How to Reach Facebook Fans in a World of On-line Noise

Back in the day, I could send out a Facebook invite for an upcoming performance and a couple of things would happen: 1) About 90% of those I invited would rsvp (either yes, no, or maybe) and 2) About 40% of those invitees would actually show up at my event. It was my most effective marketing tool.

When Facebook decided to turn on its money making machine about a year ago, the typical invite got lost in the shuffle.  Now,  I'm lucky if I get a 20% RSVP rate and for a 100 seat theatre, I'm lucky to sell 3 tickets from Facebook invites.

I understand the problem. Having nearly 1,800 friends on Facebook myself, not only do I get a lot of invites each day (about 15-20) but I also get a lot of other stimulation on my Facebook page that ends up looking and sounding a lot like on-line noise. There's just too much stimulation on my page for me to pay attention to something as specific as an invitation.

Although I've always tried to be personal with my marketing efforts, I have to be even more diligent now to make sure that my own invitations can be seen and heard through the haze of saturation. To be honest, I have ADD when it comes to Facebook and if you're planning an event, you should assume every friend you're sending an invitation to has ADFBD (Attention Deficit Facebook Disorder) too.

Here are 10 ways to make sure your invite gets over the firewall:

1) Use a title that describes the event itself or the location. For example "Illumination: Four Tellers Telling in Maryland" is better than just "Illumination." There is a balance between including interesting, length and location in your title.

2) Within the body of your invite, place just enough information to spark someone’s interest. In other words, don't cut and paste something from your website into your invitation. I don’t want to read through every review that’s ever been written about you.

3) Attach event-related photos, videos and other links on the actual invite page. Sounds obvious, but don't make me search to find out more information about the event. Also, use captions with every photo.

4) Put a “click-thru” link on the invite that will take invitees to a place where they can purchase tickets.

5) Invite all your friends, even the ones that live in Spain. Most friends want to stay in touch with you and will want to know what's going on in your performance world. An invite allows them to do this. Besides, if your friends like your work (which they should if they are your friends) this will allow them to forward the invite to their own friends who can attend.

6) Wait two days and then from the invite page, message all your guests with a short personal e-mail such as:

Hi,

Just wanted to let you know about my next performance at Seeker’s Church on September 25 at 7:30. It’s a storytelling concert I’m doing with three friends and I thought you might be interested.

For more information or to buy tickets you can visit.: http://bit.ly/illuminationstory

Thanks,

Slash

*This friendly note alerts people like me who received the invite, but didn't open it or even know where to find it to the fact that you are having an event. Without this note, I'd never know.

7) Four weeks before your event, begin to post one status update related to your event. 

Remember to use the “@” symbol in front of your event title, wait for the link to upload and then place it in your status bar.  For example, “Looking forward to @Illumination: Four Tellers Telling later this month. I’m so excited!” The @symbol should disappear and make your title into a live click-thru link. (Double check to make sure it works)

*Studies show the best times for status updates are usually 8am and 4pm

8) One to three  weeks before your event, post 2 status updates related to your event that are similar, but different than the one above. For example, “Tickets for @Illumination: Four Tellers Telling are selling well.”

9) One week before your event, go back to your invite page and: a) send a personal note to anyone who has rsvp’ed Yes or Maybe. B) send a new personal note to those who haven’t sent in an rsvp.

10) If you want to bump up your response rate to nearly 35%, then you should actually send out a personal invite to every one of your friends. Yes, I actually do this for important events. Although I have nearly 1,800 friends and this takes a few days, it's an important and personal step.  If tickets sales, filling seats or connecting with friends you haven’t heard from in a while are important to you, you’ll consider doing this too.

If you'd like to see an invite for my upcoming storytelling concert on Facebook visit http://bit.ly/illuminationstory

For more info storytelling projects by me - Slash Coleman - please visit www.slashcoleman.com

10 Ways to Love Twitter Better

As many of you know, Twitter and I broke up a few weeks ago. If you read my break up letter then you know that things weren’t going well between us. I know this may sound weird, but we are living together again and thanks to some good counseling sessions with @Joannefunch and @iknowtiffany , and @Mox_eMediaGirl , I really think we might be able to make our relationship work.

As you might know, I was introduced to Twitter about a year ago and we maintained a cordial relationship during that time. I didn’t really understand her very well nor she me, and I didn’t share that much of myself with her. To be honest, I was still in a relationship with Facebook and a lot of my energy was still going toward that relationship. Even though things with Facebook had started to take a turn for the worse, I guess I was still holding out that things would eventually get better.

I guess it has a lot to do with my Sicilian blood. I sometimes like to throw the baby out with the bath water. Often, my lack of patience gets the best of me.

You see, my first step in changing things with Twitter was downloading THE TWEETDECK. I say it like Donald Trump refers to himself as THE DONALD. With THE TWEETDECK I felt like I had gone from an “elementary school puppy love lets hold hands during film strips kind of guy" to a full blown “going together junior high school romance kind of guy"

If you are newbie to Twitter then you may find yourself in the same frustrating relationship I found myself in. I can honestly say though, now, 1 month after downloading THE TWEETDECK I'm already looking on-line for engagement rings. Let me explain.

1)      Understand Twitter Baggage

When you sign up for Twitter it gives you the ability to open the front door to the on-line world and scream your bloody lungs out. It’s the equivalent of me going into K-Mart and yelling, “Hey everybody. My name is Slash Coleman. I’m a storyteller. I have a PBS special called The Neon Man and Me. Does anyone want to help me?” For a moment, K-Mart gets quiet and then everyone returns to what they were doing. I am now utterly alone and feel stupid. My scream is soon forgotten.

But you not only have the ability to scream, you also have the ability to be on the other side of those screams. If you sign into Twitter, you basically get to see a bunch of other people screaming their bloody lungs out too. Once you choose to follow someone, you now get to eavesdrop on every scream they make. The more people you follow, the more screams you’ll hear. I’m following 726 people on Twitter. That’s a lot of noisy people!

2)      Learn to use “I” statements:

When you download THE TWEETDECK (free) it gives you the ability to have individual conversations with specific people inside the K-Mart. And you and everyone else inside the K-Mart will now be wearing name tags. This is so you will know who you are talking too.

Each name tag in Twitter has the @ symbol in front of it. My name tag on Twitter is @slashcoleman. Remember my friend Tiffany Glass Ferreira, founder of the Real Small Art League, who I wrote about a few weeks ago? Her name tag is @iknowtiffany.

Whenever I want her to see something that I’m screaming, I’ll make sure to put @iknowtiffany in my message. Cool huh?

3) Wait 30 minutes before you go into the pool after eating

THE TWEETDECK  will give you the ability to divide all the screams up two ways. 1)By a persons name tag and 2) By topics that might interest you. You can divide THE TWEETDECK into columns and follow these two types of screams.

As I said before, name tags have a @ in front of them. Topics have a # symbol in front of them. The # symbol is also called a hash tag. For instance if I want to mention something going on in Richmond, VA when I tweet it, It’s better to type, “I love the #rva #snow and drinking warm coffee with @iknowtiffany” rather than “I love that it’s snowing in Richmond and am drinking a cup of joe with Tiffany.”

One is a scream. The other is a part of a global conversation.

I have one column that follows #rva topics (Richmond topics) and in my Tweetdeck I put people I follow in Richmond into that column. Now, whenever anyone uses the topic #rva I can see those specific conversations.

4) Look in the mirror and say, “I love you.”

Rather than screaming downstairs, “Hey baby doll, is dinner ready?” You can now walk down the stairs and go up to your lover and whisper in her ear, “I can’t wait to eat dinner with you. I luuuuuv you. Is it ready?”

In one of my Tweetdeck columns I’ve set it up so if anyone mentions me (@slashcoleman), I can now see it immediately.  That’s pretty dang cool! When I set Tweetdeck up, I was surprised to find, within minutes, mentions of me that dated back almost a year.

5) Take it to the next level.

I’m not one of those Tweeters that has a fancy phone to send tweets out all day. Plus, it's not my style. Hoot Suite allows me to sit down in the morning and create all the tweets I want and schedule them to be sent throughout the day. Since I’m sending tweets out to every PBS station for my campaign, this application is the bomb! Plus, Hoot Suite, like Tweetdeck, allows me to break up all the screaming into columns to follow certain people or conversations. In less than a month, I’ve gone from a bonified Cro-Magnon man to a civilized bird. Tweet! Tweet!

6) Go on a Twitter Cruise

Still want to go to the next level? At Hashtags.org, you can type in a hashtag (a topic) and you’ll find out who’s using it on Twitter. Better yet, it even breaks usage up by date, hour and number of times it's been used with a really cool graph.

7) Visit the Swiss Alps and Marvel at their Beauty

At http://visibletweets.com, you can type in a name or a hashtag and all the tweets using that name or hashtag will be displayed in a stunning, incredible and quite trippy way. Put some good music on your I-Pod, type in some hashtags and be prepared to be wowed. For those who are looking for an artistic way to find out what to follow on Twitter - this is it.

8) Be Up Front About Your Intentions

Adam Ant sang a song in the 80’s about this topic or maybe he had an album under the same name. Anyway, http://friendorfollow.com will allow you to type in your Twitter name and it will tell you which followers aren’t following you back. Is it important? Sometimes it is. It looks bad if you’re following 1,000 people and only 13 are following you back. If you’re using Twitter to develop relationships most of the people you follow will want to follow you back. The best advice I was given in terms of this was from Jonah Carla Holland. She said, "You need to look at why you are following someone and see if their mission aligns with yours and reevaluate if you still want to follow them, even if they aren't following you." After that, I went through my list and un-followed a lot of people that weren't aligned with my mission. She was right. Once I did that, I found I was able to get more focused on why I was using Twitter.

9)Remember Our Anniversary

There’s a trend or a holiday on Twitter that happens every Friday called #followfriday or #ff. When you want to thank someone for helping you out or want all your peeps to follow one of your own followers, you can make a list like "@iknowtiffany, @Mox_eMediaGirl #followfriday" and send it out into Tweetland. This results in friends of friends finding out who your friends are. They in turn sometimes follow your friends and you've just made the world a better place. A website that has taken the Follow Friday concept to the next level is www.wefollowfriday.com. It’s kind of like a chain letter for Twitter. If you actually want more followers and you don’t care who they are, then this is a good way to get them.However, there's something to be said about too many on-line friends.

10) Be Etiquette!

What does this mean exactly? If you follow the rules of social engagement in your everyday off-line life, chances are you’ll want to follow them in your on-line life too. As Kimberly mentions in her blog post (see above) it's good to know your neighbors. How? Use the following steps in this order to develop stronger Twitter relationships.

a. After a day or two of following someone, send them a direct message that shows them you’ve been following them, visited their website or at least read their Twitter bio. When I found out that @GingerTice loved making artwork I wrote," I'm looking forward to checking out some of your artistically inspired tweets."

b. If developing a relationship with followers is important, then re-tweet some of their tweets, which means you copy and paste a previous tweet of theirs into your tweet bar and send it off into tweetland with a RT before it.

c. Find ways to begin to ask your followers questions or include them in your own conversations. This is an example of something that doesn’t work. A performer was trying to get on the Ellen show and wrote, “Hey @theellenshow I know a great performer you should check out!” This is just a scream.

And speaking of screams, my Jewish grandmother Hilda, when I would say something weird and funny to her would say (with her Yiddish accent) "Oh Slashtipher, Yewr such a scream!"

 

For more info about "The Neon Man and Me" and other storytelling projects by me - Slash Coleman - please visit www.slashcoleman.com

E-mail Etiquette: The Follow Thru on Facebook

When you set out to do something on Facebook do you follow through with it? I notice there are a lot of artists who will say they are coming to an event or use the "maybe" section as a reminder.  If you make a statement make sure you follow through. People are watching you. If you're not good for your word on Facebook, then how good is that word in the real world?

Manifest Your Creative Destiny

Artists, Manifest Your Creative Destiny

Is it possible to manifest your creative destiny in 21 Hours? 

I feel change in the world is dependent on our creative ambitions and so this group is meant to inspire you to utilize your 21 Hours effectively, helping you creatively contribute to the world at a much higher level.

The world and your creative life await. Join our Facebook community and embrace yoru artistic ambition. Find us at: http://bit.ly/rISx2

bit.ly/rISx2

Artist Myth #10e: Agents

Myth Ten: If I only had an agent, my worries would be over.
For the longest time, I didn’t understand why I couldn’t’ attract the attention of an agent. It seemed like on paper, at least, I was an agent’s wet dream. I had national reviews in The Washington Post, features in Backstage Magazine and American Theatre Magazine, many interviews on NPR and even a PBS Special. But even when I contacted agents whom I had met and (some who were my friend on Facebook), I seemed to get nothing but the silent treatment.

Then, one day I be-friended an agent and he told me the deal. “Slash,” he said, “I looked at your web site and you look like a really cool guy. But to tell you the truth, I really wouldn’t know what in the hell to do with you. I mean there’s just no market for renaissance men these days. It says you are a playwright, performer, visual artist, jazz musician, alternative rock musician, comedian, educator, etc. (The list was actually longer than this). If you were just a musician, I would know what to do with you. If you were just a comedian I would know what to do with you. But as it stands, I’m left scratching my head. When you pick one area to concentrate on, let me know and I’ll help you out.”

Over the course of the next few months I had what many of you in the creative world define as a “Career Identity Crisis.” To choose one thing made me feel like I would have to cut off my arm or my leg. To make the transition I began to look at others who seemed to do it gracefully.