Is Broadway The Social Media's New 'Wild West'?

As reported early on BroadwayWorld, a recent Forbes article compared 2015's highest grossing Broadway productions with those that are the top generators of Twitter traffic. Aside from HAMILTON, which was tweeted about over one million times, the article concluded that at this time Twitter popularity and box office success don't necessarily connect.

Contributor Lee Seymour has posted a follow-up, however, after conversations with press representative Patch Canada from Goldstar, a company that deals in discount entertainment tickets, and Jim Glaub, VP of Content and Community at the Broadway ad agency Serino/Coyne.

"In many ways, social [media] is still The Wild West," says Canada, "and there are many questions about monetizing, results, and more."

Among the new insights Seymour offers is the realization that Twitter is only one piece of a whole that includes Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat; all fulfilling different roles and augmenting each other as tools in a production's kit.

Social media may generate far more sales than we're currently able to track. Frequently, someone may see a social media post and be inspired to go to a website to purchase a ticket. Ad agencies can view in real-time both Twitter conversation and sales, but if one spikes and the other stays flat, there's no easy way to tell where the break happens.

Also, measuring a productions exposure on social media can be widely inaccurate. If the words "HAMILTON" and "Broadway" appear in a post, one can assume to know what the sender is referring to, but BEAUTIFUL's ranking as #2 in Twitter mentions could be credited in part to its title being a commonly used descriptive word.

In regards to traffic driven to show homepages by social media (4.15%), 71% comes from Facebook while 24% is from Twitter. This is most likely a reflection of The Broadway League's statistics showing that white women over 45 with high incomes are Broadway's dominant demographic of ticket-buyers. Facebook is the social media platform most used by women, people over 40 and those making over $75,000.

A Goldstar survey concludes that social media users (millennials in particular) are significantly more likely to buy a ticket to an event if a friend buys one first. 92% want to learn more about the event, and of those, 66% buy a ticket. But since Twitter is designed to be a communication tool and not a sales platform, it would be unwise to determine its effectiveness based on traceable sales. It should be looked on as more of an entry point that generates interest, conversation, and hopefully a sale.

Twitter is obviously extremely popular and finding a way to use its popularity to collect more usable data would be a huge undertaking. The trickiest part would be doing it without compromising the user's experience.

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