Facebook Firsts

Social media blog ReadWriteWeb reported at the end of last year that Facebook recently reached 350 million users, 70% of whom are outside the US, and it accounts for 25% of the Web’s traffic – an astonishing statistic.

As the world’s fourth largest website, it is very likely that you are already a Facebook user, sharing status updates and photos with your online friends. According to the Facebook’s own statistics, over 50% of active users spend more than 55 minutes on the site every day. None of this will come as a surprise to the regular Facebook users among us.

Dig deeper into the statistics however, and some interesting trends start to emerge. There are 1.6 millions active Pages (see below) on the site including over 700,000 local businesses. These pages have generated 5.3 billion Fans. In addition, the average user is a member of 12 Groups. In this article, I will concentrate on how you can utilise Facebook to create Pages, Events and Groups for your business or creative projects and harness the power of the world’s largest social network.

How does it work?

Getting Started
Getting started on Facebook is as simple as creating a profile and uploading a picture. Search for friends and contacts using the Friend Finder and start to build your network. You can use Facebook to broadcast status updates (short entries that chronicle your daily activities), share and comment on photos, share web links, news stories and blog posts, comment on your friend’s ‘walls’ (digital noticeboard), or send them private messages.

But the power of Facebook goes beyond simply connecting with your friends. You can use the platform to organise Events for your performances and workshops, start a Group for your project or create a Page for your company.

Events
Events are easy to create. Go to the toolbar at the bottom of your profile page and click on the Event button. Click on “Create an Event” and add the details (title, location and date). Here you can set the privacy levels for the event – Open, Closed or Secret. With an Open event anyone can access the event page, RSVP and invite others to the event, thereby extending the potential reach of the event beyond your own network of friends. Step two of the process involves adding a picture (if required), a description of the event and setting permissions. The final step allows you to invite all or some of your Facebook contacts as well as others by email.

Theatre company, Theatre in the Square, used Facebook’s event capabilities to promote their recent productions of The Dumb Waiter and Party Time, both by Harold Pinter at the United Reform Church in north London. Creating an event like this for a production allows you to keep track of who is attending your event and to message all attendees from Facebook instead of emailing them individually.

Groups
If you are hosting regular events, such as a theatre networking group or a series of workshops for example, or just want to create a community around a particular project, then starting a Group might be more suitable for your needs. Creating a group is easy with the button located in the Facebook toolbar. Fill in some information about the group and set permissions for members of the group and accessibility to its page (open, closed or secret). As with events, you can invite people to join your group by using your contacts or by email.

An example of a popular Facebook group is David Parrish’s T-Shirts and Suits (Creativity and Business) network. With over 3,600 members, this international group for creative entrepreneurs was set up to enable creative businesses and cultural organisations to share smart business ideas, solve problems, make useful contacts, and create partnerships. David uses the group to promote his regular Coffee Club networking events as well as providing a forum for members of the community to share news and advice, and to start blog discussions.

The Power of Facebook Pages
Moving beyond Events and Groups, Facebook Pages have become a powerful way for businesses to connect with their customers and audiences. Similar to a personal profile page, Facebook Pages allow you to create a branded profile for your business. Setting up a Page is as easy as setting up a personal profile but here you would use your company information and branding. Have a look at Soho Theatre’s page for a good example of a Page in action. Once your page is published, other Facebook users can become “fans” and interact and engage with your content. Soho Theatre has over 3,700 fans – a loyal and interested audience base that they can call on to promote their performances and events. Recent Wall posts from the theatre were offering free tickets for performances and showcasing video content from upcoming comedians (check out this hilarious viral video by Frisky and Mannish doing the Pussycat Dolls’ “Beep”).

Facebook Pages can be made even more useful for your company by integrating other applications developed by third parties. Search the directory for applications that can extend the functionality of your page. My suggested apps include Eventbrite which integrates the popular event management site, and NetworkedBlogs to publish your blog feed to your profile or page.

Making Facebook Work for You

Promotion is the key here. It is a waste of time starting a Facebook Group or Page and not actively promoting it. Put a link to the group/page in the signature of your email and add a Facebook button or link to your website. You can also create a Facebook Badge to insert into your website or blog which can showcase your profile picture, contact details and status updates and allow visitors to click through to your profile or Page. Facebook recently launched a new ‘Like’ button. You can embed the button on your blog or website and allow anyone with a Facebook account to link your content directly to their profile page at the click of a button!

As well as making use of your own network of contacts, ask your friends whether they might promote your group or event on their networks as well. Make the group active by adding events, photos, videos. Use the Share feature that appears on most blogs and social media sites to share new interesting content with your fans. Start discussions and comment on other’s postings. If the group becomes a ‘dead’ space with little or no activity then people will leave.

Facebook usage on mobile platforms is set to increase in 2010, with currently more than 65 million active users accessing Facebook through their mobile devices. With smartphone users on the rise, Facebook could be a smart choice to connect with your target audience.

Final Thoughts

While much of the activity on Facebook involves poking friends, tagging photos and for some, managing farms, it can become an important part of a social media strategy. One thing to be aware of is that Facebook was never meant to be used for business, it was set up as a photo sharing site for Harvard University students, so it’s important to acknowledge the limitations of the site. As with any social media platform, it also pays to be aware of your digital profile and perhaps keep personal social networking profiles and professional ones separate. At the very least, be careful who you accept as a friend on Facebook and make sure that your privacy settings (particularly for your photos) are at a level you feel comfortable with – this is important in light of the recent change in privacy settings.

What’s Next?

In the next article, I will look at the myriad of ways of sharing and published multimedia content including videos, audio and photos using sites such as YouTube, AudioBoo and Flickr.

Welcome to the Twitter verse!

Its official! According to the Global Language Monitor, ‘Twitter’ was the most used word in print and social media in 2009 which is an astonishing achievement given that the site was only launched in 2006. At the time of writing Twitter has over 18 million users and this is predicted to grow to 26 million users in 2010. Whether you ‘get’ Twitter or think it’s a waste of time it’s here to stay – at least until the next big social media thing.

Beginnings of Twitter

Twitter started life as a way for friends and family to keep each other updated on their activities. The service asked its users the simple question: ‘what are you doing?’ allowing 140 characters for each update. This TED video talk by Twitter co-founder Evan Williams, provides fascinating insight into the evolution of one of the greatest successes of the Read/Write Web. Twitter today is sometimes referred to as a microblogging platform. While still seen by some non-users as a place to tell the world what you are having for breakfast, the ‘Twitterati’ recognise that Twitter can be a powerful way of making connections and doing business.

How does it work?

Tweets are short messages of up to 140 characters in length that you send and receive. Once you have set up a free Twitter account by registering a Twitter name and posting some information about yourself, you can start ‘tweeting’. Other users can choose to ‘follow’ your tweets and thus become your ‘followers’, and you can search for and follow others using the ‘Find People‘ tab. The best way to learn how to use Twitter is to use it: get an account, search for people or topics you find interesting and watch and learn how people interact. The Arts Council England’s digital strategy programme AmbITion has a free Twitter for Beginners ebook on their website which is a great guide to getting started.

Once up and tweeting, there are some Twitter ‘terms’ that you should be aware of to make the most of the application:

DM: (eg: DM sineadmacmanus) Direct messages will only be seen by the person you are sending them to (like Instant Messaging). Use this for tweets that you don’t want everyone to see or to build a personal relationship with a follower. You can use up to 255 characters on a DM.

ReTweet: (eg: RT @sineadmacmanus) is when you repost someone else’s Tweet. Precede the username of the person you are retweeting by RT and the @ symbol. Tools such as Tweetdeck make re-tweeting easy and Twitter has just added an RT button to their application.

@replies: (eg: @sineadmacmanus:). To reply to someone and have all your followers see the reply, type an @ symbol before the person’s name.

Hashtags #: (eg: #theatre) Hashtags assist with searching for subjects currently in conversation on Twitter. Use the hash symbol # followed by the search term to make your tweets more searchable and to follow the Twitter talk about a certain topic.

Twitter works seamlessly with many other Read/Write web applications: plugins such as Twitter Tools will allow you to insert your Twitter Feed into your WordPress website, while the Tweet This plugin automatically adds a ‘Tweet this Post’ button to every blog post allowing readers to easily share your content; applications such as Twitterfeed can be used to automatically send a tweet to your Twitter page every time you update your blog; use Twitter Mobile to view and update tweets; post from your iPhone or iTouch with applications such as Twitterific. URL shortener sites including TinyURL and Bit.ly makes shortening long weblinks easy. YouTube and Flickr allow you to tweet videos and images directly from their sites. Last but not least, Twitter power users may consider downloading free desktop applications such as TweetDeck and Seesmic Desktop to do most of the above from a separate environment on their computers.

Making the most of Twitter

So what are the practical uses of a microblogging service?

For me, one of the most powerful applications of this tool is in sourcing and sharing valuable information in a short amount of time. Following people relevant to your industry or area of interest allows you to tap into a network of up-to-the-minute ideas and conversations, to find answers to common queries or to keep abreast of great blog posts, news and resources. The beauty of Twitter is the brevity of the medium – no essay-style blog posts here, just relevant interesting conversation that can be skimmed through at a glance. If theatre is your main interest then a good starting point is to read Andrew Girvan’s blog post that lists a 129 people to follow in theatre covering venues, companies, news feeds and commentators.

Twitter can be a powerful way of connecting with potential audience members and clients and can also be used to drive traffic to your blog or website. Like other social media applications, you build a following by having something to bring to the conversation. If you choose to tweet solely about your life/work, without sharing information and engaging in conversation, people are less likely to follow your Twitter stream. Similarly, Twitter is not the place for corporate-style behaviour, so even if you are tweeting on behalf of your company, make sure there is a personality and unique voice behind the tweets.

Hoi Polloi are probably one of the most well known theatre companies in the UK that are using Twitter extensively and have nearly 1000 followers. Both Marketing and Touring Manager Simon Bedford and artistic collaborator Hugh Hughes use the hellohoipolloi Twitter account to Tweet about the company’s work. Their Twitter feed is featured on the homepage of the website under the heading – what are we doing?

Innovative West Midlands based company Pilot Theatre have been at the forefront of developments in digital technologies for years. They use their Twitter account to update their 1200 followers with news and podcasts using AudioBoo the iPhone audio blogging app. Illustrating a more commercial side, the National Theatre use their account to inform their 5,000 followers of special offers, show reviews and news.

The recent Arts Marketing Association Digital Marketing conference at Sadler’s Wells, illustrated a new trend in the potential of Twitter for live events. Twitter users following the @AMAdigitalday Twitter Feed, were kept up to date with presentations as they happened. Conference attendees posted podcasts and videos of the proceedings and online users were able to submit questions and comments for the presenters. In total over 70 people took part in the conference in this way. It might be worth thinking about how you could use Twitter to engage with people that cannot attend your live events or workshops.

Final Thoughts

Twitter, like any social media application, can drain hours of time in your day. As recommended in my Introduction to Social Media article, a plan or strategy for using Twitter is useful. Like email, I would recommend spending no more than 30 minutes each morning and afternoon browsing your lists, retweeting any items of interest to your followers, and writing your own Tweets. Tweetdeck allows users to group their followers into lists e.g. personal, theatre, social media, for organisational ease and it can also handle multiple Twitter accounts.

Do remember to make is easy for people to follow you – put your Twitter name in the signature of your email. Add a Follow Me on Twitter button to your website and on Facebook. And if you have some great production images, do personalise your Twitter profile page with a custom background.

Last but by no means least, you might want to follow some of the folks from London Theatre Blog: Matt Boothman, Andrew Eglinton, Diana Damian, Sinead MacManus. Happy tweeting!

What’s Next?

In the next article, I will look at Facebook – the fourth largest website in the world to examine its potential for creative businesses.

Blogging: The Basics

The term ‘blog’ comes from the amalgamation of ‘Web’ and ‘log’. The original Weblogs were literally ‘Web logs’ or lists of sites gathered together by an author, published using HTML and shared with a web audience.

Today, blogs are essentially easily-updatable websites that use open source or low cost software, and allow an author to publish frequently on the web. Most blogs are primarily text based but there has been a surge in recent years of multi-media blogs incorporating audio and video. Blogs contain ‘posts’ – usually time-stamped articles or snippets of information posted in reverse chronological order, allowing the most recent content to appear at the top.

Blogs can be categorised by type of audience interaction, by genre (such as education blogs or travel blogs), by media type (video blogs or vlogs, audio blogs, and written blogs) and by device (a mblog) is a blog written on and for a mobile phone. Blogs can also be defined by professional distinction i.e. ‘hobby’ blogs and professional blogs.

Most of the early blogs were simply online journals or web-based diaries which authors used to publish their thoughts and experiences. Motivated by the need for self-expression, some blogs built a captive audience such as the infamous ‘diary of a London call girl’ – Belle de Jour, that recently made UK newspaper headlines.

Setting up a blog has never been easier: using free programmes such as Wordpress.com and Blogger, you can set up a blog and start publishing content within a matter of minutes. If you wish to have a blog hosted on your own domain name, you can follow the steps in the previous articles on Wordpress. For creative people, a Tumblr blog or a posterous blog can be a great way of blogging about individual projects with the tools to post snippets of text, photos, quotes, links, dialogues, audio, video and slideshows from the web or direct from your smart phone. See the Wellcome Trust funded art project Exploring the Invisible for a look at Tumblr in action.

The Benefits of Blogging

Blogging can be a great way of building your personal or company brand and profile. Theatre companies such as Frantic Assembly and Hoi Polloi are harnessing video blogging to provide insight into company working practices and in doing so, they are building on their approachable and ‘young’ profiles. The new non-building based National Theatre Wales is using blogging to allow members of their online community to share information and debate and discuss the future potential of the theatre for the community.

Writing a blog can be a powerful learning tool, it can promote critical and analytical thinking, both with regard to your artistic process and to issues at stake in the wider world. A blog can allow you as a practitioner to reflect and comment on the artistic process of making work which can also be a powerful audience development and marketing tool. The dance company Ludus Dance have embraced the multi-media nature of blogging and use this to share the devising and rehearsal process with their audience.

One of the key elements of blogs is the ability to link from one blog to another. In the early stages of blogging, this took the form of a ‘Blogroll’ – a list of your favourite blogs. Today linking to other blogs and websites is a key part of the ‘conversation’ of blogging. If others link to your blog posts, this can drive traffic to your blog and increase your audience. A ‘trackback’ is an automatic link to a blog that commented on your post allowing your readers (and you) to see who else is talking about your posts. Harnessing the interactive nature of blogs, including commenting and linking can be a great means of collaboration and networking.

In a practical sense, a blog can be the ‘hub’ to which you drive traffic from other online media such as social networking sites. Wordpress is particularly good at integrating feeds and content from other sites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Blogs are loved by search engines for three practical reasons; firstly they love new content which blogs deliver regularly; secondly, the ‘permalink’ structure of blog posts (see previous articles on Wordpress) allows for relevant content to be found and indexed easily; and thirdly, search engines rate your site based on the aggregate of other sites that link to it.

Making a Great Blog

Space here does not permit a step-by-step guide to the ‘perfect blog’. Many well-known commentators in the ‘blogosphere’ have excellent articles on how to make a great blog. A good place to start is with the ‘pro bloggers’ such as Darren Rowse, Chris Guillebeau, Seth Godin, Brian Clark and Chris Brogan.

Nevertheless, it’s worth taking a few moments to recap some basic points about successful blogging.

Consistency. If you’re serious about engaging an audience through your blog, using it as your ‘hub’ to disseminate your work and build an audience related to your business or artistic practice, then you will need to establish a rhythm. If you write once a week, then let your audience know when you post (Monday mornings tend to be good posting days) and make sure you deliver.

Quality. You don’t have to write the next War and Peace, but you do have to make sure that you’re passionate about what you’re writing and that you’ve done your ‘homework’ on the topic you’re blogging, vlogging or audio-blogging about.

Variety. They say that variety is the spice of life, and there’s nothing better as a reader than being surprised by a blog that you follow. So once in a while step out of the mould and try something completely different. If you run a written blog, why not try doing a podcast or a short video? You could also invite someone to post a ‘guest article’ on your blog. You might want to interview someone or you might just change your approach to the way your write and present material.

Audience. It should be quite clear from the paragraphs above and from previous articles that social media in general is a dialogue between you and the people your work seeks to engage. If that is the case then why not address your audience directly? Ask questions. Run competitions. Create opinion polls (insert polldaddy link) and most importantly respond to comments on your blog and across your social media sites (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr etc.).

The Pitfalls of Blogging

Since anyone with an Internet connection can be a publisher and promoter of their own work, the key issue is no longer one of distribution, but one of authority and relevance. If you don’t have anything worthwhile to say that will engage your audience and keep them reading, blogging on a regular basis will be a chore. One of the hardest things about blogging, and why many blogs fail, is the constant need for new content. As mentioned in my Introduction to Social Media article, any forays into social media, including blogging, should be accompanied by a well thought out strategy. It is pointless to start a blog with no clear idea of the strategic reasons behind it.

It is important to recognise that blogging has changed the landscape in which we interact with our audiences – we now need to talk and listen. Traditionally, marketing has been one-sided – we talk, our audience listens. Through blogging and social media, audiences want to be part of the conversation: this needs to be considered when setting up a blog.

Staying on Top of Other Blogs

With so many interesting blogs to read, how can we stay on top of developments without having to visit 30 websites everyday? RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is one solution that allows you to subscribe to any blog or website that supports RSS (look for the orange square). If there is new content on the blog, this gets sent to your RSS Reader. For a free RSS Reader try Google Reader. Many blogs will also allow you to subscribe by email enabling new blog posts to pop up in your inbox. A third, and increasingly common option, is using Twitter. Many professional bloggers will ‘tweet’ a link to their new blog post enabling you to quickly scan your Twitter feed for any new items. And since Twitter now allows you to create ‘lists’, you could set up a list of your favourite theatre bloggers or tech bloggers etc.

The Future of Blogging

Despite recent musings in the online world that the rise of blogs is coming to an end, the statistics appear to suggest the opposite. In its annual State of the Blogosphere report, Technorati revealed that it had indexed 133 million blog records since 2002. However, the rise of microblogging using services such as Twitter and Tumblr is providing a popular alternative to blogs based on immediacy and minimal content input. Delivering bite-sized pieces of information and valuable links, these services appear to be drawing readers away from commenting and engaging with blogs.

Susan Mernit, co-founder, People’s Software Company disagrees and comments that:

“Although new ‘right-now’ web tools like twitter and lifestreaming aggregators like friendfeed have shifted some attention from classic blogging, they’ve actually deepened the conversation and made the blog, as a place to comment, reflect, and analyze, more central than ever. Blogging has become part of the daily discourse within many communities, and more and more essential is a growing number of disciplines outside of the technosphere.” (Source)

In my opinion, the urge to publish content and communicate with the world is stronger than ever. Whether through a blog or Tumblr page, Twitter or Facebook updates, the potential is there for all. Marketing guru Seth Godin sums this up more eloquently than I can when he concludes that:

“The word blog is irrelevant, what’s important is that it is now common, and will soon be expected, that every intelligent person (and quite a few unintelligent ones) will have a media platform where they share what they care about with the world.” (Source)

Blogging is dead. Long live the blog!

What’s Next?

In the next article, I will look at microblogging platform Twitter and its many applications in a business context.

What is Social Media?

As we discovered in the first article in this series, social media can be defined as the sum of online tools that facilitate communication and multimedia content sharing. When used effectively, social media can help market your work, raise your profile and enable you to connect with potential audiences. It encompasses technologies and platforms such as blogs, podcasts and social networking sites to name a few. I will be looking at the most useful applications and platforms in some detail, but as an introduction, I want to explore some key social media concepts and their relevance to artists and professionals in the performing arts. I will also address some of the issues and common concerns that can arise when using social media.

Why use Social Media?

One of the main reasons why you might use social media tools is that the entry barriers are low, both technologically and financially. The explosion in online content creation in recent years has been facilitated by the mainly free and easy to use tools and applications of the ‘Read/Write Web’. With the availability of free blogging platforms such as WordPress and Blogger, anyone with basic word processing skills can publish a blog at zero cost. Free-to-use social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter are some of the biggest in the world, the former now has over 300 million active users. Traditional marketing methods, particularly in the theatre, involve spending money on printing, ad placement and poster and flyer distribution, and while social media is unlikely to fully replace traditional marketing strategies, it certainly can complement and enhance any campaign, and provide a good return on a small investment.

A second reason is that social media harnesses the most effective of marketing methods: word of mouth. The tools and networks of Web 2.0 allow you to build and maintain a solid network of friends and followers – a targeted, niche audience that you can communicate with directly. Social media gives these online ‘fans’ the power to recommend or pass on marketing messages to their own networks of followers. The Royal Opera House has employed this strategy effectively with their Facebook group that boasts over 17,000 ‘fans’. If you think of social media as nothing more than a sophisticated recommendation system, then you can begin to see the power of these media.

In a similar vein, Web 2.0 has given rise to Viral Marketing. Viral marketing describes any strategy that encourages individuals to pass on a marketing message to others, and like a virus there’s the potential for exponential growth in the message’s exposure and influence. The viral capabilities of online video and photo sharing sites such as YouTube and Flickr have enabled the circulation of image-based media at the click of a mouse and without charge. I will be looking in more depth on how to utilise social media to create both word of mouth and viral marketing campaigns in the coming weeks.

The third reason why social media can be of benefit is that it allows you to expand your marketing potential and reach a wider audience or client base than would be possible in an offline scenario. This concept is called ‘The Long Tail‘, and was first named by Chris Anderson, editor of Wired Magazine, in October 2004.

Perceived Problems with Social Media

So far so good…but if social media is so effective and simple to use, why isn’t every artist and company jumping on board? And perhaps more alarmingly, where many have dipped a toe in the social media pool, why have their efforts amounted to so little?

The number one reason why creative people do not engage with social media is lack of time and more specifically the concern that if they do commit, it will eat up large chunks of an already busy day. However, with some simple strategic planning and a little Web savvy, this does not have to be the case. Rebecca Coleman, a Canadian PR consultant in the performing arts has written an excellent guide to getting started in social media. She recommends that artists create a Social Networking Marketing Plan outlining what you want to achieve with social media; which platforms and tools you will focus on; and lastly, how much time are you going to dedicate to being online. Think of social media like email: a brilliant innovation that when used strategically can enhance your business and increase opportunity. Of the social media-savvy people I know, many deliberately limit their time online to one or two hours a day for this very reason.

Another issue to be aware of is privacy protection and safeguarding intellectual property. Many online applications will require that you submit a certain amount of personal data in order to set up a profile and there have been a few cases of identity theft including Facebook. However, there are ways of reducing any potential risk such as limiting the personal information that you post as well as being aware of the privacy settings on social networking sites. A recent article on the ReadWriteWeb blog suggests that it is safer to set up real social networking profiles for yourself to ward against identify thieves setting up fake profiles in your name. Users also need to be aware that any content you create and post online forms part of your ‘web portfolio’ – be conscious of what you post online, especially in a professional context, and ask yourself ‘will I be happy with this content in five years time?’

Data portability can also be an issue with social networks. At the moment you have to set up individual profiles across individual sites, many of which do not allow you to export your data when migrating to new services or in the case that you want to keep a personal record on your computer. This is particularly important if you’re thinking about using a service to input large amounts of data on a regular basis.

Copyright violation can be a concern when showcasing your creative work on the Web. Initiatives such as Creative Commons with its tagline of ‘Share, Remix, Reuse – Legally’, provide a useful framework for thinking about how to safegard and license your work on a platform that allows almost any type of public-facing data to be copied.

Lastly, there can be a fear of the technology itself and the fact that it is yet another thing to learn. I hope to allay some of these fears in the coming weeks by looking at some of the most useful platforms in more detail.

Basic Principles of Social Media

Before we jump into ‘the case studies’ (starting with the wonderful world of blogging in the next article), lets take a look at some of the basic principles and ‘rules’ of social media that apply to many of the platforms.

Much of social media is about collaboration, connections and participation. It is about starting conversations, increasing your profile, connecting with your audience or clients. It is not about directly selling products and services, but using social media well should help your bottom line.

Conversations are two way and therefore to really get the most from the experience, you need to be generous with your involvement. Like offline networking, the more you give away, the more you will benefit. By helping others achieve their goals you will build strong relationships online that will ultimately benefit your business.

Don’t expect to see results straight away. It takes time to build a presence on these networks. If you have something specific to promote, start at least three months in advance to build momentum.

Have a plan. Do not set up a Facebook group because you can. Have a good reason why this is going to help your business and a plan on how to achieve your goals. Dedicate some time to maintaining your social media profiles but don’t get lost in the world of cyberspace! In the coming weeks, we will look at some suggestions for connecting and cross-linking social media profiles, expanding your social media reach, while potentially reducing your time online.

What’s Next?

In the next article, I will look at the world of blogging and attempt to answer the question: is blogging dead or should it be a vital part of your social media strategy?

Note: Part 1 of this two-part series covered how to set up your website on your own domain name using WordPress and also reviewed some useful settings and functions of the software. Read part one »

Step Four: Choose a Design for your Site

WordPress makes it easy to change the design and feel of your site with what’s known as ‘Themes’ or design templates. The default WordPress installation comes ready with two basic Themes pre-loaded, but changing the theme of your site will start to make the site feel more your own. Themes range from simple variations on a colour scheme or layout to complex magazine-style themes. Whatever your vision for the design of your site, there will be something that suits.

There are at least three different ways that you can change the theme of your site:

1. Download a Free Theme: browse the internet for free themes designed by the great community of designers and coders. A great place to start is the official WordPress site. It is updated daily and currently houses over 1000 unique free designs. Another good source for free themes is Smashing Magazine and their review of 100 high quality free themes. Alternatively you can simply do a google search with the terms ‘WordPress” and “Themes” and refine the search to results from the past year.

2. Purchase a Premium Theme: while many of the free themes are perfectly adequate for some websites, many designers have gone one step further with the design and functionality of their templates. These so-called ‘premium themes’ are usually low cost and gave give a site an added design ‘edge’ over some of the free templates. Three great sites to hunt for premium themes are Elegant Themes, ThemeForest and WooThemes.

I personally use the premium theme Thesis for all my websites. It’s an SEO optimized theme that allows for complete customisation using the ‘Thesis Open Hook plug-in’ so it is perfect for those of us with little to no coding experience. You can read about my experiences of the Thesis theme here.

3. Get a Custom Theme Designed: you can also ask a designer to design a custom theme for your site to fit your personal or company brand image, either from scratch or using another theme as a template. The freelancing website elance.com can be a great place to find WordPress specialists or ask around. Another example, much closer to hand, is the bespoke design used on London Theatre Blog, built by the talented Chugs Designs. Any design company worth its salt should provide you with a free and open quote on your design needs – it certainly pays to shop around!

When you have found a suitable theme, download the zip file to your computer. To install the theme, log in to the Admin area of your site and go to Appearance>Install Theme. Click Browse to find the theme that you downloaded to your computer earlier. Once you have successfully uploaded the file, click on Appearance>Themes. To apply the new theme to you site, simply click on the picture of your theme to preview the design. If you are happy with how this looks, click Activate. The theme should now be applied to your site. Check by clicking on ‘Visit Site’ at the top of the Admin area.

WordPress makes it easy to play around with the look and feel of your site without going near the code. I would recommend uploading a number of themes to the Admin area and try each of them out for size.

Step Five: Widgetize your Site

WordPress Widgets were designed to provide a simple, drag-and-drop way of customising the sidebar content of your site without having to hack into the code. By removing pre-installed widgets or by adding new ones to your theme, you can start to make your site function according to your specific needs. Common widgets to use in a sidebar might include:

Pages – this widget lists your static pages.
Recent Posts – this widget displays the latest posts you have written
Tag Cloud – the Tag Cloud widget is a popular one that enables visitors to click on different Tags and be taken to relevant Posts.
Search – the Search widget displays a helpful search box on the Home page.

The Widgets SubPanel explains how to use the various Widgets that come delivered with WordPress, and the Widgets page at Automattic (the company that runs WordPress) explains how to ‘widgetize’ themes and plugins.

This image shows you an overview of the WordPress widget admin panel. To see a practical example of widgets in action on a website, take a look at the left and right-hand sidebar elements of my personal blog.

Step Six: Add Plugins to Extend the Functionality of the Site

One of the most amazing things about WordPress (and there are many so this is a tall order!), is the concept of Plugins. A plugin is a little piece of code that integrates with the WordPress architecture to add a unique element of functionality. If you can think of something that you would like your site to do, there is a fair chance that you’ll find a plugin for it; and just like free WordPress Theme designs, there’s a community devoted to creating free WordPress plugins too. Want to embed Google Maps into your site? Insert your Twitter feed? Or just change the order of your theme’s page navigation? No problem!

Previous versions of WordPress required some knowledge of File Transfer Protocol to upload plugins but with the latest version you can search for and add new plugins right in your Admin area. Just visit Plugins>Add New and do a keyword search for what you are looking for. After you have installed your plugins, don’t forget to Activate them. If you upload and activate a plugin and find it doesn’t do what you want it to do, you can simply Deactivate or Delete it, with no interference to the rest of your site. WordPress comes pre-loaded with the helpful spam killer plugin, Akismet. Don’t forget to activate this plugin as it will help you fight comment spam on your site.

Some great plugins that I add to all my sites include:

Page Link Manager: “adds an administration panel that allows you to pick which page links are included in your site’s navigation.”
WordPress Automatic Upgrade: “allows a user to automatically upgrade the wordpress installation to the latest one provided by wordpress.org using the 5 steps provided in the wordpress upgrade instructions.”
Twitter Tools: “creates an integration between your WordPress blog and your Twitter account. It allows you to pull your tweets into your blog (as posts and digests) and create new tweets on blog posts and from within WordPress.”
Custom Post Order: “enables users to modify the order in which posts are displayed on all pages(or in selected categories) of the blog.”
Google Analytics for WordPress: “automatically tracks and segments all outbound links from within posts, comment author links, links within comments, blogroll links and downloads.”

Note: In future articles in this series, I will highlight available plugins for any social media applications that we look at such as Facebook, YouTube and Flickr.

Coming Up

In six easy steps I have shown that it is possible to get a self-hosted website up and running with a minimum of design skills and no knowledge of HTML.

In the next articles in this series, we now turn to look at the heavily hyped area of social media (Twitter, YouTube, Facebook et al) and examine them to extract areas of benefit for your theatre company or practice.

Introducing WordPress

A dedicated web presence is an essential marketing tool for every theatre company and practitioner. But how do you build a web site for yourself or your company with no money and no programming skills? Until recently, many artists turned to volunteer programmers from IT courses who wanted a chance to show off their coding skills. Others took evening courses in HTML, Dreamweaver or Flash. For most, these options were seen as a stop-gap, a way to get online until the money was found to pay for a ‘proper’ web designer.

And then WordPress came along and made the process of getting online available to anyone who could use a web browser and a word processor. WordPress, like Blogger and Typepad, started as a blogging platform. Although it is still seen as the blogger’s choice of platform, it is also used as a powerful Content Management System (CMS) that drives many well-known websites around the world. The beauty of WordPress is that it is an open source platform, which means that anyone with programming skills can contribute to the code, adapt and use it for their own purposes.

There are three main reasons why WordPress is perfect for small creative companies and artists: firstly, it is free to install and adapt, the only expenses incurred are registering a domain name and paying for web hosting. Secondly, the WordPress CMS is easy to get to grips with; in fact anyone at ease with using Microsoft Word or an equivalent word processor will be able to publish a website using WordPress. Lastly, there is a dedicated, worldwide community of WordPress users that devote time and expertise to the project in the form of free support, free design themes and free ‘plug-ins’ (extensions).

You can use WordPress to build any kind of site, it doesn’t have to be a blog. You can insert videos, a forum, a social network, a photo gallery, or almost any type of function you can think of via the plug-in directory.

This week we will look at how to get your WordPress site up and running. Part II will delve deeper into the capabilities of the software and look at design and functionality.

Step One: Get a Domain Name and Hosting Package

WordPress is essentially a set of files that your install on a database in your web space. If you already have a domain name and web hosting company, visit WordPress.org (not to be confused with WordPress.com, the hosted version) and follow the steps for their famous ‘5 minute installation’. This does require some knowledge of how to transfer files to your web space using an FTP (File Transfer Protocol) application.

Fortunately, there are a number of reliable, open source FTP programs with simple user guides to achieve this. Alternatively, and in recognition of this additional task, more and more Web hosting companies now offer a One-Click Installation of WordPress. In terms of recommendable hosting companies offering this service, I find Bluehost works well and you can read about my experience here. Alternatively see this list of WordPress.org endorsed companies. Please note that most of these companies offer .com, .org or .net domains only. If you wish to use a country-specific domain such as co.uk, search for ‘WordPress UK Hosting’ in Google and review your options.

Using Bluehost as an example, once you have signed up to a new account and registered or transferred your domain name, you are ready to install WordPress. Login to the Bluehost Control Panel using the domain name and password you chose when setting up your account. Once in the Control Panel, scroll down to Software/Services and click on Simple Scripts. Find WordPress, click on New Installation and follow the simple instructions. Congratulations! WordPress is now installed on your hosting account and you are ready to start building your website.

Step Two: Configuring your Website Settings

To log on to the admin area of your new WordPress website, in your web browser type in your domain name followed by /wp-admin e.g. http://sineadmacmanus.com/wp-admin. Enter the username and password that you gave during the install process and login in. You are now in the administration area of your website. Have a look around.

There are a number of small settings we need to take care of straight away. Go to Settings>General and enter the website name in the Blog Title field and your Tagline in the Tagline field. Set the time and date display as you require.

Next click on Settings>Reading. WordPress gives us two display options for the home page (the first page visitors see) of your site. The default display is a blog (‘Your latest posts’) and the second option is a ‘Static page’. We will come to Posts and Pages in a moment. There are advantages to having your Posts page as the front page of your website – search engines such as Google like original content so having continually changing material on your home page will rank your site higher in the search engine listings. Many companies and artists also use the blog facility of WordPress to provide Latest News and updates on their home page which can make a site more interesting and dynamic to visitors.

To control how visitors can comment, if at all, on your site, click on Settings>Discussion and make the required changes. Next, to ensure your site appears in search engines, click on Settings>Privacy and select the right option. To help with SEO (search engine optimization) and the ability for the search engines to index your website content, click on Settings>Permalink to set the format of the URL that will be used for your Posts and Pages. Choose the Month and Name option.

Step Three: Creating Content for Your Site

To add the main content to your site, you will need to add a series of Pages. Pages are static pages that link from your home page. Examples of static pages could be About Us, Past Productions, Current Production, Education, Contact Us and so on. Click on Pages to see the list of default static pages and edit and add your own here. To add a new page, click Add New. Enter the title of your page e.g. About Us and add your content in the main field. To format the content use the text editing tools. WordPress uses similar formatting icons and tools to Microsoft Word. Pages will appear by default in alphabetical order, but you can adjust this using the settings. Here you can also decide if you want the page to appear in your navigation bar. You can also create Parent and Sub-pages which could be useful for past productions, as an example. When you have finished editing your page, click Publish to publish this page to your site.

To add Posts to your website, click on Posts>Add New. Posts will be displayed by default with the most recent at the top on your home page. You can use Categories and Tags to categorise your Posts to make your content easier to find.

You can use the Appearance>Widgets menu to decide what to display in the sidebars of your home page. If necessary, remove the default widgets and use the ‘Add’ button to add the ones that you want. For example, you could choose to display your Recent Posts, a Tag Cloud and your list of Categories.

What’s Next?

If you follow the steps above, you can have your own website, hosted on your own domain name, up and running in less than an hour. In A Practical Guide to WordPress (Part 2), we take a look at customising the design and capabilities of your site using Themes and Plug-Ins to make a unique site for your theatre company or practice.

Web 2.0 and Social Media

The terms Web 2.0 and social media are often used to describe developments on the Internet over the past five years, but what do these terms actually mean and of what use are they to artists and theatre companies? Web 2.0 marks a shift in the use and purpose of the Internet, moving from a static, information repository to an interactive space where sharing and collaboration is key. Social media can be broadly defined as the sum of online tools that facilitate communication and multimedia content sharing; it encompasses technologies and platforms such as blogs, podcasts and social networking sites to name a few.

If we consider the first generation of the web (Web 1.0) to be ‘read only’, aside from its key informational role, its application to theatre companies and performances seemed limited to advertising. In contrast, Web 2.0 is all about reaching out to your audience and collaborating with your peers – it’s perfect for creative companies. So if you’re willing to invest a little time, you’ll find that web tools and social media can help you build your company profile, both online and off, communicate to your audiences, develop new income streams and streamline your business, all at little to no cost.

The Series

Join me over the coming months in a practical exploration of all things web. This Practical Guide to Theatre and Web 2.0 will be a series of ‘how to’ articles covering a wide range of tools and topics including websites, blogs, social networking, collaboration software, microblogging, project management, creativity, publishing, email, multimedia, productivity and organisation. Each article will focus on a particular topic or tool, explaining how it works in practical terms, its potential for use in the theatre industry and, drawing on examples from across the creative industries where the Web has been put to good use.

Starting Points

Before we get into the practical guides, I want to highlight some off and online starting points to get you thinking ‘technology’. A good offline source is The Guardian’s Technology supplement on Thursdays (and its online blog) and The Times technology blog. ReadWriteWeb and TechCrunch cover developments in web technology, profiling and reviewing new internet companies and services. Closer to home, Lateral Action is a blog focusing on the meeting point between creativity and productivity. Written by the talented Mark McGuinness, Tony Clark and Brian Clark, it often talks about the potential for creative people to use the web.

The Future

A recent assessment of the “online presences maintained by Arts Council England’s regularly funded organisations” (RFOs) revealed that many arts organisations are beginning to embrace the potential offered by digital technology but that there is a clear opportunity for the arts to further develop their digital provision for the benefit of companies and audiences. With ‘Digital Opportunity’ being one of the current four priorities of ACE, now is a great time for arts organisations to get on board.

TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design and is dedicated to “ideas worth spreading. Visit the site for the latest presentations on developments in the world of technology; such as Web guru Kevin Kelly’s entertaining and enlightening talk ‘The Next 5,000 Days of the Web’. Kelly reminds us that the web as we know it is still very young but the developments and progress we have seen in its first 5,000 days has been staggering. I truly believe that we have only just started on our Web journey and the road ahead is exciting and paved with opportunities for creativity and business.

Stay tuned for part 1: making the most of the Web’s most used, free blog software: WordPress