At the Arts Marketing Association Digital Marketing Day last week there were some useful points raised regarding creating Twitter content. I thought I would put together some of the main ones in a blog post.
1) The importance of re-tweeting
In our Managing Director Jim’s keynote speech he cited this great quote:
“When a blogger asks for comments but never replies back, it’s like beginning a conversation and then leaving the room when someone else starts talking.”
One of the best attributes of Twitter, in my opinion, is the fact that you can contact people so succinctly and directly. As the social media fan and CNN anchorman Rick Sanchez tweeted, ‘i twitter because i need as a journalist to get what viewers think and say. w/out them i’m just another talking head.they complete me, lol!”
2) Dealing with negative feedback
Susan Hallam in her talk regarding digital marketing strategies, suggested that the best thing to do when your organisation is given negative feedback on Twitter is to wait. Not for long enough that your silence is noted, but for long enough that someone else from outside the organisation will step in and defend you. Though you may want to reinforce this, it is a more powerful defence if it comes spontaneously from a fan.
3) Planning to speak to each of your audiences
Though it’s not a new concept to plan a schedule of communication, or for this to include social media sites, I thought it was a great idea of Susan Hallam’s to divide up your schedule by audience, not necessarily by event. So rather than just thinking of the messages you want to put out to each audience in the launch of an exhibition, instead set yourself the task of putting out one message for each main target group each week or fortnight. She also reminded us of the importance of aiming messages at journalists - they are often big fans of the blogosphere too.
4) Lovelinks
DK from Mediasnackers introduced us to the term ‘lovelinks’. If you’re nervous about having a Twitter feed directly into your website, an alternative is to provide links to anyone saying positive things about you under a ‘What people are saying’ type heading. A Tweet from agency Redfront during the AMA event pointed out that sites like Trip Advisor should be included too.
It’s not the ideal scenario in my opinion but if you can’t persuade your organisation to set up an incoming feed then this is a good compromise.
5) Meeting your audience
In large venues, it can be difficult to get to know your audiences, particularly where you don’t have ticketing and the chance to gather data. Susan Hallam suggested starting by finding out who your main Tweeters are by using one of the tools like www.socialmention.com and searching for your organisation’s name (and your competitors) being mentioned in microblogs. In the left hand side bar you’ll get the details of the main authors mentioning you and in turn you can look them up and find out more about them.
6) The method not the result
DK overtly urged organisations to ‘come out from behind the curtain’ and be personable, as part of getting involved in social media. He suggested, ‘Stop writing press releases and show what you’re doing’ and explained how powerful it can be, and how interested people are, in you updating them on your process and progress rather than just announcing finished ‘products’ (events or exhibitions). Jim has often cited the Brooklyn Museum blog for how well they do this. This approach also gives people information in bitesize pieces but with links to more detail, a good general principle for online communications now.
Susan Hallam suggested a great, simple way to give loyal audience members added value and to give them a reason to read your e-bulletins and link to your website - to generate some exclusive information in the form of an interview with an upcoming artist, curator, speaker or similar and to provide a link for signed up fans to find it first. This could be part of the strategy of keeping the audience involved in the development process.
7) Calls to action
The National Theatre of Wales website, presented by their Artistic Director, John McGrath, reminded me of the importance of calls to action. ‘Find out more’ is more impactful than just a Ning link and ‘Visit our social network for reviews, comments and more…’ (as used on the NTW website) is even better because the audience can understand the reason for clicking.
And one final point which is much broader than just Twitter but, I thought important enough to be worth mentioning here:
Jon McGrath said that ‘Can we do it digitally?’ has become a kind of mantra for them. They had a really brave (and successful) online launch and are now committed to this a continue this approach as widely as possible (although their performance content will, for now at least, remain in person not online). This inspired me and I think we need to look at more opportunities for our clients to transfer processes online. We are currently developing an intranet and online ticketing functionality so hopefully these will be first of many such projects.
