The GRAMMY Awards, Social Media, and Arts Marketing

Something funny has happened to the way I experience television in the last six months. I don't really "watch TV" anymore -- I keep up with shows I like online. Between Hulu, streaming Netflix, and iTunes, I have everything I need to stay up to date.

So I stay caught up with Glee and How I Met Your Mother and Mad Men via the Internet -- but I still have my old television sitting around. Most of the time it just takes up space in my apartment, but it does in fact get broadcast channels.

See, these days, the only time I actually turn it on is for "event TV". Things like the World Series, the Golden Globes, the Olympics -- those big nights that only happen once, and that could be "spoiled" for me if I didn't watch while they aired. (Not everyone has learned this lesson: my boss keeps complaining that this season's football games have been ruined for him by logging in to answer Facebook messages and accidentally reading people's excited or disappointed newsfeed stories.)

So for these time-sensitive occasions, I dig out the remote and settle in to watch. But there's something new, now. I'm not just watching by myself, even if I'm alone in my bed. I watch TV with my computer in my lap, with Twitter and Facebook and Tumblr loaded up in my browser. When it's an Event TV night, there's always more going on -- I think of it as a backchannel. **

My TV-watching experience isn't just happening on one screen -- I'm also watching the commentary of millions of other viewers (and adding my own). Whenever there's something really big happening, it becomes a trending topic. I can refresh my own Twitter followers over and over again and see what 150 other people think about what's happening; I can search for "yankees" and find another 500 tweets every 15 seconds. I can tell which of my Facebook friends are excited about speed skating.

Lots of people are watching this way -- which means that there's the story on the television, and the story ABOUT the story on social media.


I bring this up now because last night I watched the GRAMMY awards, and this multi-channel experience was taken one step further. This year, the Recording Academy seriously stepped up its social media presence. They're on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, they rebuilt the official Web site… and more than that, they got it right.

Now, just for the record: I don't actually care much about awards shows, in general. I'm not the kind of person who fills out ballots with friends and tries to predict winners. There have been plenty of years when I haven't watched the GRAMMYs at all.

So when I say they got it right, I mean that I was so drawn in by their social media coverage leading up to and during the show that I spent literally EIGHT HOURS yesterday paying at least partial attention to the GRAMMY awards.

For many people, the GRAMMYs is Event TV for sure -- plenty of my friends and follow-ees were watching -- but in this case the backchannel I was watching went far beyond a small assortment of the people I happen to be friends with on Facebook, or a random snapshot of the Twitterverse. This time, there was a whole content-rich backchannel coming from the producers themselves, plus dozens of other resources they pulled together.



So not only could I read frequent updates from @TheGRAMMYs themselves, providing a recap of winners and letting people know what was coming next, but they also created a Twitter-list of GRAMMY nominees, most of whom were live-tweeting from the awards. Another list collected all of the bloggers they hired and scattered around the red carpet, who posted about celebrity sightings and about what goes on at the show during commercial breaks. On Facebook, there were longer posts with photos and video clips. The GRAMMYs social media team worked really hard to put the backchannel right up front, and in doing so greatly enhanced this viewer's experience. **


I see two big lessons that arts organizations should take from this:

1) Get to know your backchannel -- and get involved.

Are people talking about you online? Are you listening? Are you talking back? You might not dominate a list of trending topics like the GRAMMYs did, but you can still encourage a conversation. What if you created a hashtag for your next show and threw a note in the program asking your patrons to review it on Twitter?

This is what I've been saying at conferences for months: the first step of embracing social media is to turn yourself into the audience, and listen to what your patrons have to say.

2) Access is everything (or, Show Don't Tell).

My favorite part of the GRAMMYs coverage was the liveblog on Tumblr.

"Can you spot Lady Gaga’s giant silver hat blocking the front row?"

" I saw Mary J. Blige and Andrea Bocelli run through their performance a couple times on Friday..."

"Have a tip, question, or comment for me as I Tumble from inside the GRAMMYs production office?

Posts like these require being up-close-and-personal with the event in question. They go beyond reporting ("So and So just won for Best New Artist!") and let the audience see things they would never have access to otherwise. The most dynamic and engaging social media content doesn't get written between 9 and 5 at a desk in your office -- it's happening on stage. You can't leave your social media efforts solely in the hands of your marketing department, unless you make sure the marketing department has direct access to the art, and can post things patrons haven't seen or heard before.

Chad Bauman talked about this at his NAMP Conference session back in November. He came right out and said that if your organization has a blog, you should let the artists themselves be in charge of it, or at the very least put your marketing people in same the room with the artists -- and he also told a great anecdote about chasing down Edward Albee in the hall with a Flip video camera to get a quick interview with him to post on Facebook. That's what social media is for! Step away from the desk, step away from meticulously-written marketing copy and press releases, step away from scripted Twitter updates that tell, tell, tell -- and make sure the person or people doing the updates can be in a position to SHOW your fans why they should care about your org.




**A new book just came out called The Backchannel: How Audiences are Using Twitter and Social Media and Changing Presentations Forever -- in it, author Cliff Atkinson writes about the phenomenon of live-tweeting during live presentations at conferences. Same idea; but his is a business book aimed at conference presenters, instead of at arts organizations. back

**For more on what the Recording Academy did with social media this year, read the excellent article on mashable.com. back

Link, link, link to your social media accounts

If you attended my webinar series this fall (or the first round, in the summer), you'll remember that the easiest and most important way to get new fans and followers is to link to your Facebook and Twitter accounts from your Web site! If you don't tell your patrons you're there, how will they ever find you?

Well, here's one organization that's getting it right (with maybe the best/most straightforward Twitter link I've ever seen): Monticello's Online Communities

Un-linking Your Facebook & Twitter Posts

Just a quick followup to my last post -- if you had been auto-posting from Facebook to Twitter or vice-versa, and I convinced you to unlink the accounts, here's how to do it.

If you're using the built-in "Facebook Pages to Twitter" app, just sign in to your Twitter account and go here to disconnect them. You should also visit facebook.com/twitter and make sure the change appears there.

If you're using a different app to send updates from Twitter to Facebook, you should be able to de-authorize the application on this page (again, just make sure you're logged in). All set!

Coming soon: a look at what's great about the recent Facebook news feed changes, and a recap of my day-and-a-half at the National Arts Marketing Project Conference in Providence.

Using Twitter to Update Your Facebook Page

I was out in LA last week, attending meetings and, more importantly, speaking about social media. Thanks to everyone who attended my sessions at the ArtsReach conference or at the NAMP workshop!

So of course I've been talking a lot about both Twitter and Facebook, lately, and there's a question that keeps coming up:

How can I find the time to keep up with both my organization's Twitter account and Facebook Page? Can I just post the same content to each? ...And isn't there an app for that?

As I've said many times, for a lot of small arts organizations, social media doesn't have to be a financial expense at all -- but it sure is a time expense! There are a number of different ways to link your organization's Facebook and Twitter accounts, but you should think carefully about how you do it.

There are several apps built for either Facebook or Twitter that let you automatically "export" your updates from one as updates into another. (So for example, if I'm using one of those apps, I can type in the Facebook status box, "Michelle is writing a blog post!" and have that message automatically post as my Twitter status as well.)

That certainly saves time! But is it a good idea?

I'll come right out and say that it drives me crazy when organizations -- or people, for that matter! -- use one of these apps to automatically post 100% identical content to Facebook and Twitter. As you might expect, I follow many arts organizations on both platforms, and it's not only redundant to read the same post in both places, but frankly quite annoying. It's one thing to occasionally have to scroll past content that doesn't engage me; it's another to sit there and scroll past content I just read five minutes ago in a different browser tab!

Besides the annoyance factor, it's also simply true that Facebook and Twitter are different platforms with different cultures. You can have different kinds of conversations with your fans and followers in each place. Facebook's character limit is way higher than the 140 you get on Twitter, for one thing. For another, it's much easier to post photos or links with context to your Facebook Page. (Twitter can be great for direct and personal interactions with your patrons... but more on that another time.)

That said, if you're interested in linking your accounts, your best option is to choose an app that lets you post selectively -- that is, one where you can choose whether or not that "Michelle is writing a blog post!" update gets sent out to Twitter or not.

There's a new-ish app that Facebook launched last month, which allows Pages to automatically send their status updates to Twitter. (If you've logged in and looked at your Facebook Page recently, you've probably seen a message announcing it at the top of the page.) The app claims that DOES let you be selective, but as far as I can tell, that claim is exaggerated. While you can choose what kinds of updates to export (status updates vs. links vs. photos...), you can't actually turn it on and off for each individual message.

Instead, I recommend checking out the Facebook app called Selective Twitter Status. It works exactly the way it sounds: When you post a new tweet on Twitter (want a Twitter lingo refresher?), you can CHOOSE whether or not it should become your new Facebook status by appending the tag "#fb" at the end. So:

"Michelle is writing a blog post! #fb" would get posted to Facebook.

"Michelle is writing a blog post!" would not.

Pretty simple, very effective. (Note that I am not at all affiliated with the folks who created the Selective Twitter app! Just a fan.) I just think it makes more sense to choose an app that gives you more control over your social media experience -- and more importantly, the experience of your fans and followers.

More Twitter Lingo Explained

My coworker Allison has getting been getting into the social media game! If you missed her two excellent articles about Twitter, you should check them out -- the first one is a more general introduction to Twitter and its terminology, and the second gets into more specific examples of how arts organizations have been (and should be!) using Twitter.

There's plenty of Twitter info that didn't make it into the main articles, so I'll be posting some of the "outtakes" from here on the blog. Here's the first!

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Allison Klein, guest blogger:

If you've been listening or have recently started tweeting yourself, you've probably noticed that a lot tweets that have "RT" peppered throughout them. Welcome to the world of the re-tweet.

What?
Abbreviated as "RT," the idea of the re-tweet is really just a way to indicate that you’re quoting another users’ tweet. If you find a tweet to be particularly interesting, full of useful information, or including call to action worth passing along, you may consider re-tweeting it.

How?
To re-tweet something, just copy and paste the content of the original tweet, and precede it with the letters “RT” to indicate that it includes something that you’re re-posting from another user. Follow that abbreviation with "@" and the username of the original tweeter to give them credit. If you that doesn't push you over the 140-character limit, you might also want to include your own comments, but the re-tweet can also stand alone. (And yes, you have to copy/paste -- just typing "RT" will not do anything "automatically" like I thought it would the first time I tried to re-tweet something.)

Why?
I find that re-tweeting comes very naturally -- I don't know about you, but I'm always sending links to useful Web sites or funny videos to my friends and co-workers. Re-tweeting is just the equivalent of this practice in the Twitterverse. So I guess what I'm saying is--why not use it? It's an easy way to become a more regular/active tweeter without having to come up with or find your own content.

PLUS, using the re-tweet is a great way to get a conversation going with another Twitter user that you might not know yet. Once you've re-tweeted them, many people (corporate accounts included) will send a thank you message (via @reply), which you in turn can reply to if you so choose, so it really does serve to help build new relationships on Twitter. You're putting yourself on the original tweeter's radar -- which means that they might very well start following you, and so might some of their own followers. So think of re-tweeting as a good karma measure! The more you re-tweet and give credit to other Twitter users, the more likely they will be to take notice of your tweets and do the same.


Here are a few examples of re-tweets that I've posted recently, so you have an idea of what this looks like and how they may be used.

After seeing Hair on Broadway:

(I didn't happen to catch the performance on Letterman after all, but as a result of my re-tweet, my colleague @seajo did!)


Regarding a giveaway I was missing while out of town:

Notice that this one's a DOUBLE re-tweet: Not only am I re-tweeting the tweet that @NewYorkology posted, but they're re-tweeting the original 'news' story from Twitter user @MidtownLunch. This is how things tend to go a bit viral on Twitter!


You're probably following and being followed by other Twitter folks in your field:

You're bound to come across tweets that will be useful to those followers professionally, so why not re-tweet that content and help get the word out?


I found this original tweet via Twitter search results:

...so I re-tweeted it to spread the word.


And the Atlantic Theater did the same here, when they saw my own tweet reviewing their current show:

I should add that finding out that something you've tweeted has been re-tweeted brings no small amount of pride -- so definitely consider re-tweeting your followers if you want to make them feel good! It also lets them know that you're listening to what they have to say!

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Thanks, Alli!