WHO SAYS WE CAN’T GET 500 LIKES ON OUR FACEBOOK PAGE IN A FORTNIGHT?

The Power of Social Networking

I’ve been puzzling a while about Social networking.  So, firstly – I’ll explain where we are, and then my thoughts on why we’re not quite where I want us to be…and how we might get there.  In the last month or so, after it stalled, I’ve been working really hard to encourage people to like our Facebook page… I’ve managed to persuade very nearly 200 people in that time to like the page.  Well, I want to get to 500 likes in a Fortnight.  Is it possible?  What can you do to help?

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Burnley-Youth-Theatre/172630009436137


Read on, Macduff. 

WHERE WE ARE NOW...

Social networking…

We know that social networking, and digital content are crucial to our success and our future development.

We have leapt forward exponentially as an organisation and are now active on many social networking sites, and are becoming more savvy about how to use these platforms can enhance the experience of the young people within the organisation, and how people can find out more about us and stay involved – in the conversation, in shaping the future, in having their say about what we’re doing now, and what we might do in the future.   

We can be found on Twitter @BurnleyYT – and if you’re on Twitter you can sign in and follow this blog easily enough.  We’re on Facebook – like us http://www.facebook.com/pages/Burnley-Youth-Theatre/172630009436137

or follow us on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/user/YouthTheatreBurnley?feature=mhee

Or go and take a look at our photos on Flickr

http://www.flickr.com/photos/56959443@N03/

If you know or have any ideas about the best way to develop social networking and the best ways of contacting you, let us know.  We’re all ears. 

Social Network Archive…

We are working our way through uploading our archive.  This is a difficult job!  Burnley Youth Theatre came into being in 1973 – that’s almost 40 years of photos, posters, films, press releases and so on and so forth.  But bit-by-bit, more of our archive goes up.  More recent, digital stuff is easier to share.  But a lot of photos have been scanned and are ready to go – but all of this is done in my spare time, pretty much so given that I’m quite busy this is sometimes the thing that gets squeezed out.   If you’ve got any photographs you want to share, or any memories, please go to our Facebook page and share this with us…

Connecting other groups…

Ollie Briggs (who is fab and who I connected with on Twitter) is working with us to develop an Internet tool so that we can have an online conversation with other groups about the content of pieces and maybe in the future an online festival of work!   This will be purpose built and will give a forum to extend the conversation of in this case, a devising process.  The site will be limited to those involved at the moment (groups from Bury and Darwen are working with us on this) so that it’s a closed conversation.   This is a really exciting development, and I think has untold potential within the youth theatre as a whole, and in developing us as a hub of youth theatre practice. If you’d like to take part in this conversation let us know… In the meantime, we’re pleased to hear from all of our friends and chatting to them about possibilities… get in touch…

Digital Content…

We are ambitious about developing content.  This year, in Edinburgh, our young people returned enthused by the possibilities of projection and we will be using projection within our Christmas show for the first time this year.  This is a particularly exciting development – and we’re pleased to be working with the genius that is Anthony Briggs (no relation to Ollie, although being called Briggs clearly helps!) to support it happening.  

We know that film, projection, and digital stuff is easy to generate, and we’re brave enough to share rehearsals and raw content on our You Tube.  There’s some very edited material there, but also improvisations from the Rep Company, and footage from our recent trip to Shakespeare’s Globe…

Today at a fundraising event we were using camera, flip camera and a hd video camera... And this is a regular thing for us...

WHERE I WANT US TO BE (and what you can do about it)

So, here’s what I really want to talk about.  We are open minded about possibilities through content and through sharing our ideas, thoughts, and in trying to advertise what is happening at the youth theatre at any given time.   But I am acutely conscious that we are not making full use of the networks open to us.   And it has taken me a really long time to work out why…

People don’t always use their social networking pages for very much at all.  Why should they? They use them to connect with their buddies, to check up on family – as a means of chatting to school friends (and sometimes arguing) or whatever, as a means of belonging to a particular social group.  My experience this year has suggested that people generally don’t see their social network as more than a single collection of people. Their people. I think, and I could be wrong, that for a lot of people – and particularly young people, social networking is about reaching out and belonging.  It’s not about the network (s) in and of itself.  It’s not about the possibility of that network (or indeed the networks of each of their 130 friends.) 

Without trying to sound like some young and funky thing, anyone who knows me knows that I am a massive fan of social networking tools, and an equally massive fan of gadgets. I was among the first wave of iPhone users (still the best design in my view), and am, and have always been, interested in the power of the network. Networks can change the world.  Long before social networking pages on the Net, campaigns operated a ‘phone tree’ to generate a quick call to action.  Each person on the list might ring an additional two people, and they might ring two and then 100 people would be standing in a demonstration stopping something terrible happening… that’s how social networks worked then and that’s when they worked effectively. And that’s the principle I am interested in looking at now.

Networks are everything; the means by which we extend, expand and grow – how we connect to others and how they connect to us.  Long before the social networking tool was created, networks existed.  Networks are made of people or places that are tied together by one (or a number) of ‘interdependencies’ (Wiki, accessed 16^th October 2011) – and each of us has many: family, friends, school, interests, work, beliefs, or knowledge, for example.

Without trying to sound exploitative, I make use of my Facebook network (I have 2, a work and a personal one).  75 of my Facebook friends like BYT’s Facebook page. This is about a 5^th of my friends, and they do it because I ask them to.  I am convinced of the value of them knowing about what we are doing EVEN if they live miles away and are never likely to come to the youth theatre. Why?  Because people will then know about what we are doing, and about who we are and maybe reconsider youth theatre.

An average Facebook user has 130 friends – if all the young people, ex-participants, workers, volunteers and interested others who currently 'like' us and that are already connected to us asked a 5^th of their friends to like our Facebook page 9,984 (based on 384 currently liking the page) would immediately like us.   This means that almost 10,000 people would know about the professional shows that we have on at BYT, for example or learn about projects or access other information about us.  Why is this important?  Even if no one ever comes to the show, they see details of what we do and our profile is immediately raised.  So, why not ask your friends to like out page?  And then ask them again?  Offer them a link.  Make it easy for people to support us in this way.  Explain why it is important to you.  Explain why it is important to us.  The more people who know about us, connect with us, communicate with us, the better argument we can make to our supporters that we are what we say we are – a vibrant youth theatre serving a wide community.   And the more likely we are to be able to explain what we do to funding bodies.

And this is another thing.  If a 5^th of people like the Facebook page – that still leaves 104 (on average) that don’t.   What should we do about them?  Well, once a week maybe, you could share a story from BYT on your newsfeed.  If you did this, based on the average number of Facebook friends, an additional 40,144 people would see stories about us.  Can you see why it matters?  40,000 people hear about us, see that we’re a vibrant, busy organisation… and just think if they shared it – well you do the maths!   And if you simply see this as advertising exercise – it’s colossally powerful and saves us huge amounts of money.  If we printed 40,000 leaflets this would cost £500 for each set.  If stories were shared as described every week we would actually be benefitting from about £26,000 a year of free advertising!  It’s amazing!

This would be more than just extraordinary advertising for us.   This would be an extraordinary raising of our profile.  This would mean that people would find out about us who might never have known about us.  It means that we can really start being what we are charged with – a hub of youth theatre activity, a small venue catering for small and medium sized touring shows, a really high profile arts company with an effective socially networking process.

This is just one thought about social networking.  I have many.  Just one way of looking at it…what do you think?  I'm not suggesting this is it's only use either...

We are keen to know your thoughts.  Whoever you are, wherever you are.  I sometimes think the social network thing is all smoke and mirrors, and I’d be better off buying Karen Barnes a mega-phone and sending her down town on a Saturday to tell people what we’re up to. (To be fair, she doesn’t actually need the mega-phone…)

Do social networking sites work?

You tell me.  Better still – show me.  Who says we can’t get to 500 likes on our Facebook page in a fortnight?