January 23, 2008

The Importance of Social Media Press Releases for Dance

I've always been intrigued by "Social Media Press Releases" (SMPR) and how they can be used to enhance publicity within the dance world.

In a nutshell, a SMPR is a relatively new press release format that aggregates 1) summaries of key information, 2) multimedia content and 3) relevant links while removing the extended editorializing that bogs down traditional press releases. (By "bogs down," I mean overwhelms or is irrelevant to non-traditional writers and journalists). Finally, anybody can subscribe to a SMPR feed to be automatically notified about any updates.

A key advantage with SMPR is that they can be used to reach a much larger number of content creators--not just traditional journalists. Dance and presenter SMPR, for example, could be used to reach both dance and non-dance audiences and appeal to anybody with a blog or social networking page--a potentially huge audience.

In this post, I'd like to offer some suggestions of how dance companies could create SMPR for their upcoming dance performances. But first some background:

Background About Social Media Press Releases

Maggie Fox (no relationship) of the Social Media Group wrote a post on Monday "The Social Media Press Release - Digital Snippets." In her post, she includes links to SMPR that her company has created for Ford (here are more Ford SMPR), and a Social Media Press Release Template (PDF).

If you browse through the Ford SMPR, you'll quickly get an idea of how this new take on press releases is constructed and how easy it is to find the types of content you're looking for.

My Posts About SMPR and Dance Publicity

I've written a number of posts since 2006 about new approaches to publicity and how to transform the publicity function in order to increase the number of content creators who are covering and discussing your work and performances:

May 2006: Revamping Press Releases for the Arts

December 2006: Increase Dance Coverage with Multimedia Releases and Open Rehearsals

March 2007: What Strategy Should Drive Dance Publicity?

July 2007: Multimedia Press Kits for the Internet Age

Thinking About Dance and SMPR

There are two important trends to keep in mind when it comes to dance publicity:

1) Dance is now back and part of American popular culture. Just consider the popularity of on-going and new dance shows (Dancing with the Stars, So You Think You Can Dance, Dance War and more), viral dance videos (Evolution of Dance, Soulja Boy and others) and the number of upcoming Super Bowl promotions that feature dancing, including the inane KFC Chicken Dance contest.

2) A huge number of people, especially young people, have social networking pages and profiles--which means that just about everybody can and does create content.

So in light of a huge dance audience and the huge number of content creators it does not make sense to keep producing traditional press releases that only appeal to a small sliver of your potential audience.

What Do Dance SMPR look like?

I think that Dance SMPR would look very similar to the one created for Ford and more or less follow the SMPR PDF template I linked to above. You'd essentially be including videos, pictures, facts, interview quotes, links and recommended tags. ("Recommended tags" would be tags that you recommend content creators use when writing about your dance rehearsals, performances, workshops and similar programs.

In the end, an SMPR is very similar to a blog except that you'd really be creating and aggregating content so that other people could cover what you're doing and the emphasis wouldn't be as much on telling your own story directly to your audience--although you could do that to.

Finally, as with any blog, anybody who wished to could subscribe to your SMPR feed. As things stand now, if a dance company does not have a blog, I have no way of following what they're doing on a regular basis. By creating a SMPR with a feed, I would always be in the loop and so would thousands of other people be as well.

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January 10, 2008

Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet Reaches Out to Dance Bloggers

Last night I attended a dress rehearsal for Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet to which local dance bloggers were invited. The event was a lot of fun and it was a real pleasure watching the company's talented dancers perform works from three very different choreographers. Philip at Oberon's Grove is first out of the box with a write-up of this event and the performances. And Tonya just wrote this event wrap-up about famous-people sightings as I'm about to push the publish button.

It was great to see and meet fellow dance bloggers - there were about 10-12 of us - more on this topic coming soon along with a list of bloggers and a group photo.

I really appreciate Cedar Lake reaching out to dance bloggers. This type of event is the first of its kind and my guess is that more dance companies and presenters will more actively include bloggers in their future publicity efforts.

After the performance, we talked with Artistic Director Benoit-Swan Pouffer. He has a very positive attitude about the value of the unfiltered, personal writing style of bloggers, and expressed his appreciation for the diverse ways that bloggers go about covering dance.

Unfortunately, I didn't get to meet Caleb Custer last night - he was sick so he didn't attend. He's an intern with Cedar Lake and he helped put together this dance blogger event. Caleb definitely shares my interest in exploring how dance companies can leverage the Internet, blogs and videos to connect with audiences in new ways. So I hope to meet with him soon to discuss dance, the Internet and related topics.

Does This Event for Dance Bloggers Have Real Significance?

On one level, you could say this event is not a big deal. Cedar Lake was just smart to invite bloggers to a dress rehearsal, treat them to wine and cheese and host a post-performance talk with the artistic director. And in return get some good, quick coverage in the dance blogs - it's already happened.

All true. But, how come nobody else has done this before?

My answer is that many marketing people in the arts have a fairly traditional way of thinking about publicity, audience development, audience engagement and fundraising. There's still a huge emphasis placed on getting coverage and great quotes in the prestigious and mainstream media outlets such as the New York Times. These quotes are then taken and inserted into advertising/marketing campaigns and funding proposals.

I'm not actually discounting the importance of these favorable quotes to the financial health of dance companies. What I do believe, though, is that the emerging blogging outlets for dance ought not be ignored and offer many possible benefits to dance companies.

Bloggers are part of the community-oriented, participatory spirit of the Internet. And I think we will see many more dancers and dance companies exploring how to use blogs, social networking sites and related offerings to engage audiences in extended conversations about their work.

We turn around stories quickly, which means that you'll get coverage before the last curtain goes down. We include multimedia so that our readers can see videos of your work and make-up their own minds.

Collectively, dance bloggers, especially in New York City, get a good amount of traffic. Dance blog readers tend to be avid dance fans and are probably more interested in dance than the average reader of dance reviews in traditional newspapers.

Finally, dance blog posts can easily show-up toward the top of search engine results. Do a Google search for "Cedar Lake Ballet" and see what happens. A link to a story I wrote about Cedar Lake is right under the links to the Cedar Lake website. The same thing happens if you do a search for this week's "APAP conference" or "Arts Presenters Conference." Great Dance is very high in the search results listings.

What do these Google search results mean? They mean that if publicity people considered how Internet users searched for information about their organizations and performances, then they would reach the conclusion that dance bloggers are important. And, in addition, that it's worth the time and energy to support bloggers in their efforts so that they will hopefully offer positive coverage of your programs.

This post probably sounds like I'm going overboard patting myself and other bloggers on the back, which is somewhat true. But I do believe that there is a large discrepancy between the way in which marketing and publicity people in the arts see the world, and the way the world actually is.

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December 17, 2007

Tony Award-Winning "Spring Awakening," a Powerhouse User of Distributed and Viral Internet Marketing

A think it's helpful to take a look at the overall Internet marketing strategy of Broadway musical Spring Awakening -- Bill T. Jones is the choreographer for which he won a Tony. Here's his acceptance dance and speech:

Actually, that was slight digression - I just like the video. Back to Spring Awakening's Internet strategy. At the heart of what appears to be a highly successful online marketing program is the embrace of no-cost/low cost, highly viral distribution channels to reach large, enthusiastic audiences.

Here are the component parts of the Spring Awakening Internet Strategy. As you'll see, there is little here that dancers and dance companies with even the smallest budgets cannot do:

The Website

Their website is bold and nothing is extraneous. It's about selling tickets and merchandise, getting fans to spread the word about the show and making as many friends as possible on MySpace and Facebook. Take a look at the Spread the Word page. I don't think they missed a single avenue for encouraging visitors to help generate excitement and sell more tickets. Here's an example of a promotional banner that you can embed on your website/blog/social networking page:

MySpace and Facebook

On MySpace, Spring Awakening has amassed over 12,800 friends and 3,300 messages. If you take a look at this page, you'll notice that it was designed with existing content - music, video and details about the show. So it was not time consuming at all to create and generates a lot of traffic.

And for the official Facebook page, the show has another 13,000 or so friends. Their Facebook page is on the boring side, but obviously thousands of fans see value in signing-up, which means that the "friends" of these 13,000 group members also end-up learning about the show. Here's example of the viral nature of Facebook. I visited group page for Spring Awakening. I clicked the "Share" button and posted info. about this group to my profile on Facebook. Now visitors to my profile page see the following in my Mini-Feed:

YouTube and iTunes

Here's one of the many Spring Awakening videos on YouTube. It's been watched 44,000 times, has 44 comments and 86 ratings:

I'm confused by what is and is not an official show video on YouTube.

You can also sign-up for the Spring Awakening video podcast on iTunes and then watch it on your computer or iPod. Here's screen shot from iTunes - you can click image to see larger picture:

Conclusion

Above I didn't really delve into the strategy behind building an integrated Internet campaign that leverages the viral and distributed nature of the Internet. But I did just want to show the component parts of such a campaign. While implementing a successful Internet strategy obviously takes expertise and thus money, what's especially interesting is that the actual services above - MySpace, Facebook, YouTube and iTunes - cost no many to use and can help you reach huge audiences.

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December 13, 2007

The Columbia Ballet Collaborative Promotes Performance on Facebook

The Columbia Ballet Collaborative, a group formed by Columbia University students earlier this fall to increase awareness of ballet on campus, has successfully used the social networking site Facebook to promote their weekend performances (tomorrow and Saturday).

To access their Facebook pages, you'll need to register. You can visit the Columbia Ballet Collaborative page and also view the details about their weekend performances.

Here's a screen shot of their performance/event page - you can click image for larger picture:

Here's screen shot of the same page that highlights the Facebook event invitation tools. On top right visitors can RSVP. Then on bottom and in right-hand column, you can see who will, might and will not attend - click for larger image:

This morning I spoke by phone with Lydia Walker, a part-time Columbia student and professional ballet dancer who was one of five students who created The Columbia Ballet Collaborative. Lydia said that they used Facebook since all the students were already using this social networking site and it took the fewest resources to get up and running with it. She said that this application will work well for anybody who has a good friend base and it's a really easy way to let people know what you'll be doing.

To promote the Ballet Cooperative, they set-up a Facebook group and event page, and asked friends to join. Once you join this group, you then automatically receive updates from the group in your newsfeed on your Facebook profile page. Plus, your friends who visit your profile page will then see info. about the Columbia Ballet Collaborative.

Here's the mini-feed that appears on my profile page after I signed-up for the Columbia Ballet group:

Simply a great form of viral marketing. Once you sign-up to do something all your friends know what you'll be up to. (The Columbia Ballet Collaborative's Facebook initiative has inspired me to get more serious about Facebook. I have not been very active at all and I think I should start using it more.)

Lydia said that a good place for dance companies to start their Facebook explorations is with dancers under 35 who have a lot of friends on Facebook.

I would be delighted to hear from other dancers/dance companies about how you are using social networks to build audiences and sell tickets. Do you have success stories to share?

Other Articles/Posts about Columbia Ballet Collaborative

- Pictures of the Columbia Ballet Collaborative.

- Ballet Collaborative mentioned in this post about Dance at Barnard.

- Preview of Columbia Ballet Collaborative in Time Out New York by Gia Kourlas

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November 26, 2007

Distribution of Dance Coverage in New York City

Now that I've been linking to dance reviews for performances in New York City for the past two weeks, I'm curious to examine what does and does not get coverage.

If you look at the right-hand column of the NYC dance review blog, you'll see that there is a significant imbalance in terms of what is written about. New York City Ballet (8 reviews) and Batsheva Dance Company (7 reviews) followed by Complexions Contemporary Ballet (4) and Pennsylvania Ballet (4). All the others have one or two reviews. (I should point out that I probably have links to about 80+% of reviews in newspapers and blogs and that this data covers only a two-week period).

Why do some dance companies get more coverage than others? Popularity? Prestige? Venue? Or is it that the mainstream media (in this case dance critics who write for newspapers/magazines) has certain favorites? Actually, the mainstream media angle doesn't really work. If you take a look at the reviews for Batsheva Dance Company in particular, you'll see that a good number of the reviews are from bloggers.

And on another front, do dance critics with the New York Times, The Village Voice and other papers only write about the most popular companies performing at the largest/best-known venues? Yes, to a certain extent but definitely not always. I link to three reviews of New York Times' writer Jennifer Dunning. Two are of the New York City Ballet and the other one is of Gesel Mason at Joyce SoHo. Deborah Jowitt of The Village Voice, on the other hand, reviews Douglas Dunn & Dancers at Dance New Amsterdam and Monica Bill Barnes & Company at Danspace Project.

There are many ways to examine this aggregation of dance review data from over the past two weeks. But one thing is for sure: Most dance companies get virtually no coverage whatsoever - maybe one review or blog write-up if they're lucky. And the readership of dance reviews in the traditional media has been going down. The Village Voice would not have cut-back its coverage of dance if readership was increasing. And the New York Times would not have removed the link for "Dance" from its home page navigation bar (left side) if dance readership was steady or increasing.

Given this overall paucity of coverage and shrinking readership, what then is the best publicity strategy for dance companies?

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November 19, 2007

Update on New Blog with Coverage of NYC Dance Performances

You can visit the new Great Dance blog that links to dance reviews of dance performances in New York City.

So far, you'll find links to recent reviews for performances from more than 15 writers. If you'd like to submit your own review, you can fill-out this submission form.

Some Additions and Changes

- In addition to linking to an existing dance review on a newspaper website or blog, you can also submit a review directly to Great Dance. Just complete the above form to share your thoughts about a dance performance that you've recently seen. We do review all submissions for relevance and suitability before publishing.

- Of course, please post your comments in response to any of the reviews if you'd like.

- I'll soon add a calendar of upcoming performances in the New York City area. And there will be a form you can fill-out to submit your upcoming performances to the calendar.

- Choreographer and dancer statements and previews are welcome and encouraged - please read section that follows for elaboration of this.

First Person Creative Statements from Artists

This new blog to New York City dance performances does link to or feature dance reviews. But I also think it's important for artists, choreographers and dancers to have their own voice on this blog as well. Many people who are thinking about seeing dance would be delighted to hear directly from the creators of the work they are about to see; they don't want to just read reviews.

So I'll be setting-up a separate form on this blog that choreographers and dancers can use to share their first person perspectives about a work that they are about to perform. These posts can include video previews as well--actually, I hope many of them include video excerpts so that dancegoers can get a visual idea of the works that will be performed.

By the way, I'm definitely not inviting choreographers and dancers to submit press releases. Press releases are not usually designed for human consumption. I get lots of press releases and I don't ever look at them -- unless they are the only source of specific factual information that I need. To me, press releases are filled with impossible to decipher hype that my brain simply can't process and people on the Internet do not communicate in "press-release speak."

I realize that many dancers don't usually write about their work in the way that I'm proposing. Some dancers think that their work should speak for itself or they might not feel comfortable writing about their dances in a direct, more or less conversational style. All understandable. But I strongly believe that artists who don't share their vision online are simply missing out on an invaluable opportunity to communicate with their audiences and are letting others define their work--sometimes in inaccurate or unfavorable terms.

I'm more than happy to work with dancers to help in the process of writing artist statements about work you are about to perform.

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November 14, 2007

Access New York City Dance Reviews from a Single Blog

I'm about to launch a series of new blogs that will feature brief excerpts from all online dance reviews within a specific geographical area.

The first blog in this series, which will launch this week, will be dedicated to dance performances in the New York City area. Essentially, you'll be able to visit and subscribe to this blog to access brief excerpts of online reviews in newspapers, blogs, community forums and on other sites. If a review interests you, you can click a link to be take directly to the entire article or post, whether it resides on Great Dance or any other website.

I'm creating this centralized dance review resource for a number of reasons:

1. There is no single website that dancegoers can visit to gain quick access to all reviews for a specific city or town.


2. There has been a sharp increase in the number of people writing about dance, especially on blogs. And I think the number of people writing reviews about dance will continue to increase. These new Great Dance blogs that aggregate dance reviews will make it easy for people to find all of these reviews.


3. Part of my mission for the expanded Great Dance, now that we're hosting blogs from different dance-makers, is to reach both the existing dance community as well as occasional dancegoers and newcomers to dance. By creating a centralized gateway for accessing a diverse range of voices sharing their thoughts about local performances, it makes it much easier to capture the attention of this larger dance-going public.


4. Fourth, many choreographers, dancers and dance companies simply do not get enough or any coverage through traditional media outlets. Given the expansion of online dance reviews, there's no reason for this situation to continue. Even the smallest venue or emerging choreographer should have an opportunity to have their work discussed and reviewed online.

What Dance-Makes Can Do To Build Audiences

A central location of links to all dance reviews, I believe, will be helpful to dancers and dance companies as they work to build their audiences. But dance-makers also have an opportunity to rethink how they work with dance writers for mutual benefit.

One of the perennial problems with traditional dance reviews is that by the time these reviews are published, the dance performances are over. So even a spectacular review won't sell more tickets if there are no more performances to see.

But what would happen if dance-makers increased the number of days between the writing of the first review and opening night? Say there was a four to five day time-frame during which reviews were being written and dance enthusiasts were talking online about your upcoming performance even before your first show? The inevitable result would be that you would be getting much more free publicity than ever before and many more people would be talking about your dance company. The odds are that you would sell more tickets.

There is a catch however. Are you willing to invite dance writers--critics with newspapers, dance bloggers and others--to write about works that probably are not finished? If you invite writers to see your work 5 days or so before opening night, you may have quite a ways to go before your work is ready for the stage.

So the basic question is: At what point are you willing to show your work to people who will write about it so that you can build in as many days as possible for conversation about your upcoming performance to peculate throughout the online world before the curtain goes up? You might decide, for example, that you'll invite writers to your dress rehearsal but not before than.

In addition, I think that as part of this process of expanding the "perculation time-frame" it's worth cultivating relationships with non-traditional dance writers who are blogging about the performances they see or posting their reviews to message boards. For starters, is your publicist reaching out to these writers and encouraging them to cover your dance company? Are they being invited to rehearsals and opening night?

Are You Writing About Dance in New York City?

I already know many people who write about dance in New York. But you may want to drop me an email in any case to let me know about your website/blog or other online writings. I'd like to put together a comprehensive list of writers that I can share with dance companies, presenters, publicists and others who might want to reach out to you. You can email me at doug@greatdance.com.

Advertising on Great Dance

With the launch of this centralized dance review service, first for New York and then for other cities, I'm going to start selling ads on Great Dance to presenters, dance companies and other organizations connected to the dance world. If you'd like to discuss advertising possibilities on Great Dance, I'd be delighted to hear from you. Since I'm in the beginning stages of structuring various ad programs, it's a perfect time to hear from likely advertisers about the specifics of how you would like to benefit from your participation in our advertising programs. You can email me at doug@greatdance.com.

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November 7, 2007

I'd Like a "Sense" of The Dancer When I Visit a Dance Website

I, of course, have visited thousands of dancer and dance company websites. And it struck me that I very rarely get what I'm after when I visit these sites.

What I want is a really simple home page. At the top there are three to four sentences about the dancer/dance company. Then beneath this intro there is a large, high-quality video clip of the work the artist is most proud.

That's it. What else would I want?

Then I can access all the other details (history, profiles, works, upcoming performances and contact info.)

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October 22, 2007

Dance/NYC Townhall - Part III: How Does Live Dance Compete? Embrace Amateur Dancers

I'm continuing my posts in preparation for this Wednesday's Townhall meeting at Dance/NYC titled "Dance Have a Future? Implications of a Technological World."

In January of this year, I attended an educational session, "Professional Presenters and the Amateur Arts," at the Association of Performing Arts Presenters Conference in NYC. This session, which I wrote about, was conducted by the students of Andrew Taylor (his blog) at the Bolz Center for Arts Administration. The focus of this session was on how presenters should respond to the growth of participatory and amateur art-making. In addition, the students explored whether this explosion in non-professional art-making represents a competitive threat or possible partnership opportunity for presenters.

I believe that the Internet is contributing to the growth of amateur art-making and I think that this increase in the number of non-professional artists who are actively involved in the process of creation is a very positive development for performers and presenters intent on sustaining and growing their audiences.

The Internet has benefited amateur art-makers because it provides anybody with any interest under the sun with quick access to the resources, expertise and, most importantly, others who share the same hobbies and passions. So whether you're interested in scarpbooking or virtual jamming with musicians around the globe, you can easily find the people and guidance you need.

Be Like Mike or Buy Pavarotti CDs

In the on-going discussion on the Foot in Mouth blog about whether the dance world needs its own Pavarotti, Apollinaire Scherr offers a perspective that is alien to me. In her post, Apollinaire publishes a comment from Natalia of Bellydance: Experiences. Natalia suggests that what the dance community really needs is a Michael Jordan and not a Pavarotti. Natalia writes:

There's another issue here, which I haven't seen addressed: Do we want shows to turn people on to watching dance or to doing it? It's not the same thing, and although it's not an either/or proposition, if I had to choose I would hope shows inspired people to get off their couches and shake their tail-feathers a little bit. ;)

I think the dance world could use a Michael Jordan more than a Pavarotti. Sure, Pavarotti sold albums, but were kids running around wanting to "Be Like Luciano"?

Apollinaire responds to Natalia's recommendation:

But what makes me leery of just saying, yes, let's ditch the Luciano model and go for Michael Jordan, is that we've hit this moment in the culture when everyone wants to do. No one wants to absorb what others are doing and have done.

There are probably more people writing novels today than reading them, more people wanting to be a celebrity or a model or a dancer on TV than fawning over them. The culture has gone so over the top with participation (blogs are another example: the constant chatter) that I'm reluctant to encourage any more--though, yes, we do need to shake our booties as often as possible.

What drives me crazy about the pro-participation argument--and it's driven me crazy before on this blog--is it usually dismisses the possibility that being in the audience is also a form of participation. It's a very profound form, I'd say; it just happens to be taking place inside a person.

I find it difficult to accept Apollinaire's perspective on just about any level.

For starters, the idea of a professional class of art-makers is a a very new one. The culture and art-making developed and created over thousands of years has always been amateur in nature and highly participatory. The idea of discouraging amateurs from pursuing their creative interests would have, until recently, been an unimaginable notion. Before radios and records, people use to gather around the piano or guitar, play music, sing and have fun. So why this type of enjoyable art-making became unacceptable is a very strange development.

More Amateur Art-Making Leads to Larger Audiences

If anything, the opposite of what Apollinaire writes is true. The more people do, the more they want to see. The more people write books, paint, play an instrument, sing, dance or engage in any other creative endeavor, the more they want to see or enjoy the work of "professionals." And these amateur art-makers probably are more observant audience members/fans than the non-doers.

In terms of my own experiences learning to dance over the past two plus years, one of the most gratifying experiences for me has been the process of developing muscle memory. In other words, learning how to see a dance teacher show a routine and for me to be able to replicate it. Even though my technique has a long way to go, my ability to remember movement has gone from zero to a decent level in two years. When I started taking dance classes, my body simply could not remember and replicate anything that an instructor did - movements, changes of direction, synchronization with the music or anything else - my mind was just blank and my muscles were clueless.

In my remaining days in DC, I've been using up my class card from Joy of Motion. One of the classes I took was a jazz class with Maurice Johnson on Thursday night. The routine at the end of class was a little too fast for me. But the next day, when I was practicing on my own, I had just about 100% of recall of the routine and was able to replicate it. This may not sound like a big deal to experienced dancers, but for me it represented a lot of progress.

And this ability to remember and re-create movement definitely makes a difference in terms of enjoying and thinking about the dance performances you attend. Just to offer one example, if you attend a performance with little ability to remember movements and patterns, it is very difficult to make sense of the overall structure of a dance work.

So if the hope is as Paul Parish writes (his comment is published in Apollinaire post) for spectators to become

...real audience members, people who would pay deep attention and lose themselves in the vicarious experience [of dance performances]

then more amateur art-makers are needed and not fewer. Natalia's "Be like Mike" recommendation makes a lot of sense.

Tapping into Amateur Art-Makers

The Internet is flat-out a great way to reach amateur dancers -- especially if you define "amateur dancers" in very broad terms: students of concert dance forms, social dancers, ballroom dancers and competitors and dancers and students of world dance forms are all audiences to pursue.

And one of the fastest and easiest ways to tap into these audiences is through the social networking sites, message boards and blogs that cater to dancers and dance students with very diverse dance interests.

This targeted social-networking-focused approach is especially worthwhile for dance-makers who already bring an eclectic approach to their choreography. Anna Brady Nuse (see her Move The Frame Blog) wrote the following in a recent comment she wrote in response to one of my posts:

You are absolutely right that cross pollination doesn't happen enough between different dance styles and genres. However, there are plenty of exceptions to this, and I'm always encountering new choreographers and companies who like to mix it up: Nicholas Leichter, Doug Elkins, Parijat Desai, Merian Soto/Pepatian, just to name a few in my circles. I think that enough exceptions like these exist that have made a substantial impact on the art form. If enough of these types of artists learn to market themselves effectively in web 2.0, I think major change could come rapidly for dance.

A popular marketing strategy is to go after the "low-hanging fruit." In other words, market to the people who are already receptive to your message. If your upcoming dance work combines elements of Lindy Hop, doesn't it makes sense to embrace swing dancers who are already hitting the dance floor one or more times a week?

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October 19, 2007

Dance/NYC Townhall - Part II: Is the Internet Good for Dance?

I'll be a panel participant in Dance/NYC's Townhall meeting next Wednesday on the topic of "Does Dance Have a Future? Implications of a Technological World." (Dance/NYC RSVP, my initial post and "Part I: Dancing for the Environment and 15,861 Bloggers.")

In this post, I'd like to discuss the success of classical music on the Internet, offer my thoughts on why it is successful and share what I think are some of the key obstacles in concert dances' efforts to replicate the online energy and richness of the concert music world.

The Internet is Great for Classical Music

New Yorker music critic and blogger Alex Ross has a column in this week's New Yorker: "The Well-tempered Web: The Internet may be killing the pop CD, but it's helping classical music." I strongly recommend reading this article because of the parallels with the dance world. He writes:

The anonymity of Internet browsing has made classical music more accessible to non-fanatics; first-time listeners can read reviews, compare audio samples, and decide on, for example, a Beethoven recording by Wilhelm Furtwängler, all without risking the humiliation of mispronouncing the conductor's name under the sour gaze of a record clerk. Likewise, first-time concertgoers and operagoers can shop for tickets, study synopses of unfamiliar plots, listen to snippets of unfamiliar music, follow performers' blogs, and otherwise get their bearings on the lunar tundra of the classical experience.

Chris Bell, the director of worldwide product and music marketing at iTunes, happens to be a classically trained violinist, and he has closely monitored the progress of the classical division. He told me, "An interesting fact I recently uncovered is that, when you look at different genres in terms of sharing and cross-pollination, there's more dabbling going on than you might expect. We sell almost as much hip-hop to classical buyers as we do jazz. We've made iTunes a safe place to try classical music. It is easy to sample and the buying is low-risk." Bell talked about the serendipity of listening on the Internet, where someone might come to the site looking for a souvenir of Pavarotti and end up with the Kronos Quartet playing pieces by the Icelandic band Sigur Rós.

In these two paragraphs, Ross captures some of the elements that have helped break-down barriers to learning about and enjoying concert music on the Internet. In the rest of his article he offers specific examples of websites, musicians and business models that have helped revive the classical music world.

Key Contributors to Classical Music's Online Success

The Internet, according to Ross' column, has helped grow the audience for concert music in the following ways:

- Lots of good, diverse content that is easy to find and is very accessible.

- Internet users have anonymity and don't have to feel embarrassed because of their lack of knowledge - this fear on the part of newcomers definitely has parallels in the concert dance world.

- Concertgoers can make sure that they are very well-informed before walking into a concert hall.

- There is an abundance of high-quality audio recordings available at affordable prices.

- Music fans do not limit themselves to a single genre of music - there is a lot of "sharing and cross-pollination."

How Can Concert Dance Replicate These Resources and Offerings?

I would like to say that the answer is easy, but it is not. Classical music on the Internet starts with a number of advantages over dance - this despite all of the complaints of classic music fans that they can't build new audiences and the economics don't work.

- More people (including musicians, composers, critics and others) write, blog and communicate about classical music on the Internet than they do about concert dance.

- The quality, scope and diversity of music-focused content is better than that for dance.

- There are millions of high-quality audio recordings that can be listened to and purchased online. The quality and scope of dance videos on the Internet, however, is fairly poor overall.

- In the dance world, there does not appear to be that much "cross pollination." In other words, I think there is a tendency for dance-makers, dancers and dancegoers to limit themselves to specific styles or genres of dance and to not interact with or market to dancers in other dance spheres than themselves. For example, have you ever seen printed postcards at a Salsa dance promoting an upcoming modern dance performance?

Here's one example of the challenges faced by the concert dance community:

Let's say I'm going to see a performance of a classic work of a 20th Century modern dance choreographer. How do I learn about, watch and ask questions about this dance piece before going to the performance? The answer is that I can't in almost all cases. I'd like to be proven wrong. But pick any of the 100 most famous dance works of the 20th century and try to put together an educational and viewing kit for somebody about to see one of these works. Can you find sufficient background materials? Is video available? Is the quality of the video any good?

Now in some cases, classic ballet is in somewhat better shape than modern dance, but not by much. And it's often difficult to find good quality video of these ballet performances. And even if you find good quality video, it's probably a short segment and posted illegally.

So what should the concert dance community do? I think next week's Dance/NYC's Townhall is a good starting place to discuss and brainstorm about these challenges. And maybe we can set-up a dedicated blog to continue thinking about and discussing these issues after this program.

Please share your thoughts and reactions.

Posted by Doug Fox at 7:20 AM - Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

October 15, 2007

Dance/NYC Townhall - Part I: Dancing for the Environment and 15,861 Bloggers

Last week I wrote about my upcoming participation in Dance/NYC's October 24th townhall on how the Internet and technology will impact the concert dance world.

One of the questions that will be discussed during this forum is: How can we use [the Internet] to grow our audiences? (Here's the complete description of the townhall and an RSVP form).

I'd like to offer my first answer to this question:

Dance-makers (choreographers, dancers and dance companies) should actively pursue ways to integrate their dances into the causes, interests, organizations and activities about which they are passionate.

For example, if you make a dance about the environment and put an excerpt from this dance on YouTube, why not encourage all bloggers who cover global warming and related issues to embed this video on their blogs? You're offering bloggers engaging, captivating content, which will help them connect with their audiences and you are building a larger audience for your upcoming performances.

Why Not Reach 15,861 Bloggers?

Today is "Blog Action Day." The goal of this initiative is to raise awareness and encourage action on behalf of the environment. If you visit the list of participants, you'll see that 15,861 bloggers, with a readership of 12,697,713, have agreed to write a post today about the environment.

Natalia of Bellydance: Experiences is one of the participating bloggers. You can read her post, "8 Little Things Bellydancers Can Do For The Environment."

Let's say you're creating a dance piece about the environment. Three months before the next Blog Action Day for the environment, you approach the organizer of this outreach effort and offer the following proposal:

You will shoot and edit a dance video specifically for the next Blog Action Day. With heightened interest in dance as a result of popular TV shows, your video on the home page of their website will encourage even more bloggers to participate in this event. In addition, you will add a brief clip before your dance of the organizer of this event talking about this initiative and encouraging more people to join the effort. Then the organizer will conclude by saying: "Now stay tuned for a dance video about the environment and our Blog Action Day."

So the video will be viewable on the home page of Blog Action Day, and all participants will be encouraged to embed this video on their own blogs.

A nice and simple way to reach tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands or millions, of new fans in a single day. On top of that, you will likely reach individuals, corporations and grantmaking organizations who will be interested in providing financial support for your choreographic work.

All you have to do is create one great, engaging video!

Posted by Doug Fox at 1:02 PM - Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

October 11, 2007

In Art and Business Fluidity Trumps Clarity

In my beginner modern dance class last night at the 92nd Street Y, my teacher Susan Cherniak made the point during one of the exercises that she wasn't interested in our arriving at the right point in sync with the music, but was more interested in the process of our getting there. This is simply another way of saying that the quality of movement or the process of moving is more important than the goal of reaching a specific destination.

This need to focus on the fluidity of movement as opposed to the desired outcome might be a good metaphor for many of the conversations and developments that I've been following on the Internet. An emphasis on process, I think, forces us to be more aware of change over time in all spheres of our life, and limits the tendency to become glued to fixed notions about the way things work or ought to work - maybe I'm pushing this point a bit, but here are some examples of what I'm trying to get at.

Here's a TV ad from Zurich Financial Services that I've always liked - it's part of their series of ads with the tag line "Change Happenz":

The point of the ad is straightforward: Don't get locked into fixed ways of thinking because if you do the world will pass you by. So the only survival strategy that makes any sense is to accept that we live in an ambiguous world and that we can't become too attached to specific ways of living and working.

TED Talks Blends PR and Advertising

Last week I received an email from Natasha Dantzig a PR representative with Galloway Media Group that represents the TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) Conference. She emailed a number of dance bloggers encouraging us to embed and promote the following video of hip-hop dancer Kenichi Ebina who performed at a TED event this past March:

You'll notice even before watching this video that it's sponsored by BMW and once you click "play," you're presented with a brief BMW video ad followed by a longer one after the dance performance. So Galloway Media Group is in part a public relations firm that builds awareness and audiences for its client, but it's also building an advertising distribution platform for TED at the same time - a nice synergy at no extra cost. In essence, they are encouraging bloggers and others at no financial benefit to themselves to host ads from their sponsors. TED is using the VideoEgg platform to host, distribute and, I assume, monetize its video content.

I think the blending of the PR and advertising functions is an interesting one - something that is not possible to replicate in the same way in the offline world - especially the part about encouraging the embedding of viral videos with sponsorship messages.

Publicity in the Dance World - Pursuing a Traditional Path

I continue to be surprised by how few publicity people in the dance world make personalized pitches to me and other dance bloggers to write about or feature either stories and especially online videos in our posts. I do get an increasing number of press releases. But there seems to be no basic understanding or interest in how bloggers "see" the world. There's not much we can do with press releases in most instances. But if you write us a short personalized email and say, "We just put up this new video that I think you'll like. If you find it of interest, you might want to include it in an upcoming story or yours," we'll be happy. You don't really have to say much more than that except to provide a bit of context for the video and making sure you include links to the video.

What I'm recommending that dance PR people do is really simple, but almost nobody does it. This to me means that many PR people are stuck in a time-warp with very traditional notions and inflexible definitions about what publicity means. Or, to be fair, maybe their clients or bosses are in the time-warp and have very fixed ideas about how to measure PR success. If getting bloggers to write about dance performances doesn't provide concrete benefits to PR people, why should they waste their time pursuing this type of exposure?

In the Dance World, We Can't Even Define Dance

Even when we're creating and discussing dance, nobody is certain how to categorize and define what we're doing any more, even though this is not really a recent development.

At the beginning of July, I had just taken a week-long workshop, "Generating and Crafting Movement" with Liz Lerman Dance Exchange (my write-up). So I was inspired to create a dance with my 6-year old nephew. So I asked him what he had done over the past week. He said he took a karate class. So I made a karate movement with my arms. He protested and said that karate wasn't dance. I then told him about Paul Taylor's famous "Duet" that's performed in complete stillness. That seemed to put an abrupt end to our artistic collaboration. The next morning, my nephew pointed to a curtain and proclaimed, "That's not dance!". I figure I must have made an impact.

There are two current blogging conversations that highlight the continued uncertainties about how to categorize dance.

In "Viva la dance dance revolution!," Anna Brady Nuse considers the popular Dance Dance Revolution game and ponders whether it is indeed dance - read comments on this post and Matt Gough's response on his blog as well.

In another post, "What's in a Name," Anna highlights the many terms that are used to try to define what I'll call for now videodance. In a nutshell, there are a huge number of different terms and many people describe this art form in different ways.

A Final Thought...

Of course, we've probably been deluding ourselves for decades and centuries. There's never been as much order as we imagined and all our neat little, seemingly-logical categories were simply created to convince ourselves and others that we lived in a sensible, coherent world. That said, I advocate reinstating the Great Chain of Being:

OK, scratch the Chain of Being idea. We do live in a very fast moving and rapidly changing world and maybe our challenges in defining what happenz around us and our difficulties in creating usable frameworks in which to operate and do business will create new ways for dance, with its fleeting and fluid qualities, to speak to these uncertainties in tangible ways???

Posted by Doug Fox at 8:45 AM - Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

October 1, 2007

Dancing for a Better World and Commissioning Dance in New Ways

There are three important trends that I think the dance community should be avidly following and embracing:

1) TV dance shows are big hits.

2) Internet-based cause marketing and fund raising are growing by leaps and bounds.

3) Online video consumption continues to grow.

The importance of these developments is that choreographers and dancers now have new ways that they can support worthwhile causes and be commissioned to create new dances. Plus, additional revenue streams can be created for dancers while pursuing either of these two paths.

Let's first take a quick look at these three trends:

First, despite some grumblings in the concert dance community (read compelling posts on Foot In Mouth), the success of Dancing with the Stars and So You Think You Can Dance, represents a great development for everybody involved in dance. More people are excited about dance and energized by movement - that's an excellent start. As Clare Byrne said to me last Friday, these TV shows could potentially end-up having an impact on the concert dance community.

Second, Internet-based fundraising is one of the hottest trends out there. Read Wall Street Journal article by Rachel Emma Silverman, "A New Generation Reinvents Philanthropy: Blogs, Social-Networking Sites Give 20-Somethings a Means To Push, Fund Favorite Causes." There are many software applications and a range of strategies that not-for-profits can implement online to seek both small and large donations. On the popular social networking site Facebook, you can see a list (once you register) of different causes and the amounts of money that they have raised.

Third, Internet video continues its stellar rise to the point where it's now a mainstay of how web users expect to follow their favorite interests and past times. Plus, video is becoming part of fundraising campaigns as well. Take a look at YouTube's new "Broadcast Your Cause," which lets not-for-profits use this popular video service to seek donations from viewers. [via TVover.net and Watching TV Online].

New Avenues for Dance-Makers

These three trends lead to two major opportunities for choreographers and dancers:

Fusing movement with causes:

At any given time, choreographers around the world are making dances that deal with every topic and issue imaginable. Works are being created that either in a concrete or abstract form deal with global warming, human rights, health care and many other pressing issues of our time.

So why shouldn't these advocacy groups and dancers partner - online and offline - to expand and enhance their efforts on behalf of social justice and other initiatives?

If millions of TV viewers are engaged with dance, they are more open than ever to dance as a medium of communication and emotional connection. So if advocacy groups start featuring dancers in their online videos and in-person fundraising efforts, they are likely to connect with their audiences in new and compelling ways. Plus, from the position of dancers, they now have the opportunity to dance about what is meaningful to them, reach larger audiences and maybe benefit financially in some way from their involvement. For example, some fundraising efforts may serve both to raise money for a particular cause as well as to provide financial support for the participating artists.

New approaches to commissioning dance:

There is also a more commercial ramification to the trends I highlighted at the beginning of this post.

If more people are watching dance on TV and on the Internet and thus increasingly value movement as an important form of engagement and communication, why wouldn't more corporations, trade groups and associations commission dance works that deal with specific themes and ideas that are important for their companies and organizations? I realize that this may be a bit far-fetched in some instances, but I think it's worth considering.

Many meeting and conference organizers invest considerable financial resources in booking speakers and entertainment for their events. Why shouldn't they commission, instead, dance pieces that will help their audiences think about, grapple with and discuss pressing issues that need to be addressed? Wouldn't the kinesthetic energy of a performance open new avenues for viewers to approach and respond to these topics?

I don't know if a gathering of tax attorneys can be encouraged to commission a dance performance to help them explore the ramifications of creating tax shelters for their richest clients, but I'd wager that there are thousands of other groups who might be amenable to the idea.

Posted by Doug Fox at 8:45 AM - Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

September 7, 2007

The Problem with Most Dance and Presenter Websites

One of the main objectives of dance and presenter (theaters/venues/festivals) websites is to sell tickets for upcoming performances and help people get to your venue.

Simple enough. The problem is that most of these websites make fundamental tasks too difficult or cumbersome for dance-goers.

I often go to a website to find out the performance date and time, the address of the venue and how to get there.

But there are usually obstacles in my way that make it a hassle to find these really basic pieces of information. Some websites:

1. Start-off with cumbersome Flash animations that take time to load and bypass.


2. Don't give me an obvious link that I can click on to get date/time and directions.


3. Include address information in graphics, which makes it difficult to print and impossible to cut and paste into my calendar and/or mapping software.


4. Force me to open-up a PDF file to get this information.


5. Put pieces of this information on different pages, which slows me down.


6. Combine dates and times for multiple performances so you're not sure which time a performance starts on the day you are going.


7. Don't include the full address - including city, state and zip code, which makes it difficult to find a venue on a map.


8. Include impossible to decipher maps that only make sense to the people who already know where the venue is. And,


9. Don't embed a Google Map or provide a link to a Google map.

It's nice to have a visually appealing website. But in the end, people visit your site to find the information they want quickly and hassle free. If you create obstacles, you'll just annoy your audiences.

I'd recommend doing a quick audit of your website. Is it really clear what the dates and times of each performance are? Can people who don't know where you're located actually figure out where you're located and how to get there?

Posted by Doug Fox at 11:27 AM - Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

Creating and Promoting City-Wide Dance Calendars

In a post on The Evil Imp blog, Article19 writes that while dance performances obviously draw much smaller audiences than the movie industry, there's still much that presenting and dance organizations can learn from how films are promoted.

The movie studios spend a large percentage of their budgets on marketing, they do joint-promotional campaigns with food companies and game makers and there is considerable cross-promotion of films from rival studios. (Actually, I'm not sure about this last point - I think that movie chains run trailers of films that the studios pay to have promoted. So you'll end-up seeing promotions for films from different studios).

In any case, Article19 sets the stage for asking why presenters and dance companies don't follow in the footsteps of the film industry:

1. Why don't dance companies promote each others shows on their websites?

2. Why don't theatres run video trailers, prior to dance performances promoting other dance performances in the same theatre or nearby venues?

3. Why don't NDA's [National dance agencies in England that provide professional support services to dancers] carry a synchronised listing of all dance performances on their websites for the whole country?

4. Why don't big, successful companies promote the shows of smaller, new companies?

These are all important questions to consider because much can be done without significant financial resources to promote dance more effectively. This Article19 post points out that even though they've set-up a free listing services on Upcoming for dance companies to promote their performances, nobody has taken advantage of it.

I just talked with Neil Nisbet of Article19 via Skype a few minutes ago because I didn't know what NDA stood for. During our conversation, he mentioned that Article19 has also been experimenting with Twitter for updates to dance auditions. You can go to their auditions page and you'll see a link for Twitter that you can follow to sign-up to receive audition updates by SMS. While it's an interesting idea that may prove to be worthwhile, at this point there are only 4 subscribers - myself included. So either there is very limited interest or people don't know about this offering.

Using Free Internet Marketing Services for NYC Dance Community

I think it would be incredibly helpful if presenters and dance companies in NYC used popular event listing services such as Upcoming and Eventful to list their performances. These are very flexible listing applications that let users add your events to their own calendars, provide RSS feeds, and let you embed listings in websites and blogs.

But I think the trick to ensuring that free services like this work is making sure that they are comprehensive and updated on a regular basis.

Personally, I'd like such an offering because it would save me a lot of time, energy and hassle. It takes me too long to find all the dance performances and related events in NYC. I just want to go to a single location and find everything that I want.

I've written about this topic before, primarily with a focus on Washington, DC:

- Should You Use Upcoming and Eventful to Promote Your Dance Performances?

- Adding Upcoming Event Badge to Your Blog or Site

- Promote Dance Performances with Google Calendar

Posted by Doug Fox at 6:38 AM - Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

September 6, 2007

Email and Text Messaging Are Different Types of Communication Tools

In "Text Messaging VS E-mail Marketing," Gene Carr, founder and president of Patron Technology, argues that "text messaging is a transitional technology" and will be replaced by email. [via Danciti]

I think that Carr's position is incorrect on most counts.

First, email and text messaging (SMS) are two different forms of communication. For me, text messaging is great for sending and receiving short messages from people I already know. It answers basic questions about where are you now, what are you doing and related topics that can be dealt with in a sentence or two. Even though I can easily send and receive email from my Sprint phone, text messaging is still a faster form of communications in many situations.

Second, the type of information that I want to receive via SMS is different than what I want to receive via email. For example, I like receiving a weekly lists of dance performances via email--either from DanceMetro/DC or Dance/NYC. But I sure don't want to receive a long list of performances via text messaging, actually it's not possible. What I would like via text messaging are changes in scheduling and other details for specific dance performances that I am likely to attend or will attend.

So let's turn to Carr's points:

1) "The lines between e-mail and text messaging will blur."

Yes, you can send email messages and text messages from the same application. But users of each of these tools have different expectations of how they want to use them and the types of information they wish to receive. In addition to the points I made above, text messaging is a two-way communications tool (among people); email, especially in the case of email marketing, is a broadcast tool and primarily meant for one-way marketing that is intended to inspire a specific response or action.

2) "Text messaging is just text: Text messaging is limited - you can only send 160 characters (not words), and it's plain text. You can't send a complex message, or an attachment, or a picture or video. And, there's no formatting. Text messages can't be easily stored, forwarded or archived."

Limited functionality does not by definition equate with being useless or inferior. The beauty of text messaging is its limitations. Nobody wants to attach a video to a text message. That's not its purpose.

3) "Text Messaging Merely Got There First: If getting e-mail on your phone was really what everyone wanted in the first place, the reason it didn't happen was that the first generation of cell phones couldn't support the technology infrastructure needed."

I don't agree with this statement. For whatever reason text messaging was created, it still makes sense even with email access on the same device. SMS is for instant communications and email is often for non-instantaneous communications. I don't want to have to go through all of my emails on my phone to communicate with somebody via SMS. Maybe there's an elegant way to combine the two on the receiving end into a single application but this doesn't seem like a high priority to me.

4) "The price of text messaging is about $.08 to $.10 per message, to send AND the same cost to receive a reply. In a world in which most of our clients pay half to one tenth that rate to send an e-mail and pay nothing to get a response from a consumer, I think it's a marketing method with a lot sizzle, but not a lot of beef."

As I wrote above, different types of communications are optimal for email and SMS. So if you do let your clients receive notices by text messaging, you'll be sending different types of information. For example, you can send changes in schedules via SMS, as I mentioned above, and you can also send short special offers to people who want to receive them.

Whether SMS messages are more expensive or not, that is not the main issue. If somebody wants to receive a message from you as a SMS message, it means that they have a very high interest in what you offer and they are very likely to attend your performance or other arts event. So if it costs an extra 10 cents to get them to buy a ticket, it is worth it because your conversion rate will be very high.

But there are also ways to send free SMS messages. If you put your event calendar on Google Calendar, anybody can sign-up for text message notification. So if a dancegoer wants to track one of your upcoming performances, they can simply subscribe to it and indicate how they would like to be notified. Here's a screen shot from Google Calendar where you set your event reminder preferences:

Posted by Doug Fox at 8:31 AM - Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

August 14, 2007

How Do I Get There?

If there is one thing that really bugs me about many websites that promote dance performances and related programs is not being able to figure out where the venue is located.

It would seem like the easiest thing in the world for an organization (theater, festival, studio, dance company, etc.) to include complete address information, a map or a map link, and written directions on their website. But often I'm completely baffled by the address information that is provided and I have to take too many steps to figure out how to get there.

So here are my suggestions about providing website visitors with the information they need to get to a venue:

Address Information

The address for the venue should be written-out in its entirety:

full venue name (theater/studio and building name as well if necessary)
complete street address or names of streets at intersection
city, state and zip code

I've been to websites for festivals that don't even tell you in what town they are located in - so I can't even begin to figure out how to get there.

It is very important that the zip code is included. Many people, including myself, go to Google Maps and search for a location. Google Maps can get confused if you do not have a zip code.

Also, you do not want to embed the venue address in a graphic--this doesn't happen too often--because you can't then cut and paste the address for use in Google Maps or another application.

Finally, if the venue is on a campus or other setting with a lot of buildings, you should specify the full name of the building where the performance will take place. And this name should correspond to the name given to this building on any maps and diagrams:

"The performance will take place at the ABC theater in the DEF building, which is behind the XYZ building. See below diagram for location of DEF building."

Maps and Diagrams

Maybe it's me, but I'm always confused by the diagrams and maps that venues include about where theaters are located--this is especially the case with campuses and outdoor venues in parks and recreation areas.

The diagrams are often too small, I can't find the building/theater I'm looking for and I can't figure out where the venue is in the context of a city or town. For some reason the creators of these diagrams think it's sufficient to highlight the nearby streets, whose location I don't know in the first place, and not even indicate which way is north.

Even worse, I'm forced to open up a PDF file with diagrams, which is not something I want to waste my time with.

So my recommendation is to always include a link to Google Maps. This way visitors to your website will never be confused and they can see both a detailed view of your location as well as see where it's located within a larger geographic area.

To create a Google Map link, enter the address for your venue and then click on "Link to this page" toward the top right of the page. Then copy the link that is displayed in a pop-up box.

Even better, Google is about to make it easy to embed maps directly into your website--see story in Mashable. It has been possible for a while to embed Google maps like I did for this customized Washington, DC map of performance venues. But this embedding process is complicated.

Whether you link to or embed a map, you want to ensure that the marker that indicates the location of your venue is in the right place. In some cases, you might enter an address and Google will put the marker a block away from the actual location. If your venue is on a corner, the solution is easy to fix. In the address search engine for Google Maps, replace the street address with the names of the two streets at the intersection (e.g., Main street and Maple street).

Directions

Most websites do a decent job of providing written directions to a venue. The best approach is to write different sets of directions based upon the locations that people are likely to come from.

In addition to driving instructions, it's also important to provide public transportation details.

Printing and Reading

Addresses, maps and written directions should be easy to read and print. All of the necessary information should be on one or two easy-to-read pages that can be printed without any of the information being cut-off.

I thought about writing this post about how I get annoyed with venue maps and directions after reading Ilana's post on DCDanceBlog about her interest in finding good dance websites with accessible contact information.

Posted by Doug Fox at 6:49 AM - Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

August 6, 2007

Five Strategies for Engaging New Dance Audiences

In Friday's post I wrote about how to produce content for your blog that will engage new dance audiences.

In this post I'll write about how to market dance blogs to both groups that are "pre-conditioned" to find dance compelling if given the right access point as well as more difficult to reach audiences.

Since Danciti expressed their objection so effectively and concisely to my premise that dance blogs can be used to reach new audiences, I'm also writing this post to refute their argument. Danciti writes:

I don't think blogs reach beyond the super dedicated dance devotee. You read blogs about things that you already have a strong interest in rather than stumbling across a blog and finding a new interest in dance. Blogs aren't a very good entry point because they are written for such a niche audience. It's hard to get interested in a blog that is about the subtleties of dance if you're not already highly interested in dance.

Marketing Strategies

Here's a brief overview of five online marketing strategies you can pursue to build new audiences for your dance blog:

1) Cross-marketing partnerships with artists and arts organizations: The best place to reach "pre-conditioned" audiences (those who go to galleries/museums, theater-goers, opera lovers, etc.) online is by getting as much exposure as possible for dance on the websites (and other Internet initiatives) of these non-dance artists and organizations. Everybody benefits from this reciprocal marketing: Dancers and the artists/organizations with whom they partner both build more traffic and exposure while nobody losses their audience in the process.

2) Targeted distribution of topic-specific dance content: Dance performances deal with hundreds of different topics - health/medical issues, spirituality and healing, science and technology, environment and sustainability, war and violence and many other issues. For just about any theme or topic you can imagine for a dance work, there are hundreds or thousands of websites that deal with this topic and have audiences that are highly engaged with this issue. By making your dance material available to these websites, especially in the form of video content, you can engage these targeted audiences directly with your dance material, which many will find quite poignant. And this can be done regardless of whether or not these audiences have any exposure to dance whatsoever.

3) Partnerships between dancers and presenters: As more dancers embrace blogging, there will be new opportunities for theaters, performing arts venues, festivals and touring organizers to promote performances by highlighting a dancer's/dance company's blogging activities. Some presenters receive large-scale website traffic that goes well beyond traditional dance audiences.

4) Dance education for newcomers: As things stand today, there is no online video material that is designed to help new dance audiences learn how to enjoy and appreciate dance. Yes, there are some dance instructional videos. But I have never seen a single online video that was intended to provide insight and analysis so that people with no dance background could actually learn about an upcoming performance. When this gap is filled, I believe that it will be easier to cultivate new dance audiences.

5) Join with charities and causes that are important to you: This suggestion in related to item two above. The theme of your work may address issues and ideas that are important to local charitable organizations. Why not partner with these organizations both online and off-line? You can perform at, say, a fundraiser and also make your dance video content available for the organization's website. In return, you get to support a cause that is important to you and to connect with an audience that comes to your work because of a commitment to an idea, hope or initiative not directly through movement.

Implementing Your Strategy

The above strategies represent a handful of the many different online approaches that can be pursued to grow your connections with non-traditional dance audiences. But none of these approaches, I believe, will be very successful unless considerable thought is devoted to the types of content you produce (see Friday's post with suggestions of questions to address in your blog).

If you produce a blog within the framework described by Danciti--an insider's blog by and for dancers only (or dance devotees)--then I don't think it's realistic to pursue the above strategies. But if you want to broaden the scope and purpose of your blog (or create a new blog along these lines), then I believe you can reach much larger audiences by implementing a number of the above outreach initiatives.

Posted by Doug Fox at 8:55 AM - Permalink | Comments (10) | TrackBacks (0)

July 26, 2007

Should You Sell Videos of Your Dance Performances with a Second Audio Track for Commentary?

Tuesday night I saw Doug Varone and Dancers at Wolf Trap outside of Washington, DC.

It was great to finally see Doug Varone's company and I especially enjoyed Lux, which premiered last October at the Joyce Theater in New York City.

But every time after seeing a work I enjoy, I have the same reaction. I want to see it performed again - immediately. Or at least, I'd like a high-quality DVD version to watch at home. Even better, I would like the DVD to have a dual audiotrack. The first track would be for the music and the second audio track would be for commentary from the artists themselves or dance experts. That way I could watch the dance with the musical score, for Lux that would be Philip Glass' The Light, or watch the dance while listening to artist or expert analysis -- maybe the commentators could add a John Madden-type Telestrator for graphic overlays.

The Benefits of Dual-Audio Dance DVDs

From my standpoint, a DVD with the music and commentary would blow me away. If I could watch the entire Lux performance multiple times and hear Doug Varone talk about this piece for its entire length - maybe 15 minutes or so - it would give me so much helpful background in terms of thinking about his work and understanding how he approaches the creative process.

There really is nothing comparable to such an offering. It is possible that I could attend an after-performance talk, which would probably be fun and interesting. But it still is not the same as having a vocal guide describe what you're looking at while you're watching a recorded version of the actual dance.

Such a tool would be invaluable to dance newcomers who don't have a framework for thinking about or responding to dance. And it would be equally helpful, maybe more so, to people who never even go to performances because dance strikes them as an alien, inaccessible art form.

On top of these benefits, I think that there is money to be made for dancers and dance companies who produce these videos, whether they are distributed in DVD format or for are sold via the Internet.

Obstacles

But there are big challenges to launching such a project:

Licensing and Contractual Arrangements

Once dancers start selling digital dance content, a host of legal issues have to be dealt with to avoid problems down the road. First, the music has to be licensed so it can be included in the recorded video of the dance performance. And music rights must be obtained for both DVDs and online distribution. The use of royalty-free music would significantly reduce these costs.

Also, all parties to this creative process have to sign agreements or waivers of some type. Dancers, costume designers, lighting designers, set designers and even the venue might have to sign-off on this project. (When I was at the the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center, I couldn't even watch some dance videos because I first needed written authorization from the venue where the works were performed - a real hassle, but a good illustration of the number of parties that can have a potential legal interest in an artistic project.)

Describing One's Own Work

Among choreographers and dancers there seems to be a lot of resistance or lack of interest in describing one's own work. I think many dancers take the understandable position that the dance should speak for itself. Last year I was at a performance of Liz Lerman Dance Exchange's Small Dances about Big Ideas at DNA in New York City. After the performance, dance company members talked about the work with the audience. One guy in the audience was really adamant that Liz Lerman describe what the piece was all about. Liz refused and asked the audience member to share his reaction to the work. In the context, a post-performance talk, I think many performers would have responded the same way that Liz did. They just danced. Why should they have to explain what they did?

But in other contexts, I don't think that a reluctance to describe one's work benefits dancers and choreographers. In the end, whether you explain your work in a detailed manner or not others will do it for you. Dance writers and critics will assess your work, and people who see a performance will discuss your dance with their friends. So why be at the mercy of other people's interpretations when you can set the framework for how the discussion proceeds? And what better way to share your thoughts about your own work than on a dual audiotrack of a performance video?

Video Production and Technology Know-How

In order to produce a dance DVD with a dual audiotrack, many steps have to be taken that require specialized expertize.

A good quality video has to be shot of a performance using one or more cameras. Lighting has to be optimized for the video shoot or the resulting video could easily be terrible. The video has to be edited and then prepared for DVD and/or Internet distribution.

A separate high-quality audio track has to be recorded by the choreographer and/or dancers, or independent commentators.

For Internet distribution and sales of DVDs and downloadable videos, an e-commerce system has to be implemented along with a fulfillment process. Plus, a marketing campaign has to be developed and launched.

Costs

The folks at Article19 always say I should have more specifics when it comes to issues like costs. But I don't at this point without doing research for a specific project. But as with any other endeavor, you can spend a lot of money or, alternatively, take a guerrilla-budgeting/marketing approach.

If you collaborate with a group of artists who want to see such a project through to fruition. And among those artists are musicians who write and play their own music, you can minimize or reduce to almost nothing many of your costs. You can shoot a performance with a single camera and thus simplify the editing process, and turning-out basic DVDs is pretty straightforward these days. Then you need to take advantage of low-cost distribution approaches for selling your dual-audio track dance video performances.

Hmmm....

Well, upon reflection, that's a lot of work.

But the Internet is huge. If you sell your videos in downloadable format - put aside the DVDs for now, the numbers can easily add up. If your two-video package (for downloads you have to sell two videos as single unit - one video has music and the other has commentary) sells for $2.00, how many copies do you have to sell before you make a profit? If you sold 5,000, you'd generate $10,000.

The one element that I believe is often overlooked is the sheer size of the online audience. If part of your overall marketing strategy involves constant efforts to grow as large an audience as possible for your performances and other offerings, the economics are dramatically reshaped. Yes, it's true that in a small black box studio that only so many seats can be sold for any given performance, which means that there is a concrete cap on total box office sales. On the Internet there are no caps. Your just replicating digital content that can be sold again and again and again.

Posted by Doug Fox at 12:03 PM - Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

July 25, 2007

Multimedia Press Kits for the Internet Age

Eva Yaa Asantewaa and I are about to post another audio interview on the Great Dance Podcast blog.

As you can see in the post that includes an audio interview that Eva did with Japan Society Artistic Director Yoko Shioya, we included multimedia materials - pictures and videos - highlighting some of the upcoming performances for their fall 2007 season.

If it were not for the excellent media kit provided by the Japan Society, these pictures and videos would probably not have been included. Eva and I worked with two public relations specialists on this project: Shannon Jowett of Japan Society and Meg Own of The Karpel Group.

Media Kit Contents

In addition to the printed press releases, the media kit included a CD-ROM with a large gallery of high-resolution pictures of dancers and dance companies who will be performing as part of the Japan Society's Fall 2007 Performing Arts Season. In addition to the pictures, a master Microsoft Word document included thumbnail images of all the photos along with all of the important information for each photo - name of performer, name of photographer and other details.

So it was easy for me to grab the pictures I wanted, downgrade the resolution for the web, and copy and paste the captions for each photo.

A DVD included video clips that were shown during the press conference we attended. I ripped a couple of the videos from this DVD, converted the files to Flash format and uploaded them to the web.

From my standpoint, the Japan Society's media kit was very helpful and thorough. In particular this media kit was web-publishing friendly in its inclusion of digital pictures and video clips.

Putting Together Multimedia Press Kits

I would like to encourage all PR people who promote dance to think about how your media materials can be used by others outside of the traditional print press. And to consider how you can prepare materials in a way that it will make it relatively easy for online writers to add your pictures and videos to their stories.

Last year I wrote a post about social media press releases that addresses the issue of how multimedia materials can be offered to writers in new ways. I'll expand on this post soon and offer specific suggestions on how dance photos, videos and audio programs can be packaged and distributed via the Internet.

If you know of examples of web-friendly media kits for dance, please share.

Posted by Doug Fox at 9:22 AM - Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)