London Theatres and Social Media - Term Paper Example

Word count: 3809

Table of Contents

1. Executive Summary2

2. Introduction3

3. Literature Review5

4. The Role and Use of Social media7

5. Tools and Application of Social Media in Theatre8

6. Identifying solutions: Developing a strategy11

7. Impact of the solution13

8. Analysis of findings13

9. Recommendation13

London Assembly, 2013. Centre Stage Supporting small theatres in the capital. [PDF] Available at: <https://www.london.gov.uk/sites/default/files/gla_migrate_files_destination/Small%20theatres%20report%20FINAL.pdf > [Accessed 18 June 2016]18

• 1. Executive Summary

Social media has become an integral part of the promotional strategies used by companies, in order to gain a competitive advantage in any industry. Due to the cost effectiveness, most of the companies prefer to use social media these days. Also, the extensive reach of social media, makes it easier to get in touch with the target audience.

The performance arts industry has effectively incorporated social media into their promotional techniques. The theatre companies are maintaining an online presence in order to communicate with the audiences and get their feedbacks, which will further help them in improving their performances. Also, they use social media platform to provide relevant information regarding the shows, the tickets, expert ratings etc. to the regular theatre goers.

This paper will provide an overview of the techniques and tools of social media that various performance arts companies have used and further steps that can be taken to improve the performance of these companies in the industry.

• 2. Introduction

Social media can be considered the fastest media to reach point to the mass audience these days. With increasing number of Internet users and the growing competition in every field, the presence of social media has become a mandatory requirement for any kind of business to perform well in the market. It provides effective cost advantages, which can substantially reduce the promotional cost for the companies. Companies which tend not to follow the latest trends in technology are likely to lose from the competition of the industry. In particular, social media plays an immense role in increasing the awareness amongst the audience about performing arts. The Theatre industries also have also received the benefits of adopting social media into their promotional strategy, apart from the traditional methods of promotion.Promotional activities through social media help in keeping people aware about the upcoming events. Also, techniques such as selling tickets online, giving discounts and passes on shows through online contests etc. help in increasing customer base for the theatre companies (Bajpai et al., 2012). Podcasting and creating viral videos on platforms such as YouTube, not only gives the audience a prior idea about the show, but also helps in generating a wide viewership which helps in increasing the brand awareness of these companies. This also helps the companies in getting in touch with the investors and hunting for artists, who would be helping them with its future growth. The performing arts have grown to use social media as an effective promotional tool for reaching out to the potential customers and the target audience.

The cost effectiveness of social media helps the companies in gaining strong competitive advantages in the industry. They help in reaching out to a vast network of audience (Hajli, 2013; Thomsett-Scott, 2013). It helps in generating interest in the common people about the performing arts. Another use of social media is to improve the internal connectivity of the organisation. This not only helps in planning out the functions and effectively organising the events, but also helps in increasing clarity and transparency in the internal functions of the organisation.

London is known for its heritage, and the theatre is a part of that heritage. Known to the world for the home for more than 240 professional theatres in the city, it is considered to be the cultural hub of the world. Over the past years, the theatre industry has also evolved with the changing trend in the world and has adopted social media as one of the primary promotional tools. Although the effects of implementing strategy to incorporate social media in the promotional techniques has been remarkable, the industry still has to catch up with other industries in this regard.

In this paper, we will analyse the use and effect of social media on the Theatre Industry of London, and understand how it helps the industry in communicating with the stakeholders. Also, an analysis will be provided on devising strategies in order to deal with issues that the industry is facing.

• 3. Literature Review

The easy accessibility and low-priced nature of social media is making it even more valuable for organisations. According to Palmer and Koenig-Lewis, social media is an online platform, media and application that can be used to communicate, collaborate and share content with an individual or a group of individuals (Hanafizadeh et al., 2012). The use of social media is varied, but the underlying idea is the same, that is to communicate. According to Constantinides and Fountain, social media has the following components (Hanafizadeh et al., 2012):

• Social networking: These are applications that allow users to create their own websites, which are accessible to others and can be used for the exchange of contents.
• Forums: These are websites that allow interchange of ideas amongst a group of people usually around a common interest.
• Blogs: Online journals often combined with audio and video podcasts, allow people to share their ideas about things to people.
• Content communities: This refers to the websites that organise and share particular types of content.
• Content aggregators: These are applications that allow the users to fully customize the content of a website they wish to access.

The theatre companies of London, although at a slow pace, have started using social media as one of the most effective promotional platform. Companies such as Gielgud Theatre, Prince Edward Theatre , Royal Court Theatre etc. are big names in the theatre industry of London, which have successfully maintained their presence in social media. Maintaining their presence in Blogs and Forums as well, apart from social networks, these companies have successfully promoted themselves and stand as a few of the major competitors in the theatre industry of London. Another such examples is the Dominion Theatre, which maintains an online presence in the social media sites.

According to Miller, Fabian and Lin, the effectiveness of social media lies in its asynchronous, interactive, immediate and cost–effective nature (Miller et al., 2009).

This provides an opportunity to the theatre companies to adopt effective promotional techniques in a cost effective way, which will also help it interact ting with the audiences on a regular basis and get their feedbacks.

According to Boyd and Ellison, on bigger social networking websites like Facebook, people are not really looking forward to meet new people but to maintain contact with family and old friends (Hanafizadeh et al., 2012). The reach of social networking sites is huge. On Facebook, every user has an average of almost 130 friends. 100 million people use YouTube every week and around 800 million people visit YouTube every month (Hanafizadeh et al., 2012). In order to survive in the evolving industry, and the growing attraction of people towards technology, the theatre industry has adopt the social media trend to survive and sustain itself.

• 4. The Role and Use of Social media

In this competitive age social media presence has become one of the primary requirements for any business. Due to increase in internet usage over the past few years and extensive presence of people on the internet, it has turned into a basic requirement for any business to maintain its online presence. The field of performing arts is no exception. The following reasons justify the usage of social media in businesses these days (Wicks, 2015; Musical America Special Reports, 2012):

• Improvement in responsiveness: The process of receiving and providing feedback becomes much easier with the Internet. When it comes to performing arts, the audience is able to give feedback and suggestions to the company. Being in touch with the audience helps the companies in building relationship with them, and further in understanding the interests of people in performing arts.
• Effective marketing technique: The social media platform gives the company an opportunity to directly communicate with the customers, unlike the traditional methods of promotion. This laid back promotional technique generates more followers by using creative yet mellow promotional tactics. The big and famous theatres in London, such as Gielgud Theatre, Prince Edward Theatre , Royal Court Theatre etc, maintain a constant online presence by updating about their scheduled events not just on their own social media pages and websites, but through other blogs too. This helps them in creating a constant buzz in the industry about their events, which is another type of promotional technique.

• Dealing with the competition: With the increasing presence of companies on the Internet, it has become mandatory for them to increase their use of social media and keep up with the competition. When it comes to theatres, having a social media presence helps in effectively reaching out to the mass audience of different age groups.

• Searching for customers: Techniques such as using hash tags and keywords, helps to find people who will be interested in the performance and upcoming events of the theatre. This helps in identifying the potential customers.

• Cost effective: Social media requires a minimal investment and is a very effective way of marketing. This is particularly beneficial for small theatres and other performing arts, which are always in search of cost effective ways of promoting their business. This will not only help them in gaining audiences, but will also help these companies in competing with the bigger theatres.
• Communication and branding: Being in regular touch with the audience helps the theatre to get feedback from the customers about the performances, which will later help them to make improvements.
• 5. Tools and Application of Social Media in Theatre

Social media has become an essential part of communication in recent years. Companies are now using social media as one of the major methods to reach out to target customers. Nowadays, the performing arts sector is strongly influenced by the social media (Evans and McKee , 2010; Zarrella, 2009; Lonergan, 2015.).

Following are the most commonly used social media tools:

Social Networking: With the widespread usage of the internet, and the people becoming more tech savvy, social networking has established its place in the internet. Even the theatre industry has successfully incorporated social networking into their promotional techniques. Theatres such as Prince Edward, Royal Courts, Gielgud etc., which are the notable names when it comes to theatre industry, are have not only maintained their presence on common social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter etc., but on the not-so- common ones too. For example, Google plus,

Photo sharing: Sharing photographs not only brings a clear idea regarding the concept being shared, but also helps the message to be clearly expressed without leading to any sort of confusion. Social media platforms such as Flicker, Smug Mug, Picasa, Photo Swarm etc. store millions of photographs that people can simultaneously access at any given point of time. Instagram, one of the recent applications for photo sharing is very effective in reaching out to the mass audience of different age groups. Theatre companies such as Round About Theatre Company, Shakespeare’s Globe etc., maintain a regular presence on Instagram, which brings them in contact with millions of viewers everyday.

Audio: A message through audio is much more believable than text. It allows marketers to address the audience and deliver the message adding a personal touch to it, which helps the audience in connecting to the cause. Podcasting is a recent method of reaching out to it by means of audio recordings.

Video: Another means of effective communication when it comes to social media is video. The theatre companies of London use platforms such as YouTube and Facebook, to promote the teasers of their performances in order to gain the attention of the target audience.

Micro blogging: Micro blogging is essentially short form of texts that are used to convey messages to the mass audience on social media platforms like Twitter. Short and to the point communication is very effective in getting the attention of people.

Promotional techniques play an important role in increasing the number of audiences for the shows. Aggressive promotional techniques used by the bigger theatre companies lead to the smaller companies losing audience.

Obstacles and issues (Internal and external)

Though social media is considered to be one of the most effective means of promotional activities these days, there are various challenges that companies face in using social media for promotional purposes for example, what the company is going to achieve through online promotion, how much time and resources it is going to devote to the social media, what platforms will help it in reaching the target audience, what it wants to achieve through social media promotions. Despite having a strong promotional methodology, the theatres in London are facing the following challenges (London Assembly, 2013):

These problems are:

• Small theatres, such as Arts Theatre, Criterion Theatre, Fortune Theatre, Trafalgar Studios etc. have a comparatively moderate fame and do not attract enough audience to their venue and find it more difficult to attract the tourists. Their promotional techniques are not strong enough to reach out to the mass audience. Most of the audience are particularly fascinated with the bigger theatres and larger events.

• The regular audiences want more information about small theatres. They are equally fascinated with the small theatres, as they are with the bigger events. The smaller theatres also have very talented artists working with them and not having a good audience base demoralises them. The lack of enough resources for promotional activities is another reason for smaller theatres not being able to promote themselves on a wider platform and attract audience.

• The use of social media is rather slow in theatres; whereas, other industries are catching up fast with the changing technology. In spite of incorporating the social media as one of the means promotional methods, the theatrical industry is far behind as compared to other industries.
• 6. Identifying solutions: Developing a strategy

The above mentioned problems have become a major concern for the theatre industry. The communication gap between the audience and the industry, will not only disappoint the audience, but will also affect the business in the long run. Being active in social media is not enough. Proper strategy has to be developed in order to use the social media platform in an effective way. Considering the performing arts or theatre industry, it exists online in two forms:

In the form of digital content such as live broadcast, online video etc. and in the form of digital content related to theatre such as marketing and educational tools etc. Selecting the proper platform is very important to reach out to create a successful promotional strategy.

The Five Steps to Social Media Success is a systematic demonstration of strategy formation of using social media (Safko, 2012; Stelzner, 2014).

The steps are:

• Analysing the existing social media used by the theatre companies:

The social network platforms that the theatre companies use are Facebook, Twitter, YouTube etc. Companies such as Flute Theatre, People Show LTD, etc. maintain their Facebook and Twitter presence on a regular basis.

• Social Media Trinity (blogging, micro blogging, social networking)

Social media trinity refers to the three main types of social media platforms, which are blogging, micro blogging and social networking. Devising strategies based on these platforms will help the theatre companies to prioritise the issues that they are facing.

• Integrating strategies: Maintaining the uniformity of the message to be delivered is an important factor that has to be considered while using a number of platforms for this purpose. The following strategies can be undertaken by the theatre companies in order to improve its performance:
• The small companies need to focus on these promotional activities as they often lack the resources to promote themselves.
• The companies should provide information, reviews, and timings etc. through the social media platforms, which will be helpful for the regular theatre goers and in generating their interest in the events of the small theatres.
• The theatre companies can improve employee connectivity and communication amongst the staffs effectively through social media, as almost everybody is present in the social media platforms.
• Updating information regarding the progress of the organisation regularly on the social media sites will help the company to interest potential investors.
• Resource Identification: The financial needs can be addressed through fund raisers. Part of the revenue generated by the shows can be used for this purpose.
• Implementation and Measure: The organisation should take the help of professionals to maintain its official pages on various social media sites.
• Making viral videos is a technique that companies use in order to gain attention of the audience. The theatre companies can use these techniques in order to draw attention of the audience towards the performance of their actors.
• The companies should regularly update the Facebook and Twitter page with information regarding their shows etc., in order to create a “buzz”.
• Information about upcoming events can be updated on the pages in order to get in touch with the regular theatre goers. This will also help them to get in touch with potential investors, who are very important for the need of small theatres to grow their promotional activities.
• 7. Impact of the solution

The strategies will not only help in increasing the customer base for small theatres like Apollo Theater and Ambassadors theatre in the West End, but will also help in bridging the communication gap. The use of social media for communicating with the employees will help in increasing the quality of performance. The successful implementation of strategies will help in attracting investors and will also help in raising interest of the general public towards theatres.

• 8. Analysis of findings

The theatre companies in London have used various social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube in order to reach out to a mass audience. The industry has grown its presence into these social media platforms into these platforms but effective promotional techniques are still required in order to increase its visibility. The theatre companies still have to increase their efficiency into these social media platforms, in order to reach out to the stakeholders effectively.

• 9. Recommendation

The following suggestions are provided aiming to propose a solution to the problems that the theatre industry in London is facing in establishing an effective social media promotional strategy that will help it in communicating to the stakeholders effectively:

• Increasing the reach to potential customers: The theatre companies should try to reach out to the potential customers by regularly updating their social networking sites. Regularly updating the social media pages will help the companies to constantly communicate with its customers. The companies that can afford to hire professionals to update pictures and videos on a regular basis should do so, in order to avoid any shortage of content.
• Increasing the reach to the investors: As already mentioned, the main problem that the small theatres are facing these days is the lack of resources for promotion. The small theatre groups can effectively use social media to promote themselves as it one of the most cost effective promotional solutions in the present time. Various events can be held in order to gain the attention of investors towards these small theatres. Providing attractive facts and figures about the performances of the companies, such as ratings by experts, star of the show actors etc. will help in getting attention of the viewers.
• Increasing the connectivity with the employees: Another important way to incorporate the usage of social network is by increasing the connectivity and improving the communication with the employees. The improvement of communication with the employees can help to bring clarity of instructions for the employees as well as maintaining transparency in its functions. Better communication will improve the quality of events and performances.
• Increasing the reach to the general public: London is known for its theatrical culture and performing arts. As a part of its heritage, the organisation should also promote this culture. With the increase in usage of the internet, the activities on the social networking sites are growing these days (Neti, 2011). This provides an opportunity for the theatre companies to reach out to the general public in order to promote the theatrical culture, particularly amongst the youth.
• Increasing the activities on audio platform: Considering that audio is one of the most effective tools of social media after video, the theatre companies should also become active on podcast. This particular social media platform can be used to deliver audio recording of plays. Talk shows can be organised with different actors and information about various events can be effectively delivered to a vast network of podcast users.

10. Conclusions

With the increase in internet usage, the companies are focused on improving their promotional activities through social media. The primary reason for this is the cost effectiveness of social media. Another reason is the vast reach of the social media platforms to the target and potential customers. In every industry, social media has occupied a huge space in the promotional activities. The companies that do not follow with this changing trend fall behind in the competition. The increased communication of the companies through social media platforms has enhanced its popularity.

The various tools of social media are social networking, photo sharing, publishing, audio, video, micro blogging etc. In the analysis, we found that companies in the theatre industry of London have used these techniques to benefit its stakeholder and to improve the performances. Even though the theatre companies have successfully incorporated social media into their official functions, the industry is facing a few issues with the promotion of the small theatres. The small theatres are missing out on tourism, as tourists mostly prefer going to big theatres. This is mainly because small theatres do not have enough resources for promotion.

Another problem faced by the theatre of London is that average theatre goers require more information to get interested on shows by small theatres. The regular theatre goers on the other hand, understand the amount of talent that the actors working for small theatres exhibit. They are very much interested in watching the shows but are not able to do it because of the lack of information available for these shows. This communication gap puts both the audience and the theatres at a loss.

The theatre industry is much slower than other industries in incorporating social media in its operations. The theatre companies should try to increase the use of social media in an effective way as it can provide major cost advantage. The investment required for increasing the promotional activities through social media is minimalistic. Required funds can be collected through promotional events and through revenue that the organisation generates by the sales of the tickets.

The five steps for strategy formulation on the efficient use of the social media platform is to first analyse the market and then incorporate the three main tools: social networking, blogging and micro blogging. Finally, strategy is established aiming to reach out to the target audience, investors and to connect with the employees.

Reference List

Bajpai, V., Pandey, S. and Shriwas, S., 2012. Social Media Marketing: Strategies and Its impact. International Journal of Social Science & Interdisciplinary Research, 1(7), pp. 214-224

Evans, D. and McKee ,J., 2010. Social Media Marketing. [PDF] Available at: < http://pauladaunt.com/books/Social%20Media%20Marketing.pdf> [Accessed 18 June 2016]

Hajli, N., 2013. A study of the impact of social media on consumers. International Journal of Market Research, 56(3), pp. 387-404

Hanafizadeh, P., Ravasan, A. Z., Nabavi, A. and Mehrabioun, M., 2012. A Literature Review on the Business Impacts of Social Network Sites. International Journal of Virtual Communities and Social Networking, 4(1), pp. 46-60

• • London Assembly, 2013. Centre Stage Supporting small theatres in the capital. [PDF] Available at: <https://www.london.gov.uk/sites/default/files/gla_migrate_files_destination/Small%20theatres%20report%20FINAL.pdf > [Accessed 18 June 2016]

Lonergan, P., 2015. Theatre and Social Media. London: Palgrave Macmillan

Miller, K., D., Fabian , F. and Lin, S., J., 2009. Strategies for Online Communities. Strategic Management Journal, 30(3), pp. 305-322

Musical America Special Reports, 2012. Social Media and the Performing Arts. [PDF] Available at: < http://www.musicalamerica.com/specialreports/SOCIAL-MEDIA.pdf> [Accessed 18 June 2016]

Neti, S., 2011. Social Media and Its Role in Marketing. International Journal of Enterprise Computing and Business System, 1(2), pp. 1-14

Palmer, A. and Koenig‐Lewis, N. (2009). An experiential, social network‐based approach to direct marketing. Direct Marketing: An Intl Jnl, 3(3), pp.162-176.

Safko, L.,2012. The Social Media Bible: Tactics, Tools, and Strategies for Business Success. New York: John Wiley and Sons

Stelzner, M. A., 2014. How Marketers Are Using Social Media to Grow Their Businesses. [PDF] Available: <https://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/SocialMediaMarketingIndustryReport2014.pdf> [Accessed 18 June 2016]

Thomsett-Scott, B. C., 2013. Marketing with Social Media: A LITA Guide.Chicago: American Library Association

Wicks, D., 2015. Role of Social Media Marketing in Business. [Online] Social Media Today. Available at: < http://www.socialmediatoday.com/social-business/role-social-media-marketing-business > [Accessed 18 June 2016]

Zarrella, D., 2009. The Social Media Marketing Book. California: O'Reilly Media, Inc