Chloe Veltman
Every day I read articles in the press about how important it is for anyone involved in the arts world (or indeed, any world) to use social media as a way of marketing one’s “product”. I know how useful tools like Twitter and Facebook are from what I’m told by others. And technologies that enable organizations to mail out information to select members of their mailing lists or entire lists at the touch of a button has revolutionized the way we spread the word about what we’re doing, reach new and familiar audiences, generate enthusiasm and even build funds.
What I struggle with though, is finding the time and mental capacity to both keep track of others’ social media outpourings and develop my own. I’ve been feeling a bit stressed about it lately because I keep getting emails from Twitter telling me that someone wants to “follow” me via the tool, but I just can’t bring myself to add tweeting to an already overwhelming amount of daily activities from writing this blog and filing articles to newspapers and magazines to doing all the fundraising, producing and hosting of a weekly public radio show and teaching.
I have a Facebook account which I rarely visit. I also have a Twitter account, which is an even bigger joke. I set up the account about 13 months ago as an aid for a class I was teaching to a bunch of teenagers on a summer school program on writing about theatre using different media. I haven’t been to the Twitter website since, figured out how to send Tweets, or signed up to receive anyone else’s.
The long and short of it that I’m swamped and don’t have the mental capacity to add more regular activities to to my already buckling brainload.
I just about manage to keep up with this blog five days a week. VoiceBox, my weekly public radio and web project, has a Facebook and Twitter presence. But luckily for me, my wonderful intern, Victoria Lim, handles updates via those tools. If I were responsible for keeping people informed via Facebook and Twitter of what’s going on with VoiceBox, I would very likely forget because I’m extremely overextended as it is with the business of producing and hosting the project. Maintaining the project website, remembering to send out an e-letter to my mailing list once a month updating people about the upcoming shows in the VoiceBox series or spreading other news is about as far as I can go at this point with the slim resources I have. I am so glad at least to be able to outsource the social media part the project.
I suppose the solution is to get to a point where I have enough money to hire someone to handle all the communication aspects of the project. But that’s probably a way off. It’s sort of a chicken and egg situation though, because if I were more actively using social media, maybe I’d be in a better position to generate the funds I need to actually be able to hire someone to take care of this stuff for me.
Facebooking, Tweeting, maintaining an active website and sending out emails to mailing list members are important activities in today’s world. I just wish that I could understand how people manage to juggle all of this stuff though without feeling completely overwhelmed.
www.chloeveltman.com
http://www.artsjournal.com/lies/
www.voicebox-media.org/
I feel your pain, Chloe. The issue of capacity vs presence is one I hear often when speaking with arts organizations about social media. Thanks for sharing this perspective. It has inspired my next post for the salon!
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by artsusa.org, NAHM, HamiltonPhilharmonic, Sean Redmond, TechnologyInTheArts and others. TechnologyInTheArts said: RT @Americans4Arts: Confessions of a Twitter-phobe http://bit.ly/bsomZl — Capacity vs presence – how many of you feel the tug of war? [...]
It’s all in how you choose to engage.
Twitter isn’t really about sending out broadcast messages about what’s going on when and where. Yes, you can use it that way, and it’s handy that way, but it works best when it’s an engagement, a conversation. The 2amt community and website sprang from one such conversation. From there, I’ve made good real world friends and connections; the interaction on Twitter and within the #2amt hashtag there has opened all sorts of doors and opportunities for me and others.
Better yet, it’s also a way for your fans and followers to interact and engage with each other.
Facebook is more of a broadcast message site. Yes, there’s interaction in the comments/likes, but it’s not quite the same. It’s also a closed system where you limit who can and cannot see your status and info. I might visit Facebook once a day–if that–to check in; it’s handy for staying in touch with a few people who aren’t anywhere else. As a tool for spreading information or inviting people to events, it’s been useful and can be, depending on the audience, but it’s also increasingly becoming noise that’s easily filtered out.
But in the end, you should go with whatever method works best for you and your audience/students/friends/etc. If you find it’s the email, go with it. If it’s Twitter, go with that. Once you find that part of the equation, balancing everything else should be easier.
This sounds like a personal work balance issue, not a social media issue, to me.
I have both a personal and a professional Twitter account. On the professional one, I set up Tweets to send in advance whenever I have free minutes to spare at work. I also closely regulate who my work account “follows” so that my twitter feed contains inly useful and relevant content and is not cluttered with personal info from 1,000s of people I don’t know. I use HootSuite to keep tabs on my sent tweets, pending tweet, favorite tweets, and people that have replied or messaged me. It’s all viewable on one screen there.
That works for me, but everyone has their own system.
I totally understand the idea of “one more thing” and you are not alone. The high standards I have for many of my other tasks is not applied necessarily to the world of social media admittedly, and that in my opinion is FINE. A typo on a tweet or a FB post does not freak me out the same way it would in other vehicles. A blog can be short and doesn’t have to be written with the same level of prose as some of my other communications. And I find I spend less than 30 minutes a day, usually when I’m waiting in line, eating lunch at my desk, or walking to my next meeting getting the social media side of things completed. It’s a great opportunity, but it doesn’t HAVE to be a full time job. It can be a huge time suck, and it can be hard if you are not “hard wired” to “enjoy” these interactions. As long as you are consistent (1 post a week say, and a response to a few Facebook comments even, and 5 minutes of scanning and retweeting a day) you can pretty much set the expectation that is manageable for you and…sometimes the payoff with engaging your audience pays off in many ways….
Chloe, it’s really OK to not do social media if it’s too much & you’re already promoting yourself in other ways. Twitter has been fantastic for me but it’s not compulsory.
If you’re going to use Twitter, I suggest being quite selective about who you follow & having a strategy for how you use it. My Twitter is mostly focused on art & I follow people I find interesting. A lot of what people dislike about Twitter is the overwhelm factor but that can be lessened by things like using lists or scheduling some of your tweets.
Also, you can just switch off the email announcements. Just go into settings, go to notices & uncheck ‘Email when someone starts following me’. I switched off mine recently and it was a big relief.
If you’re going to use Twitter, I suggest being quite selective about who you follow & having a strategy for how you use it. My Twitter is mostly focused on art & I follow people I find interesting. A lot of what people dislike about Twitter is the overwhelm factor but that can be lessened by things like using lists or scheduling some of your tweets.
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Chloe, you are not alone on this one lots of people feel overwhelmed with having to manage their multiple social media accounts, as it very important to be consistent in social media.
My first recommendation would be to view it more as a cocktail networking party than as a broadcasting channel, I think that would take some of the stress off. Sure, it is great that you give your friends and followers valuable info but it is also important to engage with clients and prospects. If this is still too overwhelming for you then consider hiring a social media manager, to handle the everyday communications and you can come in from time to time to have fun and add your two cents
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