So I blogged about the method I went about to measure the social media efforts of theatres on Twitter at my AWayofLife0 blog (and if you came here via that, you can scroll down to after the under construction sign), particularly regardingthis endeavor. I looked at various data to compare 10 of DC's multitude of theatre companies. The theatres were chosen by a number of subjective factors, ones I was familiar with, established companies, Helen Hayes nominees, and is by no means comprehensive, but just within the scope of my own personal capacity.
This isn't a matter of who's doing social media right and who's doing it wrong. I just want to make that clear. Everyone's doing something right to some degree. As I mentioned in the other post, ultimately any individual theatre's social media success can only be based on their own goals and measurements.
That being said, the ten theatre companies I took a look at were Arena Stage, Metro Stage, Olney Theatre Center, Round House Theatre, Shakespeare Theatre Company, Signature Theatre, Studio Theatre, Theater J, Synetic Theater, & Woolly Mammoth Theatre.
I break down rankings based on presence, relationships, and influence. I then provide the overall ranking at the end. Check it out:
Rankings based on presence, one's static and fluid appearance (i.e. selection of profile & background image and tweet frequency) were:
- Woolly Mammoth Theatre
- Shakespeare Theatre Company
- Theater J
- Studio Theatre
- Arena Stage
- Metro Stage
- Round House Theatre
- Signature Theatre
- Olney Theatre Center
- Synetic Theater
Rankings based on relationships (i.e. following/follower ratio and percentage of active followers) were:
- Metro Stage
- Theater J
- Woolly Mammoth Theatre
- Shakespeare Theatre Company
- Arena Stage
- Signature Theatre
- Olney Theatre
- Studio Theatre
- Synetic Theatre
- Round House Theatre
Rankings based on influence (i.e. Klout and Peer Index scores) were:
It is also an attempt to rank engagement, which might not be a theatre company's goal with their Social Media. If you're main goal is driving website traffic and ticket sales, then this ranking will probably be of little use to you. However, I would make the case that effective engagement in addition to broadcasting content that's on message and part of your overall marketing strategy, creating a place for dialogue and conversations, however brief, can actually compliment and even help with any other goals you might have.
An interesting tidbit is that Shakespeare Theatre Company and Signature Theatre are the social media veterans of this group, joining twitter over four years ago. But the "noob", Woolly Mammoth Theatre, which joined just a little under three years ago (it'll be three years on 9/1, actually), has risen to the top in terms of social media savvy, according to these rankings.
One consideration for future reports will be to include the quantity of followers, adjusted to not include fake or inactive ones, in the scoring system used to rank. The only issue I have with this is that so much of this can be dependent on anything from location, to whether a theatre is engaging not just local and regional tweeps, but national ones, as well, and quantity in and of itself does little to provide useful, meaningful context.
Finally, for tweeps in the DC area, if you follow any of these companies (if not all of them), does this more or less reflect what you've observed their engagement to be? Any surprises or questions with these rankings? Anything you recommend I take into further consideration? Is any of this even useful? If you haven't read my blog breaking down what went into this, please check it out.
I would personally be curious as to how much this does or doesn't reflect on a theatre's social media capacity, strategy, goals, and desired outcomes. And I'm definitely up to discussing this with any person in charge of such channels, either for these companies or others, if you have questions, input, or just want to grab coffee and chat.
Let me know, and keep an eye out for future reports,
- J Street Jr
P.S. Just in case you aren't following any of the theatres from this ranking, and would like to, here you go (in alphabetical order):
- Shakespeare Theatre Company
- Signature Theatre
- Arena Stage
- Olney Theatre
- Woolly Mammoth Theatre
- Round House
- Metro Stage
- Theater J
- Studio Theatre
- Synetic Theater
And here are the overall ranking combining the previous three categories:
Again, this is a ranking and not a scoring. There is no objective standard of social media proficiency which I used to measure and score these theatre companies against. And while there are some metrics which are somewhat objective, this ranking is based on how each theatres' scores compared to the others.- Woolly Mammoth Theatre
- Shakespeare Theatre Company
- Theater J
- Metro Stage
- Arena Stage
- Signature Theatre
- Round House
- Studio Theatre
- Olney Theatre
- Synetic Theater
An interesting tidbit is that Shakespeare Theatre Company and Signature Theatre are the social media veterans of this group, joining twitter over four years ago. But the "noob", Woolly Mammoth Theatre, which joined just a little under three years ago (it'll be three years on 9/1, actually), has risen to the top in terms of social media savvy, according to these rankings.
One consideration for future reports will be to include the quantity of followers, adjusted to not include fake or inactive ones, in the scoring system used to rank. The only issue I have with this is that so much of this can be dependent on anything from location, to whether a theatre is engaging not just local and regional tweeps, but national ones, as well, and quantity in and of itself does little to provide useful, meaningful context.
I would personally be curious as to how much this does or doesn't reflect on a theatre's social media capacity, strategy, goals, and desired outcomes. And I'm definitely up to discussing this with any person in charge of such channels, either for these companies or others, if you have questions, input, or just want to grab coffee and chat.
Let me know, and keep an eye out for future reports,
- J Street Jr
P.S. Just in case you aren't following any of the theatres from this ranking, and would like to, here you go (in alphabetical order):
Really great job with this. I'm glad someone went and did the work.
ReplyDeleteWoolly is certainly the leader in this group. Though I've never considered Shakespeare to be very engaging on Twitter. They might be a regular presence, but there's no fluid back and forth between audience and institution.
What's interesting is that the smaller companies not ranked (for example: Forum, Rorschach, No Rules, Dog & Pony, etc)--all of them use Twitter to better effect than those listed. Maybe it's because the smaller companies are younger (both the institutions and the people in charge of them) and are more comfortable using new social media. Or, more likely, it's because they don't have as much (or any) entrenched infrastructure to combat when adapting new technology.
Thanks for the comment!! And definitely gives me a good place to start the next time I do a report :-)
DeleteLet me know which other smaller companies on twitter you'd recommend including to get up to ten. As I would certainly agree with you in terms of the level of institutionalization of an org directly affecting its capacity to adapt new technology and tools effectively, and in a timely manner, and would be curious just how that difference would be reflected.
Also, Steve, I think your comment about engagement hits the spot in terms of where a lot of this discussion about the added value of social media is centered.
DeleteWhat do we mean collectively when we say "engagement"? Because different people, from staff to artists to audiences, can have a variety of expectations based on their own definition of it.