Check out the beautiful pictures on the Joffrey Ballet's blog, j-Pointe.
And check out Houston Ballet's newly minted En Pointe.
Why a blog for a ballet company?
Almost all art dance companies, and that includes modern and other forms of dance outside of ballet, depend on funding beyond ticket sales. For many companies, ticket sales don't even make up half their annual budgets, so many companies depend on grants and more importantly corporate and personal donations.
Why Does Anyone Give To The Ballet?
There's a saying in the charity development community: people don't give money to organizations. They give money to people they know. A company that depends on charitable contributions must always be reaching out to the community it serves so that people in the community feel that the company is an essential part of the community. They have to feel that life would be worse off if the company wasn't in town. Only then can a company start to build the kind of support to make it successful in the long term.
10 Ways Blogs Beat Newsletters
There are lots of ways to make this happen, and one essential piece is constant communication with the community. Traditionally, arts organizations have done this by sending newsletters reporting on the latest activities of the company, upcoming performances, and other information, but newsletters are expensive to print and mail, and impose a deadline for submissions that usually leads to a mad scramble before the deadline to throw something together.
Blogs are a better way to handle that communication:
- They're free.
- They can be updated any time.
- They're very easy to write and publish so you can always report the latest news and information.
- It's very easy to add video or pictures to blog posts. And if there's one thing the dance world has in excess, it's beautiful pictures of beautiful people doing beautiful things.
Leila Drake and Yuan-Ming Chang in the Arabian dance from Nutcracker - They can be read in many ways which makes it convenient for everyone. You may be reading this on the blog website. Or perhaps you subscribed through email, and this post is in your email reader. Or you may use the RSS feed to automatically fetch new updates.
- They're easy to pass around. Just copy the blog address and email it to your friends.
- An entire new demographic (the coveted 18 to mid-30s) that is woefully underrepresented in our audiences uses the Internet extensively and often exclusively. The Internet provides new ways for new people to discover our art, and this is just the tip of the iceberg. For a large number of people, the Internet is their only source of information: if a company doesn't have a website, it may as well not exist.
- Blogs can easily link to each other, as we did for the Joffrey and Houston Ballets, and this kind of referral, unknown in physical print media, is another avenue of discovery. How often have you stayed up a bit too late following interesting links from various websites?
- Many newspapers can be read on the Web as well: you can easily point your readers to reviews and features written by your local papers.
- Size doesn't matter. You no longer need a huge budget to put out a lavish newsletter or brochure: every company is now on equal footing as long as they're willing to put the time and effort into their blog.
Of course, just like perfect ballet technique (or feet), this technology is but a tool which can be used well or badly. An interested, knowledgeable, enthusiastic human still has to fill the blog with interesting and relevant information, and they have to do it regularly. Think about the websites you visit often: how many haven't posted any new information in a while?
They also have to do it with a sense of earnestness and authenticity that reflects the company and its place in the community. The last thing anyone wants to read is some sanitized, cookie-cutter template that tries to be everything to everyone. You are an integral part of your community. What is your unique identity in your community?
So there it is in an extra-large nutshell: how blog sites can help ballet (and other dance) companies. If you know of any other ballet company blog, feel free to send the link our way, and we'll add it to our list.
3 comments:
excellent facts on blogging! much appreciated!
Excellent piece. Woudl be interested to hear comments on the advantages of a blog over a more conventional but regularly updated website however. If a Company already has the latter, is there much to be gained by developing a blog too?
Thanks! Comparing a blog to a regularly updated website, the main differences would be interaction and participation.
Interaction is what we're doing here: we're discussing the blog post, and there can be very long, involved discussions in just the comments section of a blog post.
Participation lets you have many contributors. For example, Kristin Sloan's The Winger has almost 3 dozen writers that contribute to that blog. I think this would be a great way to involve many members of your company and community by giving them a voice. While this is technically possible on a regular website, a blog already has this built-in, so it's really easy to let many people contribute.
The broader point that's important here is that there are lots of web tools nowadays that are easy and free to use, and blogging is one example. Some of these tools are great ways to reach a lot of people easily. Because these tools can be so easy to use, they let you concentrate on your content or message without worrying too much about the technology.
I think this blog and others are just the first steps, and we haven't begun to tap the potential of this medium. I would really love to hear about what other people have done with their blog, or website, or another Internet invention we may not have heard about yet.
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