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Tim E
Forum Master
Joined: 24 Apr 2007
Posts: 76
Location: Berkeley, California
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 Posted: Thu Jun 28, 2007 12:27 pm Post subject: Producing Events: What Web Savvy Audience Members Want |
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Last year I began to notice that various San Francisco performing arts venues, such as stand-up comedy clubs and local theatre companies, including those featuring solo storytellers, began offering promotions via a web site called GoldStarEvents.com.
At first I resisted the offers for discounted tickets (often half off), because GoldStarEvents required you to sign up and get a weekly email.
Eventually, I signed up... and discovered the weekly email not only sent me info grouped by zip code and genre (music, theatre, comedy... were my picks, but you can also choose sports, jazz, film, etc.) but were not offering discounts from many of the larger performing arts venues, including my local Tony-award winning regional theatre repertory house and the University's acclaimed international performing arts series.
GoldStar operates in Boston, Chicago, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, New York, San Diego, San Francisco and Washington.
Recently, the Wall Street Journal did an article on how successfully GoldStar is at:
1) attracting new audience members
2) increasing the diversity of audiences
3) reaching audience members under 40*
*I notice in my area, Web savvy seniors are using the service, to get a better discount that the senior pricing for these events.
Wall Street Journal article on GoldStarEvents here
(I note with interest that the Oak Park Theatre Festival in Chicago is using GoldStarEvents to sell tickets to their summer offerings, including to storyteller Megan Wells' performance of the Firebird.)
Two highlights from the article about these urban audience members:
1) they want to spend money on the arts, but they want it to be as easy as buying a ticket to the movies.
2) they trust user reviews online more than the local press coverage
Two questions for you, storytelling event planners (whether you run a festival, a swap, or a show at the library):
1) what is easier for your audience? to buy a ticket to the movies, or to your event?
(And which is more expensive?)
2) given that the local media rarely covers storytelling events, let alone REVIEW them, do you encourage your audience members to post their opinions online? Do you give them a means to do so?
(And I'll answer for myself first... since the Festival I work on has been offering online tickets since 2000...
1-- our online ticketing process is too cumbersome. Much easier to go to the movies. Cheaper, too.
2-- No, and no.
Hmmmm. |
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Rachel Hedman
Joined: 15 Aug 2007
Posts: 1
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| Posted: Wed Aug 15, 2007 6:53 pm Post subject: Online Tickets/Reviews Needed |
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Dear Tim:
Most likely you have read the March/April 2004 of the Storytelling Magazine has an article "Selling Tickets Online" by Odds Bodkin.
More and more storytelling events are realizing that they must have a professionally-looking website to maintain and build their audiences. With the website already up, an online ticket sales and place for audience reviews makes sense.
Yet, I have noticed that just because an event has a website does not mean that it is updated quickly. One of the largest festivals in the nation is the Timpanogos Storytelling Festival in Orem, UT. The attendance can sometimes rival the attendance at the National Storytelling Festival. Even with this prestige, Timpanogos is awfully slow to update its website. Only a week ago did it list the regional tellers (about two weeks before the event). The featured tellers have been listed for a couple weeks complete with pictures and links, though for a long time only names were listed.
When I attempted to buy my tickets online, it was a mess and I had to call to make sure everything was fine--which it wasn't.
For serious storytelling events, there should be a hired website tech guy. Things need to be smooth and things needs to be updated.
The Timpanogos Storytelling Festival does have an area on their site called "Reviews". It is not in blog format so it is difficult to be listed.
The National Storytelling Festival has online tickets available though no where do I see "Reviews".
If we truly want to merge storytelling audiences with theatre audiences, then the reviews are necessary. Active reviews--ones given in 2007 rather than years in the past--can only help storytelling be more visible to our not-yet-converted-to-storytelling friends.
Until we tell again,
Rachel Hedman |
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Tim E
Forum Master
Joined: 24 Apr 2007
Posts: 76
Location: Berkeley, California
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| Posted: Thu Aug 16, 2007 3:36 pm Post subject: |
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Rachel--
I wrote to Odd Bodkins immediately after his article on the headaches and challenges of building a box office into his Web site. The reason: there are third party vendors who will do this for you. And at the Bay Area Storytelling Festival, we had been doing it for 4 years with no tech problems (the only hitch was our own fault: not giving the vendor our correct address to send checks to!).
There are many low-cost to no-cost ticketing options available for event producers (vendors add a ticket surcharge, just like Ticketmaster or other box offices). We never worried about "blending" the box office into our own Web site, because, well, the online ticketing site looked more professional than our own, and frankly, appeared more trustworthy.
The issue of updating a Web site quickly is a salient one. Big Fringe Festivals, with dozens of venues and performers, of course need a dedicated tech person. As you say, serious storytelling events need professional web sites.
If a storytelling event does not have a dedicated techie (and, in this mostly all-volunteer community, that's probably the case), then planning needs to accomodate that. I've noticed some events using blogs and MySpace pages which not only allow quick updates without requiring a knowledge of programming code but let readers add comments.
Savvy event planners also link to reviews that they "discover" on external blogs. In 2006, for the first time, via Google and Blogpulse I discovered several bloggers wrote about their trips to the National Storytelling Festival on their own personal blogs.
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Lain
Newbie
Joined: 20 Aug 2007
Posts: 10
Location: Atlanta
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| Posted: Tue Aug 21, 2007 3:50 pm Post subject: |
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While we don't offer online tickets (yet!), we do allow our audience to comment on just about everything we do, storytelling and otherwise.
Our main site houses our storyteller videos (and will soon house our storytelling podcasts), and our blog highlights these features from time to time so that our audience can give their input and become more emotionally invested in our storytellers and our business. While we don't have formal user reviews, many of our customers leave their thoughts by using the comments on our blog.
Interaction and blogging with your audience can almost only leave to positive changes (even if the reviews aren't so good!)...and as moderator you'd have the final word in what's appropriate and what's not.
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Tim E
Forum Master
Joined: 24 Apr 2007
Posts: 76
Location: Berkeley, California
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| Posted: Tue Aug 28, 2007 5:41 pm Post subject: |
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I just went to the Wren's Nest web site, and my jaw hit the floor.
Congratulations, Lane! I believe you are the first and only storytelling venue in the country to actually have video available of the very storytellers that your audience can see at your events!
I can't even find any storyteller's web site that includes video of any storytelling-- you know, the very product they are trying to market via their web site!
Wow! Well done!  |
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Lain
Newbie
Joined: 20 Aug 2007
Posts: 10
Location: Atlanta
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| Posted: Tue Aug 28, 2007 6:54 pm Post subject: |
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Hey thanks, Tim.
It seemed like a no-brainer. I don't think anyone is going to sit themselves or their kids in front of the computer as a replacement for a real, live storyteller, so I think it's valuable marketing to actually present the storytelling instead of just saying that you offer it. Plus, people will believe it when they see it, instead of assuming that you might be some crazy storyteller dude.
Also, I benefited from some fortuitous connections that let us film, edit, and distribute for free. By connections, I just mean my buddy from college is a video editor and one of our storytellers, who is a teacher, has a parent that's a professor of communications at Clark-Atlanta University.
Our podcasts are forthcoming (we've recorded one, with four more slated this month) and will be released, um, sometime soon I hope. I'll keep y'all posted and let you know if they're at all successful.
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healy
Forum Master
Joined: 01 May 2007
Posts: 34
Location: Michigan
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| Posted: Thu Aug 30, 2007 9:50 pm Post subject: What am I? chopped liver? |
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Hey Tim,
A few of us in the hinterland have video & audio stories on our sites. (though I'm embarassed to mention mine because its nowhere near the beauty of Wren's site and I haven't updated it in months & months.)
Maybe I need to post the videos on a more accessible page.
I love Wren's site. It's beautiful to look at, easy to navigate, enticing and tells me what I want to know. Things to aim for. Can you teach us old fogies how to do it? _________________ Yvonne Healy, storyteller
www.YHealy.com
810-225-2204 |
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Tim E
Forum Master
Joined: 24 Apr 2007
Posts: 76
Location: Berkeley, California
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| Posted: Fri Aug 31, 2007 3:55 pm Post subject: |
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Okay, here's how I'd do it:
1. Have your brother major in filmmaking.
2. Have him keep up to date with advances in digital editing and production.
3. Have him buy a digital camera, film you, and edit a video.
If you don't have a brother, or if he already went a got a degree in something else, say, law, or veterinary medicine, than I'm at a loss.
Although I just found this site, seems to be applicable:
http://makeinternettv.org/
Seems not to require a degree in filmmaking, although you might need a college student to do the tech stuff, if you don't have the inclination to do it yourself.
Maybe Lain has some more ideas. |
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Lain
Newbie
Joined: 20 Aug 2007
Posts: 10
Location: Atlanta
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| Posted: Mon Sep 03, 2007 9:11 am Post subject: |
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Even though Tim sounds like he's kidding around a little bit, I think that his is pretty helpful advice. The moral is: look around your community and see who you can get to do stuff for you on the cheap.
Assuming you're working on a budget, what I'd do is this--
1. Start a website (it can even be your current domain) with free blogging software (Blogger, Wordpress, or something similar. The Wren's Nest Blog uses Wordpress.). Whether you're a professional programmer or a storyteller without much internet experience, these programs make design clean, easy, and attractive without much effort.
2. Get a high school student to set this up for you. Most people think of blogs as constantly changing and updating--which they are--but they can also be static pages used to host your videos, biographical information, etc.
3. Have this same student upload your videos to youtube, google video, and teachertube. This is helpful because they'll host your video for you, and you don't take up your own internet space with your own videos. Then, your site links to their video site pretty seamlessly (a la the video on our site).
...all you'd have to do is pay a high school student, I don't know, like $100 and the rest is free. The guy who edited my videos is originally from Ann Arbor as a matter of fact, so that's proof that Michigan residents are indeed capable of doing this stuff for you.
As for the actual recording of the stories, college students are always looking to pad their resume or make a little extra money or get experience in the real world. It seems like your connections at the University of Michigan would allow you to come into contact with the right students there, the ones looking for experience in video and video editing. Otherwise there are approximately one billion college students in Michigan--someone's bound to be into video editing.
I'd bet they'd willing to bet they'd do it for free, in exchange for some advertising, a great letter of recommendation, or course credit.
Finally, you should use libsyn.com for hosting your audio. It's free, too. Hope this helps!
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Lain
Newbie
Joined: 20 Aug 2007
Posts: 10
Location: Atlanta
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| Posted: Wed Sep 12, 2007 9:42 pm Post subject: |
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Thought y'all would be interested in our first podcast--
http://wrensnest.libsyn.com/
This was definitely a new experience for me, and a lot of fun. I have no idea how successful it'll be, but we're giving it a shot anyway. Hopefully, pretty soon it'll be available on iTunes, too.
Also, Healy, to create this podcast, a friend of mine has some recording equipment and iLife (Garage Band) on his Apple computer. The music came with the program, the storytellers were recorded at the Wren's Nest, and the fancy sounding voice is that of a dude whose kid I taught how to swim. He'd done radio in college. We're kind of rag-tag, but I think it works. |
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MFrast
Joined: 16 May 2007
Posts: 8
Location: Paso Robles, California
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| Posted: Sun Sep 16, 2007 1:00 am Post subject: |
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I found a brand new YouTube channel full of storyteller videos. They are well-made, and feature pretty much nothing but stories. These are exemplars of what a good storytelling video can be like. These look professionally made (not some video camera in the back of a school auditorium).
Oh, and they are in Catalan or Spanish.
Check it out: http://youtube.com/user/narradores |
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Lain
Newbie
Joined: 20 Aug 2007
Posts: 10
Location: Atlanta
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| Posted: Tue Sep 18, 2007 10:39 am Post subject: |
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Pretty sweet, MFrast!
Now I just have to learn Spanish.
Either that, or set up an English-speaking youtube storytelling channel. Who's with me?
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healy
Forum Master
Joined: 01 May 2007
Posts: 34
Location: Michigan
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Tim E
Forum Master
Joined: 24 Apr 2007
Posts: 76
Location: Berkeley, California
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| Posted: Fri Sep 21, 2007 6:49 pm Post subject: |
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If only YouTube's interface and search was complete.
There is a YouTube channel for storytelling, you just can't find it, unless someone in the group invites you.
Consider this you're invitation:
http://www.youtube.com/group/oralstorytelling
It's not solely storytelling in English, but it's all storytelling.
Over one hundred videos! |
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Lain
Newbie
Joined: 20 Aug 2007
Posts: 10
Location: Atlanta
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| Posted: Tue Sep 25, 2007 5:52 pm Post subject: |
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Healy,
Looks like you've got quite a bit figured out already! Great work.
And oh what a cool storytelling channel. I knew there had to be something out there, and I was just missing it.
Perhaps I'll post the full Wren's Nest Rambler clips up there one of these days. Thanks for the invite, and nice link!
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