It’s time to begin drawing our baselines for successes in the digital space. And the only way we will get there as an industry is by sharing.

Last Thursday, on a Broadway League Road Marketing Committee phone call, a pretty fun idea was born. We were talking about how to figure out what technologies people were using to access websites for road marketing,  and I got to thinking…Why not use Google Analyitcs? If a string of markets across the country all decided to include the same GA account number on their websites, in addition to their own GA account number or other tracking system code, then we could track all of that data back to a single GA account. From there, the data can be sliced and diced in a nearly infinite number of ways:  by geographic market,  by keyword, by top hits, the sky is the limit. So, this is exactly what we decided to do. Markets have begun to volunteer, and the project is under way.

If we were able to involve a significant and ever growing number of venue websites, then we could potentially begin to derive incredibly meaningful information about success stories, top content, user capabilities (Are they using iPhones to access sites? How about Blackberries or other mobile devices? Do sites with video and multimedia content really get more traffic?) Its time to start looking at the national trends and drawing the baseline for success.

Then we could take this one step further: If markets start adding content about shows not yet on tour to their sites, it would be interesting to see the kind of traffic those pages get in different markets prior to the tour launching, and measure the impact of national marketing efforts to build a brand when a tour is just launching. Additionally, if multiple markets were doing Google search marketing, we could tie the efforts back to the same GA account, and begin understanding the difference between strong and weak campaigns, and which marketing respond best to search marketing. This is just brainstorming, and certainly just the beginning of the kinds of data points that could be extracted and compiled into meaningful information from an effort like the Google Analytics Arts project.

If you are a road venue,  I hope you’ll consider participating. It’s time to demystify, quantify, and justify. The only way we can determine if building that iPhone app or having a mobile website is worth the money is to know if people will actually use it. So let’s start sharing and learning.

To participate, email Victor Hamburger, or Chris Szalaj.

Twitter is a big part of what the world of social media is doing today. Everywhere you go online and even on television these days it seems that there is a twitter graphic or button or little blue bird pushing you to twitter.

But how many of you can track what you are sending out via twitter? Are the URLs that you are posting to in your tweets actually being clicked on? Are the effective?

Well there is a new Mac desktop client, Beak, that is currently in Beta that is going to make this thing much easier.

When posting a new tweet it allows you to enter a URL for shortening and Tracking.

Sometimes we get trapped in thinking about all the ways we can reach out to our patrons. Sometimes, they just seem so far away. Now, Facebook has created a way to bring them closer, so the reach to connect with them is not nearly as far.

In a facisnating article by Steve Smith on Social Media, we observe a dialogue about the constant struggle to turn a profit on tools that have become largely pervasive, but some how not able to be monetized. Tools like Facebook and Twitter are used by millions, and clearly have high value to consumers as well as businesses, but somewhere along the line, someone forgot to send the bill. Consumers have gotten used to utilizing these services free of charge, so any charge for them moving forward  would be cause for revolt.

So how will they do it? How will Facecbook and Twitter start making money? One new feature on Facebook brings high value to businesses, and although currently free,  it may end up being a golden key to the city of dollar signs for both Facebook and businnesses trying to capitalize on social networks. It’s called Facebook Connect.

Facebook Connect allows an organization to link their site logins for patrons to the patron’s Facebook Login. Victor and Mike actually did it with this site, you should check it out. It allows users to share and syndicate information they generate on your site, and connect with their friends on your site. The reality is this: It allows you to leverage the power of Facebook’s immense social networks on your site, without reinventing the wheel, or trying to make your own social network. The networks are out there, many of them on Facebook.

As Victor Hamburger wrote to me in an email recently:
“I think Facebook Connect has the ability to change Facebook’s ability to make money by broadly incoporating it into our online culture. Instead of websites and services becoming embedded into Facebook, Facebook becomes embedded into websites and services. I think that changes the profitability dynamic as Facebook becomes an extension of what people are doing. As it gains more users, it has the ability  to be the “ID” everyone uses to get places online. Imagine you can login to ticketmaster as a patron by entering your  facebook user name and password. Or netflix or your bank… I think that is what is around the corner. Facebook and a few of the other social networks will be competing to be that engrained internet id and tool.”

Because Connect brings people and business closer together in way that holds a lot of value to businesses, Facebook should capitalize on that. Additionally, Connect uses a business’s existing assets to integrate with a social platform – they can use their own site, and don’t have to  maintain a Facebook Fan Page on a site that is in a land far away  from their own. It brings a user and their network to their doorstep instead of having to fetch it on Facebook.

Check out Facebook Connect, and think creatively with it. It is a an incredibly powerful tool that can bring your patrons closer to you.

Thanks to Michael A. Porto with ASU Gammage for sending this article to us.

Thanks everyone for attending our presentation at the 2009 Broadway League Road Conference May 7, 2009!

We enjoyed sharing information and ideas with all of you throughout the week and look forward to talking more about the future of our business on the web. Special thanks to Ed Sandler, Jessica Storm, Laura Matalon and Anita Dloniak for making this presentation possible!- Victor Hamburger

Expanding on the a session from the League’s fall marketing forum in Seattle last fall, this panel will focus on how the internet, and its new ways to reach potential customers is changing the way our industry does business. From web 2.0, and the world of Facebook, integrated sharing and twitter, to data mining internet campaigns and increasing ROI, the panel will show you the latest trends from marketers around the country as well new strategies for taking advantage of existing resources to make a big splash. – Victor Hamburger