From this I had an idea. Create a Twitter account that auto-tweets 140 character reviews from theatre bods if they hashtag them. The tweet wouldn’t be a standard RT, but the initial review with an attribution to the author at the end of the tweet. It would act as an aggregation of theatre reviews that anyone could look at for a quick snapshot of what others thought.

After tinkering around for about 15 minutes, I had something working. However, I wanted to make sure that the account only tweeted out reviews from trusted people to stop the channel being abused. I also didn’t want to have to moderate it, as I wanted it to be completely automated.

The result was @140thtr.

The premise is that a list of bloggers (who can be found here) can tweet their review with the hashtag #140thtr, and it will appear in the @140thtr feed within half an hour (cycles on Twitter are a bit problematic).

I was astounded by how easy it was to set up with a mixture of php, Yahoo! pipes and a handy service like TwitterFeed. However, at the moment the names of the reviewers are manually entered. What I aim to do in the future is to tie it into the above list, so as soon as someone is on the list, they are automatically approved. I’ve figured out how to do it, but the results are a little ugly at the moment, so I’ll play around with it and see.

If you want to be added to the 140thtr list, then let me know on Twitter or comment here.

However, there is a rather important caveat… You can’t be particularly picky about the shows you want to see, and you mustn’t expect to only see West End shows. Most of the shows I have seen in the past year haven’t been things I would’ve necessarily sought out on my own. However, it’s broadened my views and opened my eyes to the world of theatre beyond the West End and the majors.

Young and free

One of the first things I investigated when I got here was the A Night Less Ordinary scheme. While the scheme sadly ended in March due to budget cuts, there are a few theatres still offering under 26 schemes. The first one that I joined was Barbican Centre’s freeb program, which is done through a simple online form. This allows you to buy up to 2 tickets for a range of shows. The beauty is that the second person doesn’t need to be under 26 either (just don’t take them to the counter if they look too old). However, tickets do go quickly, so you need to get in there fast. The best bet is to ‘Like’ the freeb page on Facebook, as they’ll let you know when a new lot are on sale.

Another gem from A Night Less Ordinary is the National Theatre’s Entry Passprogram. While you need to fill in an archaic paper form and wait a few weeks for your card, your first show is free and any subsequent shows are £5. Apparently the Donmar have a similar scheme called Donmar Discovery, but it is nigh impossible to get tickets (as it is with most of their shows).

Use the Twitters

If you want free or cheap tickets, make sure you are using Twitter effectively. Follow the major theatres, as well as staff from the theatres (especially marketing and PR). Also, follow accounts like FreeLondon, who tweet when someone is offering free things. If you keep following these people and paying attention, you can pick up some great offers. For example, a theatre-bod I follow on Twitter recently tweeted that he had a bunch of free tickets toUmbrellas of Cherbourg. Hair were offering £20 for press night, due to unsold tickets.

If you already have a network of theatre tweeps who you follow and have some kind of relationship with, set up a list of theatre people (here’s mine as an example), add that list to Tweetdeck and filter the column with a few simple keywords like “‘free ticket’ OR ‘+1′ OR ‘spare ticket’.” You’ll be surprised how many people you know are looking for people to take spare tickets. While I’ve never gone to the effort of setting up a dedicated column in Tweetdeck, I’ve managed to see some fantastic (and dreadful) shows through this method. Through this I’ve also managed to make some fantastic friends out of people I had only spoken to a few times on Twitter, which brings me to my next point…

Network like a whore

Using a tool like Twitter is fantastic to network within the industry. Almost exclusively through Twitter, I have managed to build a great network of theatre people within the UK from scratch, and am lucky enough to now call a lot of those people friends. Events like Twespians (disclosure: I run this with the lovely Laura Tosney) then cement these relationships by bringing them offline over a few drinks.

The benefit of this is two-fold. Not only will you make friends with a new group of people who have similar interests to you, but you’ll also be building a network of industry contacts who, when you feel comfortable, may be able to help you get tickets. This isn’t using people, however, as when you have +1s for yourself, you’ll have a group of friends who you can offer tickets to.

Don’t be afraid to ask

Finally, once you build some credibility with your writing (committing to a time schedule for posting, cross posting to sites like Up The West End and building a network are good starting points), don’t be afraid to ask theatres and PR people for press tickets. It’s easy to find details online (A Google of ‘theatre name press officer’ sometimes does the trick, as does a LinkedIn search), and failing that @ the theatre on Twitter. Be honest about the level you blog at (installing Google Analytics is a good way to monitor how successful you are), talk about the network you have and ask if you can be added to the press list. Contacting agencies like AKA, Premier PR, Arthur Leone and The Corner Shop PR are a good idea as well. You won’t always get a yes, but sometimes you will.

If they do say no, it may not hurt to ask why (in a friendly way). Keep writing and ask again at a later point.

Also, contact existing sites like Fringe Review (contact me if you want to get involved with them and I’ll put you in touch) or Whatsonstage to see if they are looking for reviewers. The advantage of these is that they do a lot of the leg work for you in arranging tickets. However, once again don’t expect a yes straight away. Ask why, keep writing and ask again at a later point.

If you have any comments or want to hurl any abuse at me then feel free to leave a comment or hit me up on Twitter.

I’ve been attending tweetups for about two years now. The idea behind them is that they strengthen connections that you’ve made with the people you talk to on Twitter, as well as introducing you to more like minded people. Most of the tweetups I’ve been to have been based around social media and marketing. That is, quite often they are tweetups about Twitter and how to use it.

One thing I lamented about in Sydney was the fact that there weren’t many people on Twitter from the theatre. Theatre is about community. Twitter is about community. It makes sense, doesn’t it? However, the theatre people I talked to couldn’t really see the value in it and so they stayed away. However, when I got to London it was a different story. I suppose it comes down to the fact that while there are a decent number of theatre loving folks in Sydney, there are a whole lot more in London.

Finally my dreams of having a tweetup solely for theatre people might actually become a reality.

Twespians, the tweetup for theatre types, held it’s first event on the 2nd of February at Theodore Bullfrog in London as part of the global Social Media Week. I was never sure of how successful it would be. I was half expecting that of the 50-60 people who registered, I may only get 10 or 20 people actually turn up. In the end, we managed to get about 40, which was an amazing number.

However, the numbers meant nothing.

Who was there was *far* more important.

The thing that really struck me was the diversity of the people who attended. We had the usual tweetup fodder of journalists, bloggers and marketing/PR types, as well as a mix of actors, directors, musical directors, choreographers, producers, festival organisers, social media artists, theatre administrators and students. Also, the type of theatre was mixed as well. We had musical theatre, straight theatre, physical theatre, dance and spoken word.

To tell you the truth, I was a little surprised.

For some reason, I was expecting majority of musical theatre fans, with a few ‘proper’ theatre people thrown in for good measure (kind of like a cat/pigeons scenario). I was pleasantly surprised that it wasn’t, and the evening was all the better for it.

Was there value in it, though?

I see Twitter as being used in one of two ways. You have a ‘leader/follower’ arrangement, where somebody has a whole bunch of followers, but doesn’t follow back and only engages when directly engaged with. Then you have the ‘community’ or ‘network’ arrangement. Say you had a diagram of all the people you follow. Draw a line from you to them, then draw lines from them to the people they follow. What you would end up with is very distinct communities, or networks, based around similar interests. For example, mine would have a very distinct social media/marketing/PR circle, as well as a theatre circle. In addition, there’d be smaller circles about fairly specific interests, which are more niche communities.

This second way of using Twitter is where tweetups come in to the equation. What you are effectively doing is strengthen a connection that you’ve already made online, which is made easier by having a common passion. The other thing it does, is break down the barriers that would normally exist in traditional networking situations. Twitter is a level playing field. Tweetups like this don’t only bring people from different areas of the industry, but also different levels. For example, students are networking with newspaper editors and West End musicians. It’s great, and the possibilities that come out of these events are endless. Not only is it great on a personal level, as networking is a key part of succeeding in such a fickle industry, but also it builds a sense of community amongst people who have a passion for theatre.

We’re currently in the process of organising the next Twespians event in London. Follow the twitter account to be kept up to date with what’s happening.  If you have any thoughts, comments or suggestions then leave a comment.

At first this was going to be a post on Marketing theatre (I’m guessing a rather long post), but instead I’m going to use it to give my thoughts on how Twitter could be used to build (and/or strengthen) online theatre communities.

There has been some interesting talk about Twitter and Social Media and their use in Theatre, particuarly around marketing. The Stage published an article last week about internet marketing and building communities through social media, using Legally Blonde: The Musical as an example. There’s also been some good posts over at London Theatre Blog about Social Media and Web 2.0 by Sinead MacManus. However, most of these have been around promotion and marketing, and I really think that Twitter can be used to do more than this.

First things first… There is no one way to use Twitter. It is an extremely powerful tool, and the rules keep getting rewritten by the users themselves. For a decent overview of what twitter is all about, check out the Twitter Wikipedia Entry. If you want a help guide, then check out Twitter’s help portal. If there is anything not covered in either of these, I will attempt to link to a relevent article. Also, this post is relying on the fact that people don’t protect their updates. If you protect your updates, you aren’t willing to fully participate in the wider community.

Twitter is a powerful community building and networking  tool. I have been using Twitter for close to a year and have got to a point where I can’t be away from it for long periods of time (Withdrawal-type symptoms can occur including profuse sweating, gnawing of fingernails/limbs, and random screaming. I’ve almost joined a 12-step program). For the most part, I have used it for a mix of socia and professional networking. Within PR and marketing, Twitter has become a fairly important tool for a number of reasons. Here are the key areas I use Twitter for: networking, sharing, resource gathering and promotion.

Let’s see how each of these could be used for theatre…

Networking

Networking within theatre does happen. However, it seems to happen primarily in and around productions. You build your network by performing in shows, and occassionally by seeing them. However, between shows not much else happens. Also, theatre can be rather cliquey. It is rather impossible to penetrate certain theatre circles due to their closed nature, especially when the only opportunity is to perform with these people, or know someone who has performed with them.

Twitter, on the other hand, seems to put everyone on a more even playing field. Unlike facebook, you don’t have to get approval to follow someone’s twitter feed. That means that you can follow anyone (who doesn’t protect their tweets) from your best mate Tim to Oprah. This also means that you have a means of connecting with anybody you follow through @ mentioning them (similar to tagging and commenting in Facebook) or DMing them (similar to a private message in Facebook).

Where these connections really come in handy is at tweetups. Tweetups offer you an opportunity to meet the people within your twitter network and start to really build a community. When I first started attending networking events within the pr and marketing space, I found it rather difficult considering I didn’t know anyone at all. However, at my first tweetup, there was much less apprehension, considering I had already interacted with quite a few people on Twitter and therefore had a starting point.

Tweetups can then strengthen the bond within your Twitter community, as meeting someone in person can often make the connection more tangible. Also, it’s always great to get a group of people together who are all passionate about the same thing!

Sharing

One of the other great aspects of twitter is the ability to share. When I first starting using Twitter, a common description I heard was ‘it’s just like facebook status updates’. For me, Twitter is more about sharing information with your network (although facebook seems to be incorporating more and more Twitterlike features).

Sharing links to interesting articles, blog posts, youtube videos, events etc. has become a really important part of Twitter. Also, Twitter offers you the ability to ReTweet tweets that you might find interesting or useful, but that your followers may not see in their tweet stream, pushing the original tweet out to a new audience. Sharing interesting and useful information benefits you, as it increases your personal profile within your twitter community. Also, this will spur others to do the same, which will prove beneficial to you…

Collecting resources

The other upside to you posting your links to information is that you can then take advantage of others doing the same. Through this you could find out the most up to date news, find interesting articles and blog posts about theatre and related industries, find out about upcoming events, productions and auditions, take advantage of special deals or get free stuff. It’s all about building a community that is based around a mutual interest, trust and reciprocation.

Another side of collecting resources is the idea of crowdsourcing. This could be as simple as asking your followers a question (sometimes lazy questions, often hashtagged as #lazyweb), to more complicated crowdsourcing possibilities. For example, Next to Normal on Broadway has used crowdsourcing through Twitter in a really interesting way. The composers are using their Twitter account to improve their show. This ranges from running ideas past their Twitter followers, to asking their followers to submit lyrics or song titles to new songs they are writing for the show. They then work these into the show.

Think of all the ways theatre groups could use crowdsourcing… what about an impro show that relied on a twitterfeed from the audience using a hashtag for the event? It’s probably already been done, but there are millions of ways that theatre groups could use crowdsourcing, and for theatre venues or companies, it provides an automatic way to connect with your audiences.

Promotion

Finally, promotion. Let me put this out there… Twitter is not a tool purely for promotion. Many brands have attempted to get on Twitter and push their marketing messages out without attempting to engage at all. Many brands have tried and quickly failed.

The important thing with promoting yourself, your event or your company on Twitter is to provide some value for your followers. Although opinion does vary on this, I believe that it is important to show yourself through your tweets. Mix in personal with professional. Not every tweet needs to be about theatre (or marketing or PR etc etc). The main rules I stick by with my Twitter are One: would I say what I’m about to say on Twitter out loud in a room full of people? Two: would the people in this room be interested in what I’m saying? Three: have I been talking about myself too much?

However, promotion through Twitter can be beneficial. Building strong communities and networks can helpl when attempting to promote something related, as you can leverage your position as an influencer, and also leverage other people within your network who are influencers within their own groups. However, it also comes down to the value of what you are saying. Twitter is a great place to promote through special deals or offers, as this provides value to the other users and they benefit from being connected to you.

Also, authenticity is fairly important when it comes to promotion on Twitter. If you are promoting something that you are involved with, whether it be an event, a production or just promoting your new blog post, make sure you are upfront about your involvement. Nothing is worse than being told about how great something is as if it’s a product endorsement, and finding out that it’s actually that person’s product.

Basically, if you are going to promote something, be upfront and honest about it. Don’t spam and make sure that the people who follow you are actually interested in what you have to say.

Wrapping Up

There are loads of great articles out there on building communities through twitter and general overviews for what social media is. I’ve provided a few links to them below.

Even though this post was a bit of a ramble on how we could use Twitter, I hope it still made sense. If it didn’t, comment and I’ll try and clear things up!

Links:

What the F**k is Social Media? – One Year Later – A great presentation on social media and why it’s important.

How To: Build Community on Twitter – Tips on how to build your own community

Community Building 101: Building a Community on Twitter – Some great rules of thumb on building and maintaining a good community on Twitter