Ah, yes … some things never change, though I see this ‘Ordinary Voting Officer’ is using a fountain pen.
Voting in Brisbane, 1937
Originally uploaded by State Library of Queensland, Australia
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The theatre tribe in my neck of the woods uses Facebook … a lot. They’re gradually coming round to Twitter. Blogs are not as popular … no surprises there.
Social networking is being used, as you might expect, as a community support mechanism providing news, keeping in touch, promoting shows, providing links to items of niche interest, and of course, for online reviews. When it comes to providing feedback to artists or companies, comments in reviews don’t tend to be of much use, although they are read. You take the good with the bad, of course. Some of the worst feedback comments on reviews are the ones which sidetrack discussion into axe-grinding. The original point gets lost and a lot of heat is generated at the expense of light.
Now, producers and artists do gravitate towards the light; they want feedback … they crave it. Not only can it be good for the ego, it is, more importantly, critical to assessing the success or otherwise of a particular production, including its exposure factor and other ways in which it has been presented to the public. Of course, there’s always opportunity to provide feedback to a company via email, and many audience members do take advantage of this most ubiquitous of digital tools. Good companies always respond whether feedback’s been a bouquet or a big fat brick; that’s about maintaining healthy relationships with your customers. The company I’m most associated with has always operated this way, and I can vouch for the high success rate in converting hostile to friendly when the Artistic Director or Marketing Manager take the time to respond genuinely, politely and directly to an email or via phone. Me, I think it’s just good manners. But, back to other ways of getting feedback … and along came Talkbackr.
Talkbackr is a new online, interactive tool which allows producers and companies to be proactive in seeking constructive feedback from their audiences. Talkbackr, created by Brian Seitel (follow him @briandseitel on Twitter) was made widely available today in beta version. Brian tweeted me that he’d created Talkbackr for a theatre audience but that it could work for anything you liked. Word spread quickly on the 2amt twitter stream – and I understood Brian created it as a result of the chat there – so I took it for a spin with a dummy event. I can vouch for its simplicity and usefulness. [read the full article]
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