- To encourage engagement in the theatrical process. Have an audition coming up? We like to include audition info in our stories along with our timelines. Need volunteers? We include this in our story and more than a few messages have come through our Instagram asking about times to be there.
- To get more notice through hashtags and geolocation. Do you use hashtags or geolocation in your stories? Now is time to start. One event we love to include in our Instagram stories is our publicity photoshoot and one day we used #photographer during our shoot in our stories and the whole story got over 400 views that day. Whereas we hashtags are helpful for getting notice across the board, geolocations are helpful to find local audiences and are especially helpful for theater companies that need local business.
- To entertain your audience. Does your theater company have entertaining personalities galore? Well, Instagram is a great outlet to use these personalities in. With it’s younger audience than Facebook and Twitter, your audience on Instagram tends to be on there to be entertained and not to be sold to so therefore entertaining clips of the rehearsal process, fun boomerangs and backstage shenanigans, might just engage your Instagram audience into seeing the production.
- To get more viewership on your Instagram posts. Are you struggling to get any notice on your Instagram posts? Yeah, that happens sometimes. Our solution? Put it on our story with a fun gif, one liner and some hashtags. Tip: use 4 hashtags and put them behind the picture (you just slide the photo over the hashtags).
- To excite your audience in a way they didn’t know they would be by what’s going on at your theater. This goes back to having fun with your story. Don’t take it too seriously. Save your stories from each show and make a memory line; this will help continue to keep long time patrons and actors entertained by your Instagram and invite people into your theater world who have yet to become involved. At Theater Company of Lafayette, we like to save our stories into shows for each section so we can look back on our show memories.
Interested in how to make stories more appealing for theater marketing? Check out our new twitter chat #StageChat on Monday, October 14 at 11am MTN and 1pm EST that we are putting on in conjunction with Downstage Media.