Selling Out: Recently, Forbes contributor Lee Seymour shared “10 Insights From Broadway’s Twitter Stats,” which compared tweets and ticket sales. His highlights and analysis — including the biggest takeaway that the two were not correlated, and that tweets do not, in fact, generate sales — attracted so much interest, Seymour posted a follow-up article, “Why Broadway Is The New Wild West – 7 More Insights From Its Social Media.”
4 comments:
The part about social media not necessarily being a traceable sales technique was an important takeaway because in this age of digital media it can be hard to differentiate between a direct method of sales and just an advertisement. While an advertisement still draws attention to something, it doesn't necessarily mean that sales will go up or people will immediately go to buy that thing or go to that show. However, I think it is a powerful marketing tool in the way the article mentioned: people will see that other people are talking about it or buying tickets to it, and they'll want to get in on it too. In a way, the "fear of missing out" that has been intensified and even coined by the rise of social media has been an incredible boon for the entertainment industry because it has made every tweet or instagram post about a show an impetus for someone else to see it. In this way it's been a more powerful advertising tool than any billboard or taxi ad because it is generated by the audience themselves, it's free, and it's driven by social cues and pressure.
I think that Twitter does have an impact on Broadway ticket sales. Most Broadway shows have a twitter account to give updates about the show and post different things that get people interested. There are also a lot of actors on twitter that have a fan base because of their talent as well as their funny tweets. The more actors and shows tweet about Broadway, the more people want to be a part of it. Twitter gives people the feeling that they have a personal connection or know the stars better because they are seeing their personal tweets and some even reply to fans on twitter. This gets people more interested in the shows and makes them want to go and buy a ticket. Other people talking about how much they loved the show, especially celebrities also has a huge influence on whether someone is going to go out and buy a ticket too. Twitter is the most important social media to the Broadway community.
I think that this article is very interesting, because personally I think that Twitter and other social media platforms does directly effect ticket sales. If people such as this author believes that they don't then no Broadway show would hire people to run Twitter accounts and Facebook pages for them. Recently in a conversation with an actor I had he mentioned that at an audition for a big project they asked him how many followers on social media he had. At first that seems really silly and arbitrary but the more popular someone is online, the more hype they can create for publicity. Now a days some of the most famous people are self made people that got popular by what they post online, which does translate to theater as well. If a friend talked to you about a show in person you could consider seeing it as well, which works the same way as if they Tweet about it.
It's very interesting to look at exactly how much an impact social media has on sales. It seems like the easy assumption to say that social media marketing matters a lot, but I'm not 100% sure that it does. While advertisement and publicity are certainly very necessary in creating a successful show, I'm not sure if social media marketing always contributes that much to that success. For example, I think the marketing team for A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder is the best social media team I've seen for a modern musical. However, that show only lasted on Broadway for around two years, with dwindling success for the latter half of their run. Shows like Phantom and Hamilton however, rely very little on social media to bring in audiences. When Hamilton first started, their social media pages basically only posted photos of celebrities that came to see the show. This is a little effective, because people might see a celebrity they like and say oh, I want to see the same shows they do. But I think most of ticket sales relies on actual word of mouth and traditional advertisement.
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