By Blaire Townshend
Though I am a member of the oft-mentioned Millennial generation, I am new to the world of social media. Unlike many of my peers, I don’t find that hashtags, retweets, and Instagram posts come naturally to me. However, in a quest to make myself less antediluvian, I have been attempting to understand the complexities of these vast online communities and their implications both for my field of interest (arts and entertainment) and for society in general. What I have gathered quite quickly is that social media not only has the potential to revolutionize marketing tactics, but has already done so. In the interests of time I will speak to this revolution as it pertains to digital arts marketing, but as I am sure you are well aware, no market is unaffected.
What is truly incredible about
these mediums is their capacity to encourage consumer driven marketing. A
perfect example of this is live tweeting; the phenomenon of responding to
events in real time on Twitter using predetermined hashtags pertaining to the
subject material at hand. While I was observing arts events and bemoaning
declining audiences and lack of widespread support, my peers were busy beaming
relevant discussion topics to a global audience of millions and thus bringing
exposure to the art. And this without any urging from the producers of these
events! In essence, they were marketing arts events for these producers. On their own time. For free. In marketing
parlance, these tweeters exemplify the ideal of the net promoter; an
enthusiastic supporter of a good or event who takes it upon themselves to
recommend that good or event to their peers. This is an incredibly cost-effective
marketing base for organizations to tap into.
In fact, a Forbes article from
2014 speaks specifically to the effects that live tweeting has on platform
engagement (Bercovici). It claims that “programs whose cast members live-tweet
when the show is airing generate 64% more discussion” (Bercovici). I can
certainly attest to the fact that this is still the case two years later—when
Grease Live aired this past week, and stars such as Julianne Hough and Aaron Tveit
took to Twitter and Instagram to share their experiences backstage, express their
excitement, and just generally check in, my social media feeds exploded. People
could not seem to get enough of the up-to-the-minute, intimate feel of these
posts. They responded in kind, and as a result, Grease Live was the main topic
of conversation on Twitter and Facebook for hours that night.
The beauty of these scenarios is
that the marketing personnel of these productions can do relatively little and
reap fantastic rewards. Encourage your stars to engage in light commentary,
promote a few backstage Instagram posts, and your fans will do the rest of the
work for you. Obviously, this is an oversimplification of the marketing
process. However, the fact remains that the resulting online conversations
generate the very organic word of mouth that marketers lust after. And it is
important to note that word of mouth is overwhelmingly what this generation
responds to. The statistics say it: the Broadway League demographics report
found that word of mouth and personal recommendations were the most popular methods
for gathering information and making choices about arts events (Demographics).
The experts say it: Chris Anderson reminds us that “fundamentally social media
is a peer-to-peer medium”—in other words, the online generation values and
trusts the recommendations of their peers (Anderson 242).
When marketers understand this
and take advantage of this, they encourage the use of social media as a
platform for “peer-production”, where “users happily do for free what companies
would otherwise have to pay employees to do”—recommend these events to each
other (Anderson 219). Anderson flippantly describes this as a transition from
“outsourcing” to “crowdsourcing”, but I feel that his description is
wonderfully apropos (Anderson 219). In a market such as the arts, where paying
for wages and advertising campaigns is at a premium, who in their right mind
would refuse the assistance of that crowd? I may be slow on the uptake, but
even I can see that encouraging such collaboration is #ontrend.
Anderson, Chris. The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is
Selling Less of More. New York: Hyperion, 2008.
Bercovici, Jeff. “Twitter
Quantifies Impact of Live-Tweeting on TV Engagement.” Forbes Tech. Forbes. 18 Sept 2014. Web. 4 Feb 2016.
“The Demographics of the Broadway Audience 2013-2014.” The Broadway League. The Broadway
League. 2014. Web. 6 Dec 2015.
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