SOR 026: Alli Houseworth
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StitcherI’m very lucky to have Alli Houseworth as a guest on this episode of the podcast. She’s worked on promoting productions both from within a theatre company and as an outside specialist through her consultancy Method 121. Her Digital Lobby Enhancement work with the Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company has been covered in the Washington Post. She teaches on arts marketing and technology at both Columbia University and American University.
I took a lot of notes from this episode. I feel like Alli brought a nice balance of talking about general ideas that apply to theatre marketing in broad terms and giving specific examples to illustrate those ideas. In particular she has a great take on what it takes to use technologies such as social media effectively.
In this episode:
- why is social media hard – it’s so easy that even the most non-technical people can use it, why do so many theatres struggle with it
- who should get in to your press performances – with blogs and social media exploding, who is considered “press” today
- what question is your production asking of the audience – Alli shares a little bit about an interesting approach to figuring out what is unique about your production
- what it takes to get press coverage – Alli’s been featured repeatedly in various press sources, and I ask her what she thinks the key is to landing coverage
- no one cares about your production – you can and should work to change this, but you need to be honest that this is where you are starting from
- what makes a good marketing lead – how can you evaluate if someone has what it takes to help you with your marketing
Items mentioned:
- Reaching a New Audience – a kit that walks you through promoting a theatre production in today’s environment
- Klout – a site that pulls information about social media profiles and provides a simple numeric index to indicate how influential a person is
- Are Woolly Mammoth’s digital engagement efforts a glimpse at the theater of the future? – the Washington Post article that talks about Alli’s Digital Lobby Enhancement project
You can follow more of Alli’s work on her Facebook page or at Twitter @Method_121 as well as the Method 121 website.
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Thank you to Alli Houseworth for joining me on the podcast, and thanks to you guys for listening.