shoutout (AKA retweet)

Thank people

Use Twitter tools

The Retweet is important. The art of the retweet! http://danzarrella.com/#

There is an app store for Twitter: http://oneforty.com/

Other possible ways to interface with Twitter is Co-Tweet and Tweet Deck. Know what kind of information you need and how best to get it. Experiment with different tools and then research and get results. One such research tool is http://twiangulate.com/search/. Another is http://twitalyzer.com/

You know, there are so many more ways to use Twitter then I ever thought. And so many tools developed to analyze the people and what they are saying.

Now we're taking a few minutes to try and do ourselves. Here's the link to the Twitter Experiment: http://artssocialmedia.wikispaces.com/Twitter+Experiment

Live Blog! Leveraging Social Media with Beth Kanter

Back from lunch. One of the great things about this workshop is how much, and how often, participants are given the chance and encouraged to talk with each other. This workshop isn't a lecture, it is interactive in the pure sense of the word.

Experiments to do after you leave:

Twitter Experiment http://artssocialmedia.wikispaces.com/Twitter+Experiment

Listening Experiment http://artssocialmedia.wikispaces.com/Listening+Experiment+Tips

Twitter, how to use it effectively for the arts.

What is Twitter? Social Media for people to talk in 140 or less characters.

Why Twitter? Information/Insight, Marketing, Data Mining, Social Circles, Connections

Examples: Use it for getting contacts for programing participants. Urgent promotions (like ticketing deals.) Twitter feeds operates as a news feed (a source of content) on the website.

Who uses Twitter? The average user tweets once in 72 days. Most people have 25 or fewer followers.

How do people Tweet? Desk top or mobile phones. Amazing growth in people using it through smart phones.

How to use it?

1. As a focus group. (Example is the Smithsonian and what people say about it...very funny!)

2. Live notes during an event

3. Customer service.

4. Starting conversations about the development of new work. (#2amt)

5. Tweetups!

6. Spreading buzz. (Example is the Monterey Bay sending out a message and following it to all the people who have sent it out...and encouraging media to send out again and again.)

Live Blog! Leveraging Social Media with Beth Kanter

You can’t do a project like this, create a real plan, in 60 minutes.This is just a flavor.

So, let’s do a three minute summary of your high level strategy:

1: Jewish community center: focus on an organization that has almost no social media at this moment. Want to meet people in 20-30s. Where are those people on line? What are they using? We when through listing, engaging, watching, sharing? What tools are they using to access social media? Is this something the organization could benefit from? Decided: Using survey monkey to survey those people about what social media they were engaged in. And engaging with people who where already engaged and using that as content. Partnering with people who already had social media set ups. Then using free alcohol and food to get them to the space.

What was brilliant – Alcohol.

Beth Kanter asks: How are you going to get the time to do all this?

Volunteers? Partnering and asking those companies who already do the work to network them. User driven content. (Beth Kanter: Yes. Simplify. How can others do the heavy lifting? And as far as fan or user content…think of them as micro volunteers. Give them tasks that are one time and take less than two mintues.)

2: Contemporary Dance: Listen and find. Our target is really busy and word of mouth is really important to them. Momapedia. Tap into heavy mom blogs and twitter feeds. Tweet ups or meet ups.Focusing on the family and events that would encourage influancers to engage. Use yelp for our organization.

Beth Kanter asks: How to others use yelp: Listen to reviewers.Direct facebook fans to yelp. Using yelp announcements. Yelp elite group was invited to events. Make sure you actually own the Yelp page and control the content so you can post events. Yelp can sponsor. Encourage network to yelp in a positive way.

What about you? Do you know effective ways to utilize Yelp?