 We're streaming. The streaming missed the way we used to. But those who are watching us from afar, it's very hot in the Bay Area where everyone else is used to filming. I have a favorite. She has transferred all her knowledge. For those of you who don't know me, I'm a playwright. Yeah. So I think Megan brought me on board. Because time and again, I have proven that I can draw an audience. And that's because I do stuff for the drawing audience. The first tickets sold for the last festival were for my show. Both shows were sold out and standing with one another. Who's the fastest selling show in the festival? You know, all that stuff. And then they also invited me to come participate in the play, theater, dance, party, ball and theater area. The block festival last year, which also was very, very long time ago. And I use a blend of some social media stuff, but a lot of kind of traditional marketing. I've worked at Hedge Funds and I've worked in regular operations and marketing on the ground in Chicago and New York. And then when I moved to the Bay Area, I needed a job. And I started working for a headhunter. An executive search retained consultant in early stage startups. And she had built the entire beginning Facebook and charity. So she had an interest in what social media was. She didn't know what it was when she built Facebook because it was not yet happening. But this was years after Facebook began. I was the sixth person from my university to be on Facebook. I still had to have a .edu address for her to do that and it was not Facebook at the time. So I had a little bit of experience in how he could attract and build these products. So it was just kind of a side project. While I was researching to get to Facebook, researching this new experience online. Well, then Facebook went public and my balls were tired. And I had to find a job for myself. So I started working with other people, building on what I had done at New York, with regular operations, building on my marketing background and this new social media research that I had been doing and teaching our team about it. When I started working with small businesses, largely in the Bay Area, but also now across the country, but on content marketing, online presence, SEO, social media, I both teach people how to do it for themselves, largely in small business, also nonprofits and individuals. But also, some people I run their accounts for them. There are several businesses where I am, you see a certain handle on Twitter and it's only, I like it when it's a little bit me and a lot of my clients because they know things best about their business, they are just real time. I am a contractor for Blair and Foundation, I help them a couple hours a month. I'm coordinating what our social media strategy is and so a lot of those at PW Foundation have been during the festival. And we're trying to reach out across the nation through Twitter conversations, the new play, hashtag PWA, playwrights opportunities that we participate in, the people here in general, not just for... So what's going to happen today is Susan and I are going to have a conversation with each other. Because she is a social media expert. I am very good at community building, that's what I do down in Los Angeles. But I also come at the social media stuff as kind of a skeptic. I understand it very well and I know how to navigate it very well. I don't think that I'd like it very much today, unless you convince me otherwise. So we'll chat a bit and then we'll open up for questions and more conversations with whatever you want to know and whatever techniques that you use as well. But I think it'd be helpful for us to know who's in your name and who's your... So that sounded like a designer. I want to speak up so that our friends who are joining us on live stream actually have some idea what's going on. We are mostly playwrights in the group. We have a couple of other skill sets in here as well. So as you all know, and I hope that you know by this point now, that for those of you who submit and trying to get productions, you're always building relationships with literary departments, with directors, with artistic directors all the time, producers, etc. I hope you're doing that. That's how you're getting productions, right? Right Alan? Right? Okay, right. But you know, one thing that I think a lot of theater artists and playwrights will look is actually building a relationship with their audience. What is this audience, right? And I think it's easy to kind of overlook building that audience relationship because sometimes we think of the audience as some kind of like mysterious, monolithic... They're the audience. They just, you know, they're people that go to the theater and you're not really sure what it is. You know, maybe a few year friends and then everybody else. But you know, I think I've worked pretty hard to identify my audiences over the past, you know, 10, 15 years out of the theater. And cultivating that audience relationship, I think, is just as important as cultivating relationships with big, serious directors and artistic directors. And how do I do that? Let's talk about that a little bit. So a few years ago, I found this very interesting. John Kelly, who was the founder of Fire Magazine, published this really viral article and I think six years ago, I think around 2008, and he popularized the idea of 1,000 true fans. You've all heard of this concept. Provide and make it and actually make a living. What you really need... You don't need millions and millions of people all in your work. All you really need, I mean, if you're kind of like an independent working artist, is 1,000 true fans to sustain. And so this thing that you wrote on his blog, I was quote, quote, for you, quote, a creator such as an artist, musician, photographer, and crafts person. So now, in your own mind, I want you to start thinking of those people. How many true fans do you have and how close do you get into the 1,000? Now, the 1,000 is an exact number. It's a kind of rule of thumb. I don't think it's depressing at all because I think having a goal to think about is great and 1,000 is really not that many. I mean, how many Facebook friends do you have or you probably have close to these things. So for me in my career, in building my audience for my storytelling shows and for my multimedia plays, it's really not about quantity. It's really about the quality of audiences, massive emails. And I have them on Facebook and I'm on Twitter and I'm not obsessed with trying to get as many followers in it. I don't know if that's your perspective coming from social media. Is it a quality person? What do you plan on a quality person? It depends on how you define success. And it also depends on what you're talking about. I'm talking about... I'm saying on your social media, what you're putting out there would give me an idea of how many people I want this message to reach. Do I want to talk about activating people to support the National Endowment for the Arts so I can get those grants? I want to reach as many people as possible. But is my reach only going to be effective if it's people who believe in me and believe in my product? Then I'm more about the quality of the quantity. Is it going to be people who are going to look for my posts, especially on a place like Facebook whose algorithm springs the amount of people that you get and every time you start to figure it out, they change it? Then, yeah, I want people who are going to not only go hunt for my posts but they're going to then share my posts with other people so I get the old organic reach that used to happen. And I don't know if everybody is familiar with this algorithm, but organic reach is the amount of people who just see by virtue of showing up in their feeds. Not a paid post. It just gets there. And on Facebook specifically, if you have put a post out there and your friends, five of your friends share that post, it has a much larger organic reach because it's hitting five people's 10% of their followers, of their friends. Yeah, so I'm glad that you brought this up because Megan, you know, you're kind of us and let's get a title for this workshop. And I picked the title, Almost Nobody Sees Your Facebook Posts. And that's the title of this workshop. And Susan and I never really actually talked about what that title meant to either of us. So I think this is one of the most... It means truth. Right? I mean, you know, when you... How many of you are on Facebook? Everybody's on Facebook? Okay, yeah. That's how you found out about it. They looked for it. So you know, when you post up on Facebook and you always like to have people like them, and then you post it and they're like, hardly anyone likes the thing that you posted and you feel horrible for the entire rest of the day and just, you know, enough of that. You're black people. But the thing is that this organic reach thing is so infuriated because it's not that people don't like your posts. It's because most of them aren't seeing... Most of them, almost all of your friends are not seeing what you're posting. It's just one day you put up that picture of the cat and they got annoyed and they'd seen too many pictures of the cat with your baby where they changed your profile picture to not be you and they were like, not fine. And then they don't see you yet until Maricela tags you in a post and they see Maricela's post and they said, oh, I'm glad about it, Susan. Oh, I have to figure out how to freeze all over. I have to do this and then somebody goes, oh, I just came up. But somebody might know Playwrights Foundation and say, hey, I saw those huge ads about the festival. I want to know the details of it. Oh, I'm too lazy to go to their website, but that's not Facebook. Okay, I know that they're Playwrights Foundation. Easy, quick search. Oh, they have all these vets. There's something on Saturday morning. I might be up. Okay, I'm here. Or they typed in Playwrights Foundation to Google search and, boom, this event popped up because of this amazing thing called search and optimization. We'll get into that. We'll get into email lists. But for example, on Facebook, so we'll get back to the email lists and then we'll do a few. We'll make a sound. I think that's an interesting thing. So, you know, I know a lot of theater artists, like the extent of their marketing in terms of like voting shows that they really, really want people to come see they'll create an event page on Facebook and then invite a ton of people. And then that's it. That's their thing. You know what? If I know you very well, if I know you, if I kind of know you, I'm in front of you and I turn off the notification. So, you know, I'll visit you and then I'll let you know. So, as much as I hate Facebook, I guess I kind of love it also because I'm on it to do something. So, posting that event, you know, what I did on various days that I wouldn't like to do five posts on the same day or five days in a row of like one week, I would post a status update that was confident about something I was doing on the show another week that I would actually post a photo because, you know, the different types of things you post will also reach different people. So, you know, for example, photos will reach this group of people but not this group of people. A status update will reach this group of people but not this group of people. A link to something will reach this group of people but not this group of people. So, varying the stuff that you post on Facebook will vary to one month. So, you can't just like post status of things and expect everybody to see them. If you're trying to, if that's what you're trying to do, if you want, you know, more than, how many percent, five, ten percent. Dream five to ten. If you want more than five to ten percent to know about the thing that you're doing, you're going to have to post more than once and then more than one different type of thing. Correct? Correct. And in addition to that, when you're talking about photos, links versus just a plain old status update, even if it reaches people, they're not, they might just be scrolling, scrolling, scrolling. They're in line, getting caught, be scrolling, scrolling. But a photo's going to pop to their eyes and they're, oh, that's really interesting. Wait, okay. You have, it's called clickability. It makes it a lot of people know about. Come out. Headlines and pull people in, clickbait and things like that. You can think about your Facebook post as a little bit of a click. You want it to be as clickbaitable as possible. That doesn't mean using, it must be the title for it. It means having- I hated this video for the first 38 seconds, but then it moved my mind. How can you not click that? But, I mean, think about the ads that you see out around. Maybe the one with the compelling image that you stop and read, or is it the one that's just a lot of words. Set up your posts in the same way. Add a link to something. A link to tickets or a link to your webpage, which we will get to, that tells information about an event. You want something, but you know what, you don't feel like you're doing well with or I'm on my tablet, which does never bring keyboard. I can't post it without a photo. Don't feel that way. I'd rather have you put something out there just typed without an image or a link, but when you have the time at an image or a link, it will reach more people, and it will get more people to be noticed. But you know, your Facebook page is not just about kind of like, because I know, maybe we know some people. I know some people where I swear to God, like the only posts I see are, come to my show, get money in my Kickstarter campaign, Indiegogo, et cetera, et cetera. And I shut that person up inside. That's not, first of all, that's not the only thing that Facebook is for. And second of all, that's mostly what not Facebook is for. Facebook is for connecting you to your friends as you live in the community on Facebook. That's great. And then a dev show once in a while. Sure. Kickstarter campaign, all right, I don't believe in it, but all right, I've given, I'll never ask you for any good opinion. I have a 50-40-10 rule for my businesses. Individuals are a little bit different. But for a business, or a theater company, or an event, 50% of your social media posts should be about the larger world, the larger scope. 40% should be selling tickets or selling your Kickstarter campaign or asking someone to come to your symposium. And 10% can meet anything. Absolutely anything. Because social media is not about, is not about marketing. Social media is about engagement. It's about engagement with the community. It's about sharing things with one another. It's why it is such a neat tool. Because instead of saying, hey, here's this pretty newspaper, I'm gonna have to cut out an article and send it to my mom. I can send her a link, or I can tag people in a post, or I can tweet something out and get information out to a large group of people. What type of information I choose should be well thought out. You know, I think for me, I think for an individual audience, I think the ratio should be 19-10. I think it's 90%. You'd be a real human being on Facebook. That's what Facebook is for. And then 10%. Okay, you can tell me, I will tell you about my show when it happens or when it works out. Do you have a question about that? Yeah. I'm really curious. I grew up before the internet, and I was popular. So I'm a little more cagey than I think some of my younger peers are about life out there, having a salad or whatever. So everything I chose is friends only. Is that... And I know people sometimes who might have developed like persona for their marketing on Facebook. Like, that's the public face and then their personal Facebook page. What they think and whatever. What can you say about that aspect of Facebook? Yeah, I mean, I have... For those of you who are friends with me on Facebook, you might know that I have public posts and I also have friends and friends only posts. And then I also have different lists. I have people who I have restricted from seeing certain things, like a mom. So yeah, I'm very careful as to... I'm very thoughtful when it comes to what I am posting. There is stuff that I think is for the public. There's also fun stuff, like, you know, Aaron, you love my, you know, folks from my mom, but that's not for public consumption. That's just... I don't know, I think she's right. So when you have like a public... Okay, so do you know what all this is? I probably don't have it. Right, so do you want to explain of public pages? First, I want to make a comment as a follow-up to Roberta's piece. Regardless of where you're putting it, if you're putting it on your blog, a website, on social media page, you should not put anything out there that you wouldn't want unless you're very careful about it, that you wouldn't want your mother, your boss, your future employer, or your lover to see. Because scraping the internet is really... I want to curse really hard. I've had to do it for some clients and it is not guaranteed there are little fingers that will find the page that you don't want anyone to see that you want it to erase. So think before you tweet Facebook page, publish. Because you might not be able to get rid of it no matter how much you want to. So that goes first. Two different pages, having like a business page and then your personal account page. There are some advantages to being a business. You know, whether it's your company or a playwright, you're able to schedule most Facebook in particular. Schedule them in advance through their scheduler, which means that it reaches people organically in a better way if you try to do it through an aggravator such as Sweet or something, Facebook hides those. So they developed a scheduling tool for businesses and it's really... Yeah. For Facebook. I'm sorry. I'm talking about as a business. As individuals, I think that it shows up a little bit more but it knows they want things. They develop a scheduling tool so that you can use their tool. On that note, please don't link your Twitter and your Facebook account. Please don't. You have two different audiences. People who are looking at you on Twitter or people who are looking at you on Facebook have different mindsets. And if they're looking at you on both, they want different information from you on each of us. Okay, so stop now. The advantage of having a public persona treating yourself as a business versus your hey, these are my friends from grammar school through university and I need to earn my dog, sitter and all So just to clarify, so you know that you see celebrity Facebook pages in someone's head. So individuals can have their own kind of public page and separate from your friends. To be used in a professor's past, so Cheryl D. Huddleston playwright. It's up to you if you want to publish things. If you want to create a different persona, that's a really great way to do it. If you feel like you're going to have people follow you it's a great way to do it. There's the problem with that though but here the whole thing that Facebook has been doing is promoting posts. So I have a cat that's internet famous to take a store shop. He has his own kind of public page and for the past, I don't know for the first two, three, four years that he had that page. Anytime I posted a thing, tons of people, you could actually see how many people actually see your posts on those public pages. He would get tons of views. Facebook has really been pushing this thing for promoted posts. Promoted posts. Where you have to pay yourself. So I've noticed that in the six months to a year period anytime now that I post something, the views have been dramatically because they want me to put in money to look at my cat phone. So I don't know how useful it would be. It depends on what you want to put out there. It depends on whether you want to spend your time separating your public posts which would be essentially your public persona. Promoting your show talking about professional things saying like just finish the first draft of blah blah blah so excited celebrating the work time. You just have to go to work five times. Work Zuckerberg has a private page with a couple of people that other people can follow in this front. Anybody can do that. So there is an option in Facebook Yes they created that follow up. You have a follow up option. Yeah I mean I think that it's a lot of trouble. I run 14 in Facebook pages. It takes a lot of coordination. It takes a lot of thinking. Sometimes it's like from certain sites it's gotten better but you can't share to the correct account so you've got to go back and cut the page to do that. Sometimes it's easier just to have one. We can look back around Facebook and a little bit but I kind of want to talk about Twitter a little bit because I'm always on the verge of getting rid of my Twitter account and you know it's like I have a few hundred followers I hardly ever use it. I follow like five people. There's a few hundred people following me and if you learn I can't get rid of I want to get rid of it. I don't like it. This is my mom. How many people read a print newspaper? How many people read a newspaper online? How many people read their social media accounts? How many more? How many people know what my shirt is? How do you know what my shirt is? That kid got into the newspapers That kid is known because of Hashtag Back Kid Hashtag SF Back Kid Back Kid saved the world people sharing in advance of that kid going out and saving Gotham through the main English foundation it would never have made the nightly news it would not have made the Chronicle I'm Associated Impressions If it hadn't been for people pumping up this phenomenon before the day that Miles went out there and Miles man I'm donating you your fun I don't do Kickstarter but if you go vote but this is good Social media was a great way to get a phenomenal story out a story about a little human being who wanted to be a superhero It was amazing to me to see the build up to that day in San Francisco This is why I'm on Twitter Because it's a better news What if you're a non-phenomenal human being who just can't I'm on too many social media I'm on Facebook I'm on LinkedIn I look at none of it except Facebook It's fun Twitter is not fun for me I was a late adopter I was a doubter What was the thing that turned me around What is Twitter for? Twitter is Twitter I treat as a newsfeed It's an actual newsfeed They do not prevent me from seeing my followers from seeing people to get the things that were from a day ago If I know that there's a person who I find interesting I can go to their direct feed and read all of their tweets back day after day unless they're an obsessive teacher Is it the reach of both Twitter or even Facebook? It depends on how often you check It depends on how many people you follow If you are selective about who you follow like 700 different accounts but not all of those 700 accounts tweet all the time But if I want to know why my lights go out PG&E, I call it PG&E They're going to tell me there's an outage in this area who will let you know when it's coming up I don't have to go hunt anywhere It's right there in my feed It's an interesting quick conversation I can look through really quickly and get in a short amount of garbage what somebody's trying to tell me If I want to link to something else it's there Earlier since you were talking about how Twitter is about the reason why I have a link about where I joined it is because I've developed a connection that it's been better for my friends If you're on it anymore, you can see what they're talking about And people are trying to be first I mean It is difficult in 140 characters or less to have the kind of conversation that you can have when you're on the phone with someone or in a room, but there are some really nice conversations that happen about the state of theater, the state of the arts Playwriting problems There are a lot of playwrights on Twitter and they're active I've heard from a lot of different playwrights both here in the main area and ones that I have met just by being on hashtag 2amt hashtag New Play Those are the large ones New Play is curated by HowlRound If any of you doesn't read HowlRound you should It's a great source of information about theater Hi HowlRound Yay In HowlRound H-O-W-L-R-O That Playwriting being such an individual task for a large portion of the development of your play is a way to talk to other people across your discipline I mean we're lucky in the main area there are a lot of playwrights but there are playwrights who are in every city in America and don't get to get together with people and have have writing groups necessarily who don't know someone else who's going through the same work issue and so they come to Twitter and talk things out Yes So I have Twitter to come but I haven't ever used it and I think the thing that prevents me from starting I don't know what I would think because I don't really have the following and it's what you recommend going to some of these New Play hashtags with listening terms like you walk in a room listening to what you're talking about and you might want to contribute to that I feel like I'm in a room shouting out to people The one thing that is problematic about Twitter is the time because so much it is in real time If you did something an hour ago people are probably not going to see it Another rule of thumb, Facebook versus Twitter is post one thing on Facebook a day unless it's a really, really interesting to get the second one out there You can tweet You can do a thousand tweets a day and it would be okay if people on Twitter would not get angry at you unless you're spamming spamming No, but if it's about different content that would be fine there's no rule on Twitter and Twitter actually won't let you post the same thing twice it will refuse your tweet so you have to bury it even if you're tweeting about the same thing you have to bury it in order for it to go out bury it in order for it to go out One thing that I highly recommend is the weekly Thursday new play chat It's a great way to meet by Twitter other theater makers at this point around the world because we do have some people in the UK who are active at this point and you might find some people whose conversation is interesting and you want to follow up with I had a session with someone who's in Kentucky yesterday because he's trying to do some of what I do he's also an actor and he's trying to build a little side gig We had a Skype conversation yesterday because he saw some posts that I had made on a new play chat in Brazil and it was like, I'm interested in what you have to say, we have a chat it was great and then in Friday I'd follow up with him On the back of the back of the thing which I was like, if I recommend I'm just going to say all this stuff about things going viral is actually like improving yourself things that go viral are actually not planted like faith but placed by the people more often than you think I'm curious about the fact that it's the same kind of social media that a few very influential people got to work out and that's how the music gets done versus somebody like somebody who works in mainstream they're supposed to be different Is that mad? How do you get something to genuinely if you don't have that thousands and point yet how do you help your life or your work go viral in a way potentially organic If you're engaging with other people it will happen but you have to be committed to engaging Yes, the Make-A-Wish foundation has a press representative and put this out but there are tons of things that PR reps put out and nobody cares about It really depends on what you're talking about It's like you can do something that goes viral you might you're not going to be able to monetize it or make a living out of it so it's like what is the point of working So I have another question for you We had a question A few questions about Facebook and Twitter I agree absolutely I hear somebody was saying the thing about a really really good connection Well I'm very very interested in having my work produced on Twitter and I have new followers that I didn't see but that I have somebody who is now reading my play who I do not know because of Twitter and for me, Facebook has kind of faded in the background The last three or four months I have I'm like this is intensive I'm like a person I never thought I would be too but I haven't found that The other thing I just wanted to just mention briefly was that I think for playwrights I think psychologically and this is how I feel about myself is difficult for me to market myself It's difficult for me to sell my plays It is much easier for me to do it on social media but even saying that I have to ask myself forward to say things on Twitter about my own work I think for me it's an interesting little different persona I have to be somebody else other than a person who sits and writes a couple of books I have to be You have to be where you have to You have to be where you have to be I actually want to address this because this is one of the first points I wanted to make to talk about yet I think some of the language the playwright self-emotion thing I think it would be helpful for us to change some of the language I think for theater in general I don't know how many times you get emails from theaters from your friends who are like hey I'm in the show please come support me please come support me you're some kind of charity case that you're begging to be seen but if you're creating something up quality and I hope that you are then you should be able to speak about it in a way where you're exciting people I think one of my strengths as a promoter is that I don't want to get people excited about the thing I'm doing I can only get people excited about the thing I'm doing I know a lot of people who are like they just finished the first draft of the play but barely a first draft of the play they have a meeting and it's like hey if you have time come and maybe kind of give me feedback on this thing it's a little bit rough but I don't have time I don't have time no Fritz does not do that Fritz is like this is the best play that you can look at am I right you're right but yeah I have this when I teach now at USC I have this rule right before we do feedback sessions on people's work what we do is we workshop plays and scripts in class and before people read them out loud a lot of the time students will apologize for the work before it's time and you've been in this workshop where it's like okay it's your turn and the students go this is really rough I know that the thing in the middle is that my number one role during workshop is you cannot apologize for your work and I feel like I see a lot of people apologizing for the work and how are you going to promote your work and get people to come see your work and get people upset about your work and you're always apologizing in subtle and not so subtle words but it's usually very subtle words I don't have time nobody has time get me excited about it I'll make the time can you say that left I can't hear that someone else will love what you love about your play pull a quote take a picture of the script it will compel them to come and see it if you have multiple accounts retweet from those accounts ask your friends to retweet from those accounts reach out to people because other people will get excited about your work when you are excited about your work I thoroughly and I read other tweets and I get ideas about marketing organizations and really huge theaters I absolutely listen to their language and ask my company to see that I was starting to be suddenly please, please, please you have to go in the other direction which is not easy work we're introverted folks it's not an easy thing it's not an easy thing but it can be learned I perform I teach I'm one of the biggest introverts I understand but it's a thing that you learn there are lots of books that you can pick up in terms of figuring out how to get out of that add screeners yes, add screeners please give your handle so I listen to much Facebook for a while I have my own blog which I've actually I want to go back to that long before I'm kind of fighting about but my enthusiasm for Twitter and Facebook I really want you to have my enthusiasm because forms of media including my own media have gone down between people who are really working through either the NSA email or text the best way let's take a few more questions about that I personally feel Susan might disagree I feel like you can drop the Twitter and Facebook but you can't drop people I feel like email lists are the most valuable player in terms of reaching people and we're talking about getting people to come to your shows I don't know that Facebook and I think that I can get rid of my Facebook and I think that it stops building up Facebook and Twitter and still get people to know my shows just to improve the you know because I know my audience I know who they are I know who and who the media and who I was and my website and blog and that's a valuable thing remember when MySpace was the thing and you were collecting friends and fans on MySpace and then yeah sure it looks like Facebook and Twitter and you'd be wrong for a long time but I don't know I know that email is not going, and how many of you are here And in 2011, I started subscribing to the gay community now, which is no longer gay. But I was really struck by it. Yeah, I think having a good email list is great. And people that I know, John, I know that John and Maryse will come to anything that I do in the middle. And it's like vice versa. So I'll reach out to them to say, hey, I'm doing this thing. I mean, that's a completely different place. They're friends of mine, too. I think the most important thing is to work with the platforms that you're comfortable in. Because you will be confident. And you will be able to promote yourself or your idea or be able to share what you want to share if you're comfortable on it. There is so much available out there. I don't want you to leave this thinking like, I have to now open accounts on this, that, the other thing. Because you won't be able to keep up. I guarantee you won't. Unless you spend all your time instead of writing your plays and having your life, you will spend all your time trying to build these relationships on various platforms. I'm not an Instagramer. I never have been. I run it for other people, their accounts. But it's not my thing. That's okay. I'm a Twitter person. I like that. I'm on Facebook because I've been on it for so long. I like that. I have Pinterest. I use Pinterest as a tool for dramaturgy for shows that I'm working on. Because it's a great visual source for me. And I can share those images with other people. With my director, with a designer, a designer can share with me. I find that useful. Lauren asked us to pass this on. She loves Tumblr. That's her thing. She sends up a Tumblr for everyone of her plays while she's writing information about what she's putting herself and it turns into a marketing tool. When people produce her plays anywhere around the world, they can order her Tumblr and say that was her intent for this piece because she's written about it and she has it out there in the public sphere. But she loves Tumblr. I'm not so great on Tumblr. You need to pick the things that are going to work for you, enrich your life as an artist, and make you comfortable. I totally agree. The one thing that I argue against on getting rid of things that you've already been active in or that might be interesting to you is the possibility that it helps you when somebody searches for your name if they don't know you already. It's more reasons to get your own. But it raises your results. If they look you up and add playwright to you, that helps you when they're in Bing or Google or if there are any other search engines. We'll just talk about websites. Hang on. But also, there are leaders who like to promote you on all of these things and if you have an account they'd like to link to you. And that can help, especially if you're not produced as widely as some people here are. It might help. You might be able to find your persona and say, oh, okay, that's what this person is about. They might, their play might get picked in this other place. I don't know. It seems that people who are getting produced a lot have some presence out there. And so people have not. So it's all a crash. It's like getting into university. Why anybody gets interested. But I do think that having some kind of web presence in this century is a good idea. All right. I'm keeping my Facebook. I'm getting rid of my LinkedIn. I'm getting rid of my Twitter. So you can't find me on there after now. But I think the email list is important. But I also think the personal website is good as well. And I think that's that. I think that's normal on Facebook. Absolutely. Absolutely. You need a place if it's just a landing page with a way for people to contact you. You need a way for people to find out how to contact you. And you need it in a way that if they type your name in a search engine, they're going to find you. A company that's doing readings of yours can link to it. So people who might come and see your reading or your production can say, what's this playwright about? Who is this person? Where could I learn more about you, Seth? I really like that. I don't know why I might not know what else we're doing. I looked back on the website who I went to the reading for and might not know more about the playwright about the playwright that they can do. So it's not only that you're using yourself but allow us as a theater company to help them out who maybe indirectly the way posts are free during the production or reading or show or workshop. People do do that. They do say, oh, I saw Don's play. That was really great. I want to know more about his work. Well, every theater company that does a reading or production of your show is not going to be able to give a full in-depth bio about what this list of plays you've written are but your website can. And it's also going to tell your agent's information or whoever your manager's information or your information some way to say, I want to do this play. I want to do his play. Oh, that stuff was really great. That was so interesting. I want to, I love to find all this information but oh, she does that too. Oh, fabulous. I get a lot of emails. I respond to every one. Well, are you going to respond to every single one? It's just, it's the best way. It's like, it's the new business card. I mean, it's not so new but I still think you should have business cards because there are some people who you'd be looking at and you'd be down the street and it's great and it should have your web page out there obviously and any other information you're going to give out. I don't always do one of those. But it's a way to control how people contact you too. You can, when it comes to your web page you can have it set up so you know that it came from the web page and this is the way somebody contacted me. This is how they found me. Oh, it's a nice filter. And it creates that public persona that's separate from your personal persona instead of somebody saying like, oh, this is, it's his Facebook page and the cat, et cetera, et cetera. It's like this, okay, this is what he does for a living. This is his background. This is his CV. This is where he's been produced. This is what he has coming up next. But on a web page, the important thing is to be able to update it yourself because paying someone else to do that is very costly. So I use wix.com and wix.com. Very easy interface, very, very easy to work together on a really, really good looking website. It depends on what drives you. If words drive you or if images drive you, you should try out, you should do test trials on different platforms and see what's easier for you to work on. Squarespace is fabulous for a lot of people. It's very visually oriented. With, you know, drag and drop. WordPress is much easier for putting content in and for being able to control the HTML content even for someone who just gets an HTML from dummy's book. But it's not as visually pleasing in a lot of ways and there are thousands of themes to choose from. That would be difficult. Weebly is another one that some people use in addition to wix, a little bit easier interface but not as much customization. So you need to think about what kind of web page you want, what's important to get out there. And if you need help, seek out someone like me who works on all of the platforms and have sessions to figure out like, hey, what am I looking for and what's the best way to do this? Or set something up for me and then teach me how to update it. You want people to update it because your information should be current and hopefully your work is continuing to grow and you want to put that information out there. Yeah, you know, it really depends on what your objectives are. You know, is it about kind of reaching out to theaters and connecting with other playwrights across the country? Is it about getting people to come to your shows in the San Francisco Bay Area and play? What is that objective? We read this great book called Essentialism. The Discipline Pursuit of Lips which talks about goal setting and really kind of figuring out what you want in your career and different aspects of your life and basically cutting out anything that does not support that goal. And there's a great quote in it. I forget the name of the author, but you quote somebody else. And the quote is, you can never overestimate, you can never overestimate the unimportance of almost everything. And it's true. I mean, if you think about your life and what's not essential, it will blow your mind and which brings me back to this getting rid of the Twitter or LinkedIn thing. It's like, I feel like it's not essential for me, for me. Well, I mean, for me and my public social media, every time I post something, I have that same thought. I'm really into this. I believe it, you know. So in the last couple of hours, there's been a disturbance. There's been a lot of Twitter, and I just can't find a balance because I feel worse than any man. I think it takes a bit of soul searching. To kind of figure out what that balance is. And there's been a lot of discussion about moods and how social media affects moods. Feeling good about yourself and feeling bad about yourself if something makes you feel bad about yourself, don't do it. Don't read about your ex from high schools, beautiful new career, family, love of a lot. Because you know what? That's not going to make you feel good. If it makes you feel good, then read it. It's amazing what this new connection you were not connected with in the traditional sense has done to the psyche. And if it's not good for you, get out of there. But you need to have something online. So have a website. If you have nothing else, have a website. So people can find you. So your audience can find you. So theater companies can find you. So individual artists can find you. And spread the word out. Is there anything else that you want to elaborate upon? Or is there anything we haven't touched on? What do you want to discuss? Also your email list. Do you run it through a service? I run it through your mailing list provider. But for people that I know will come to my shows if I'm doing one, I'll email them individually. Alex, what one you're comfortable with? When you set up your template, which is a great idea, so people see some type of signature from you, whether you started the same way or you have a beautiful background, whatever it is, you need to test it on different servers. You need to test it to different email addresses. Set up calls and email addresses. If you have, if 50% of the people on your email address are on Gmail and another 25% are on Hotmail and another 3% are on Yahoo, don't optimize that email for Yahoo because it's going to show up completely differently for the people on Gmail. You need to think about the way you're reaching your audience, not just the people on the content you put in there, but what they're going to see. And then you have to check it on a mobile too. Because people can check the basket area in their email and see these days on mobile. And if you have this beautiful image, like a great graphic for your new play and it's taking up all mobile space and it's not going to load, people are going to read all of the wonderful content that you spent testing. So commit the time to setting up your email newsletter or just the email announcing something. Take the time to set it up. Check it on different accounts. Check it in different browsers because it also shows up differently that way. And once you think you finished it, shut it down, walk away for a half hour or an hour, and come back and look at it. It's guaranteed you have a spelling mistake or one of your links doesn't work and you need to stop your brain, go away and do something else, come back and look at it. I absolutely cannot stand when somebody sends me a corrected email newsletter later. I say, screw it, I'm not great, like you didn't spend the time to fix it in the first place. I'm not interested. I get way too much stuff in my inbox. You want it to go upright the first time. We are so angry up here. We are so angry. We are so angry. Elizabeth. So the question is about search engine optimization, also known as SEO. So SEO is how search engines such as Google and Vape provide their results. Sites that are optimized that have keywords that have content, that have new content, that have been around for a certain amount of time show up higher in a feed than something that is brand new, only has images, doesn't have any keywords. Depending on how you are setting up your web pages, program those things in differently. There are widgets to help you with, there are people to help you with. Companies, large companies like OpenTable, Coca-Cola, GE, pay people a lot of money to optimize their search engine, the gap. Anybody who is selling something, spends a lot of time on SEO. SEO is in the middle of a change right now. Google is saying that they are going to not use it as much. We are not quite sure what is happening, but it is still relevant as of today. So that is something you can talk about a little bit offline if you totally don't understand it. There are also some great little tutorials online if you could have a web page or a blog site. Google, SEO and that, whatever that service is, and you can watch tutorials on how to optimize your site. It is very helpful. It is going to help people when they look for you, find the not just like, oh, eHunter screen. Okay, that is a clear information. What you want is your site to be first. Okay, earlier that, you just talked about developing your voice and how you are translating who I am. Let's say she is having a meeting with an artist and she is emerging, figuring out what I am interested in and getting more information on how I am going to help as an artist in the world, both in the real world and also online. So if you have, like for your clients, they have, I don't know, I was like, I am talking about a different question and it is about my values, it is about family investment, what kind of things it will help you get started. What are the kinds of things that you want to reach people with? Do you want to, is it a topic that is driving you? Is it something that just happened on the street? Yeah, developing your persona is something that I think is difficult for all artists. I think it is a lifelong process but I feel like your public persona is just an example of yourself a little bit more amplified. So is it also your playwright? Playwright, I also, I need more. Okay, well think about the type of plays you are writing or the type of work that you are advising what you want to project out there about that work is it is it satiric, is it straight, what is the vocabulary of your work and go from there? Because the vocabulary of your work should be linked to the vocabulary of yourself. What I want to post is what I want to present. I post things that I've heard later because as Susan said it is very difficult to scrub the internet for cool things and just as difficult as it is for you to walk on the streets because your chances are maybe it will be inspiration for you later for a piece or a piece of dust from your Tumblr as she's writing her play to help her keep information in one space. Doing that with the social media tools help move it to the people back and say why did I post that picture of my work to me or how did that help me at this point. So it's kind of one of those things too because also if you go back to years and you've been putting between for however long you can see or talk about it three years ago I was really obsessed with the first bird to be in that moment I don't know why but maybe I was going on a trip to Seattle and I wanted to sit here but there's some things that were kind of nice if you don't know what to talk about which I love the news I do think I didn't know it was like I knew that I didn't know all about my writing process and I knew that because of the difficulty inspiration it requires so it's great you can use it necessarily if somebody searches the hashtag on a search engine that's how you it's great since you were talking about something and you're again talking about whatever you're looking at or for reasons or your tag or something on a blog post and then you can use that search tool you can find others that have it you can use that same hashtag that maybe you're in the media area or across the nation already in a part of the world you can start a conversation with them so what Cheryl D is talking about is what you can find and have a place to use there she might have found something from a hashtag or something like that it's a little way for you to also use you can actually just spend 20 minutes using that hashtag or you can find a hashtag someone's talking about the media light the hashtag that they're using then you can tag that hashtag and go into it so you can kind of start falling deeper but then you kind of stranger go a little bit more so even if you don't want to talk about you can just spend time searching and they archive this then you can therefore go back again and look at some of the things that you love using the light it's a really great way to just not so put things out so you can search and you also don't want to keep going it's true it's true there's a lot more hashtags out there I'm just going to say there are a lot of people for example that I could use hashtag that or on our Instagram close on our website because there happens to be a South American beauty contest hashtag gay media so now if I wanted to have a photo we have a widget on our Facebook page tag for Instagram photos but if I used just hashtag I would get a lot of head shots essentially of these beauty pages but I had pictures of Don Prology Prology in the retreat and then a princess so it happened which is great but you do have to search and I can it was Phillip I had to change Buffalo Bones to Buffalo Bones to play true Buffalo Bones and I didn't know that so I searched this is quick I just have a basic misunderstanding of Twitter is there a particular tutorial or a way to learn about Twitter that you've been and I think I'm really I don't use a few words so there are some sites that explain hashtags that explain kind of ways to tweet I can send you something I can send you a little cheat sheet but Twitter themselves at least they used to I've been on it had kind of a guide to using Twitter I haven't seen one it doesn't happen and it there are some quick things like if you're on Twitter and you start to tweet with someone else's handle which is what the app sign and then their Twitter name they're going to see it and the people that follow both of you are going to see it but nobody else's if you put a period before it and put the app sign and their handle then everyone who follows you is going to see it there's a great one called the send of social media marketing how did you begin to cultivate not in a thousand yet that's a call well I think I started with my blogs before that before the blog I had my email list going I just went and emailed well actually before email I had mailing addresses I would always send notices and then an email came and then eventually the blog became big blogging is not as typing sort of as big a platform as it used to be just because all this other stuff is that's why I think it's like what's the next thing that's going to stand out whatever is popping out but I always if it's a multi-character play that's happening I always let people know when I'm going to be that's the show so that I can actually chat with people who are there who have come to my work before and I will always plan for example so it's an opportunity to kind of further connect with people who are on new shows I've met so many people just randomly in the audience last year I met a couple of people like oh we've been following for three years and now I'm hanging out with them working three more or something I'm going to do a storytelling workshop with them I think at some point they invited me to do I met this other guy at the last festival these are people I've never met they ended up on my email somehow but just because I was there and present it allowed me to kind of create connection in a way that I would if I was there to have a show running into the city that you're living in I would say try to go to every single show at least at the end so that you can touch base with people who have spent the time and money to come to your show so I would make a commitment to say if you can at least show up to to begin as people are exiting so that you can say hello I always thank people for coming to my show I'm going to do an email after after the thing they've come because I tend to know who's in the audience so I will go out for drinks out there and how about connecting with viewers that you didn't have a prior relationship with when you're trying to get your words seen by them okay this is moving out of the realm of promoting your shows moving to the realm of how to get theaters to kind of know is this the sample yes so with people like Mary Stella I guess quitter has been been a very successful for you in terms of making those types of connections I guess I'm not on it I'm not to make those types of connections so I traditionally where I'm sending out of course query letters to people that I have prior relationships with that sort of theaters of course I meet people at conferences at events and sometimes I'll just reach out to people that I've been interested in getting to so I don't use any of that so I don't and that is fine I think it's a great chance to develop that personal connection because lead managers, artistic directors get so many queries that to have a personal connection you can invite them it's new in your life you know I run down in LA I have a standing playwrights and literary managers over the night that happens a few times every year and it's not for me to get my work up because like as I mentioned yesterday I like write one play every five or six years so it's not enough about that it's just it really is about creating this community of people that you're genuinely interested in and you want to play over with and take the money What would you say to someone is the most important thing about meeting a theater company? I think the most important thing is that you know the theater company you know they're important so if you're in the Bay Area and you're setting up queries or you're trying to get people to work wherever in the theater it's the number one thing that needs to happen is that you have to be able to be familiar with the kind of work that you and who the main players are to really be connected to that theater at least on the audience level first Do you guys have any other questions about this area? I don't know what stages people are at in your play It depends on who's running their account and you guys I know some who run the account for some theater companies because it is very clear of the description of their staff who is whether or not they're passing that information among some of the managers in the 80s I think that that varies by company certainly the smaller companies the people who have the power to produce are paying attention because they may be running for themselves Yeah, just to speak a little bit about what they're doing for me I'll share how to play find out how my contacts iterate find their agent my biggest tool is research when they write to a website just to echo that it's the greatest thing ever when their website is there it has either their agent's contact information or it has how to contact them and ask to see their play when it takes me searching through multiple pages on the pool to find some of the information I'll just give up to be quite honest I don't have all this time in the world to really be looking and hunting someone down so I think definitely I just remembered you emailed me for my schedule Did you like it? I loved it so that's how the tool is finding people because you hear about the play and you want to read it but if you can't contact them it's just I don't have an hour to find your play so I just want to echo websites amazing work on your Facebook page you don't want to have your email just having some way that I can contact you because I don't really feel comfortable contacting people through Facebook I feel a little sketchy about it personally and also so people who send you messages via Facebook and they're not your friend goes into a separate folder that you may never see once every six months they'll be like who wrote me in the other folder it's called other folder you don't even see it it's really I can't even tell you where it is right now when you put the messages there are two tabs if you're tracking on your mobile it's probably harder to find thank you thank you for telling people that what we're telling them is right that's exactly what we wanted on your website if you're going to do a email list if you're not convinced by friends you're never going to be in addition this is just a signature it's very easy to set up and your flood page should be there I personally I personally don't believe in that I feel like people try to sell me that's okay I put my mission statement on my email and I've gotten more time to respond I'm just adding to it oh we got it if you do this is kind of an offshoot but if you are perhaps a workshop of a play of yours and you happen to engage a graphic designer or did a graphic yourself certainly if you engage a graphic designer make sure that you have them give it to you in multiple sizes multiple logos so that you can easily upload it to your accounts you can have that little tiny one where there are ways to find out what sizes you should do but if you are ever say you're going to self-produce something or make sure you get that graphic from them in several formats in sizes because resizing it yourself final things we want to chat about before we wrap up one more question have using Dropbox have people access to what have changed some musical that's on Dropbox I am as a sound designer I don't know any sound files or anything so Susan what are you working on next what am I working on next I am in the hot road for a while but I have small people small people take up a lot of time so I've been workshopping two plays and what's your twitter handle my twitter handle is at Susan M as in Mary Shay so there is this big area story telling institution tell them on Tuesday which happens on 4th Tuesday every month where people come and tell stories on Tuesday at 7.30 so tell them on Tuesday dot.org you won't find me on twitter but you can find me on facebook if you google me you can find me on address it's at the Martian Berkeley you can find me easily if you want to contact me thank you so much for getting on this board thank you all for coming to this benefit please know this is one of just some of this today we've got three plays in one other talk today we've also got three tomorrow we are trying to support playwrights in any way we can that includes classes like this that includes helping develop their work we've got five plays for you to support and see each other's work see the awesome work that they're doing we chose these plays out of 500 but also to see how those plays are talking to each other and they will no doubt be talking to your own work as well so do come and see them it is cheaper if you buy a festival pass or flex pass but also don't miss the rest of the conversations they are also fascinating yesterday we talked about writing for the now how do you write about things that are happening immediately right now later this afternoon we're talking about how playwrights write about difficult topics things that people want to talk about in the dinner table something that is meaningful we have two plays and we haven't talked about them but also just using the message director or your playwright or your dramaturg how and why so coming from that thanks sir