Twitter users expect a truly social experience.

How “social” is your Twitter feed?

The Stratford Festival, North America’s largest classical repertory theatre does an amazing job of connecting with its followers.

Is your organization prepared to use Twitter to engage with your audience? Or is it just another marketing channel?

Engagement must come first. Without it there won’t be any marketing.

3 Questions to Improve Twitter Your Engagement

1) Do you post frequently and at roughly the same time of day?
2) Do your tweets connect with your followers?
3) Do you respond when someone engages with you?

Social media followers expect a conversation, not advertising.

This very simple notion is one of the reasons that the Stratford Festival has such a great following on its Twitter feed @Stratfest.

Social media customers expect a quick response.

Research shows that 42% expect a response within 60 min­utes.

As Jay Baer writes “Is your company prepared to handle social media inquiries within the hour? A few are. Most are not, in my experience, which potentially creates a disillusionment gap between customers’ anticipated response time, and your actual ability to provide a response.”

The Stratford Festival provides a high level of bespoke customer service across all its customer service operations. It’s managed to carry that tradition into social media.

@Stratfest does a great job of responding to their Twitter followers.

I did some research into how Festival engages its Twitter followers.

The Numbers
Collected on March 09, 2015

@Stratfest
Followers: 17.6K
Updates: 25.9
Klout 61
Joined July 2009
93% of their Twitter followers are active.

Here’s why they do so well on social media.

The Stratford Festival is very personal in its approach to social media.

The evidence can be found in the high percentage of @contacts, or tweets that were directed to specific twitter accounts. Many of Stratford’s tweets are replies, a key metric
for building relationships.

This gives Stratford a distinct advantage, because it’s engaging its followers in two way communication.

Remember it’s engagement that ultimately converts customers considering a ticket purchase to actually making a purchase.

If you don’t engage ’em they’ll never visit your theatre.

 

Previous post in this series:
The Theatre Experience Begins and Ends Online
Are Broadway Grosses Down Due to Discounts?
Three Proven Tactics to Increase Subscriptions
Toronto Theatre Klout Rankings