New York Theatre Network: it’s launch day!

Six months ago I got a call from one of my former classmates, Frances Black, asking me to be the project manager for “a social networking site for off Broadway theatre companies in collaboration with A.R.T./New York and TheaterMania.” That sounded pretty interesting, but I was in the middle of this, so I reluctantly turned the opportunity down. Two months later she called back, “Pretty please?” Ok, ok, who am I to turn a chance like that to actually practice what I preach — social media for the theatre.

And thus began my contract with the New York Theatre Network:

The New York Theatre Network is your hub for what’s happening on New York City stages. From the hot new company you’ve never heard of, to the theatre you’ve been subscribing to for years, NYTN is the place to find out what’s coming up, who’s tweeting ticket discounts, and which theatre company makes the best YouTube videos. Sign in with Facebook to see what recent shows your friends liked. Be in the know.

In the first few months, I had an awesome partner, Meghan Pressman — together we created a marketing strategy plan and an education strategy plan. She did 95% of the heavy lifting for these plans. Which, of course, as soon as the project began, we had to promptly throw out the window.

MARKETING

In the end, we chose 3 print publications, 7 websites, Facebook, and Google, to run an ad campaign over the course of 4 weeks. Each ad has its own tagline, and (we hope!) the graphics tie together the whole campaign. Look out for all the ads on your local newsstands, website browsings, and theatre-lobby-wanderings.

I’m pretty stoked that we have a few weeks to experiment with different Facebook & Google ads. I just wish it were that easy to tailor all those other digital ads. We’ve even tried to space out our print ads to get a better sense of CPA, because the CPM’s are maddeningly different between publications. And you know what else is maddeningly different? How to submit the dang ads. Digital portals, generic email addresses, account rep’s, messenger service. Somebody should really consolidate that.

We also hired a great PR firm, AMP3 PR who have a background in launching new websites, and an awesome graphic designer, Maggie Elliot, who has a background in coming through FTW on tight deadlines, vague instruction, and no budget (she also does all the creative for Yale Rep). There’s been much debate about whether PRNewswire or PRWeb would be the best venue of choice for our press release. And I learned a valuable lesson in paying for backlinks: the day before our press release went live, the phrase “New York Theatre Network” yielded just 3 results on Google (ouch). The day after: over 15,000. Talk about SEO. And we’ve already begun to generate some great press:

• Clyde Fitch Report, A.R.T./New York Joins Social Media Swim
• Steve on Broadway, The Social Network
• Independent Media Magazine, Theatre Social Networking Site Launching
• Encore Magazine, Theatre Arts in a New Light

And we continue to run a Twitter profile, though not a Facebook page. Both were quite difficult decisions to make; knowing that my time with A.R.T./New York is limited, and there simply aren’t spare minds & hands around the office to take on more work. Ginny Louloudes has been a trouper learning to tweet though! And if wishing made it so, we would have had a Foursquare badge. Theatre Nerd anyone? (maybe like the little guy with the glasses?)

EDUCATION

Surveys are tricky — especially with a finite population and limited response rates. The first survey we did about A.R.T./New York member theatre’s experience with, and comfort with, social media implied they were rolling along their merry way, practically headed towards Foursquare nirvana. I got all freaked out, demanded impossible features from our tech team at TheaterMania for the nytn.org site, and began planning an ambitiously advanced social media curriculum. Then we did another survey about what in particular member theatres wanted to learn about social media, and heard things like, “How do I start a Facebook page?” and “Where can I list my show online?” Hmm…there seems to be a disconnect here. In the end, we tried to plan a mix of workshops & informal discussions to get the ball rolling. And we were lucky to get:

1. Dave Charest to teach Demystifying Social Media
2. Erica McLaughlin to teach Efficiently Using Social Media
3. Sarah Lasley to teach Creating Videos for YouTube
4. Reva Cooper to teach Listings that Work
5. Dennis Baker to teach Increasing Traffic with SEO
6. Me (less lucky, more like stuck with me) to teach Social Media Strategic Planning

And I facilitated weekly round table discussions Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Blogging. Including some nifty new research on them all, where I tried to answer:

• Who’s using this platform?
• What are best practices?
• What works best, based on the research?
• What else could we do, if we’re an advanced user?
• Where can we go for further resources?

About 1/4 of all A.R.T./New York member theatres attended one of these education events, many of them attending multiple events with multiple staff members.We follow up each of the workshops with an online survey asking attendees about:

• What they expected to learn
• What they actually learned
• What they thought of the instructor’s knowledge & engagement
• If they expect to actually use what they learned at their theatre
• Convenience with the logistics
• If their overall expectations were met

We’re also totally grateful for the Flip Video Spotlight for Good program for sponsoring our purchase of technology to video tape the workshops, and lend out the flip cams to member theatres for their own use.

TECHNOLOGY

TheaterMania are the great folks behind the actual nytn.org site design & architecture. Big shout out to Dave Stanke, John Issendorf, and Ed Highfield for putting up with my endless requests for new features, submitting countless bug reports, and general needling about the 20 things that must be fixed right now. It was a huge learning experience for the A.R.T./New York team about the intricacies of launching a new website. We navigated through internal beta to private beta, to our launch of public beta today. I’ve been amazed at our frequent use of off-the-shelf products: the site itself is built on top of a wordpress platform, a Facebook open graph app powers our recommendation engine, a Google form serves as our bug report tracking, and we’ve got a Gmail support email.

We’ve written what feels like reams of website copy. Easy to forget that every single word on a website has to come from somebody’s mind/fingers, and get through the approval process of 2 organizations.

We’ve also been able to generate *tons* of support documentation: from screencasts to PDF’ed tutorials to FAQ’s. And we’ve brainstormed wishlists like:

• What if every theatre could link to as many of their social media profiles as they wanted on their NYTN page?
• What if the NYTN page promoted upcoming shows just like Hulu?
• What if it was as easy to search for a theatre company as it is to scroll through Google Images?
• What if we had faceted search like MenuPages?
• What if we integrated with Talkbackr?
• What if our Dashboard was the best of Postling and Flowtown?

And a whole list too long to enumerate here.

Every week, we track bugs submitted/fixed, member sign ups, and how many of each type of content members are updating. None of this is automated yet, so it’s a lot of me and Rebecca Phillips counting things by hand.

The last tricky thing we’ve yet to solve is WTF should go in our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use. We’ve tried compare/contrasting TheaterMania, HuffingtonPost, IMDB, BoingBoing, and TrustE, to no avail. I’m too stubborn to simply copy & paste someone else’s. I don’t like any of the templates out there. On the one hand, we don’t actually have control over much of the content posted on the NYTN site — it mostly belongs to the member theatres. And we want people to share/repurpose that content at will, and make it as easy/free of legal jargon as possible to allow them to do so. Le sigh.

INTERNAL COMMUNICATION

Out of all of my NYTN responsibilities, this one really snuck up on me. There’s been a pretty steady onslaught of emails to write every:

• Monday: Workshop & roundtable surveys (and then synthesizing the findings, and sending final reports on each to my boss)
• Tuesday: Staff updates (more on these in a moment)
• Wednesday: Promotion of upcoming workshop & roundtable
• Thursday: A.R.T./New York member newsletter updates about NYTN
• Friday: Reminder to A.R.T./New York member theatres who haven’t yet completed their NYTN profile

The staff updates, although admittedly a pain, provided a great opportunity to figure out: what are we measuring?? On Twitter, on our website, on our progress towards a whole set of goals & timelines. Check it out for yourself to see where we landed.

We also made a presentation to the board (and I learned keynote!).

LAUNCH

So that’s it. We’re launched. I’m hanging around for another week or so to try to optimize the digital ad campaigns, get the budget in order, write up a final report, and teach that final workshop. For the past three months, I’ve learned how to be a Product Manager, Brand Manager, Copy Writer, Project Manager, Educator, and Social Media Strategist. I’ve got the financial resources of a nonprofit, the growth goals of a social network, and the manpower of a start up. It’s been a wild ride. And the reason postings have been a little light on 24 Usable Hours. As I pack up to leave for Bangkok, expect postings to return to their regular schedule.

So if you haven’t already, won’t you visit the site?