Mysteries of Social Media

Social media continues to be a mystery to me in many ways. I may be a millennial but feeling unsure of how to effectively use social media makes me feel OLD! I know how to look at posts and communicate with people easily, but when it comes to generating likes, comments, and other engagements, I tend to fall flat. I have never cared about creating engagements with posts, because I never felt the need for “likes” to feel loved. Until recently, I rarely posted anything on social media. Lately, I have been trying to expose myself more in the social media world to conduct little experiments on what creates engagement.
Ever since I took a graduate marketing class, my attention has been turned to what exactly generates attention and visibility on social media, and I have been observing such strategies quite consistently now. I do this because promoting through social media is an effective way to reach millennials and make them aware of what is happening in the metro Phoenix area. This week’s class assignment is to ask our target audience how they hear about the events they go to. Before the end of class, Linda asked how we ourselves hear about the events we go to. We all concluded that we hear about things through word of mouth and social media, and I am finding that this is the case for others in our venture’s target audience. With that said, this whole grasp on generating social media engagement and a big reach is an important thing to know as an arts entrepreneur when the target audience is millennials… So how do I do this?!?
I am currently helping a new sketch comedy troupe promote their first show at Second Beat Improv Theatre in Phoenix on March 24th. I am using what I know and have observed towards promoting this group. To put it nicely, this is a learning process… If anyone has any advice to offer or stories of social media promoting successes, I’d love to read about them. Send me a message or leave a comment on this post.

~Jennifer

Customer Driven

How do you balance a dream with reality?

This week, our class began watching Steve Blank’s online course How to Build a Start Up. I personally get a lot out of video lectures, so this media is very effective for me. Blank lectures in an informative yet informal style with a spritz of humor to keep it interesting.

If you haven’t checked out this free class through Udacity, please do! All you have to do is sign up!

https://classroom.udacity.com/courses/ep245

One of the main concepts reiterated throughout both lessons we watched was the difference between the traditional start up method and the one prescribed by Blank. Blank is famous for his start up process dubbed customer development, a spin on the classic process product development. This methodology puts the startup’s focus entirely on the end users rather than the product itself. An incorrect product-market fit is a huge start up killer that customer development aims to fix. This goes hand in hand with Alexander Osterwalder’s Business Model Canvas, which emphasizes the customer’s role in the firm.

I personally love this customer-based approach, as it couldn’t make more sense to me. From a musician’s perspective, why would I perform a concert for an audience that doesn’t want to hear my music? But it is here where I reach a stumbling block.

An entrepreneur must be a visionary; they must have some sort of a plan or a target, goal or dream. The way Blank talks about startups is almost as though they need to be an amorphous, undefined entity, ready to do backflips for the proposed customer base. I understand that finding your audience’s wants and needs is crucial to your business, but where do you draw the line between what you want to make and what your market wants? How far do we stretch the original dream to meet the consumer? Making a dream come true is where I find the passion of a startup comes from. You have to care deeply about what you’re designing, or else it will fall flat as a malnourished mess.

Finding that balance between something the world needs and something I want to be a part will be an interesting challenge. It sounds silly to me to place such value on whether I’ll like the venture or not, but I have to remember that if I was ok with doing something I didn’t like, I’d just get a 9 to 5 at an office. At least I’d be making guaranteed money.

I must find passion for something there is an audience for.

This is the only way.

 

…and as always, thanks for reading! 

Will VI

 

Anxiety

Fear wouldn’t be the right word, but maybe anxiety is. If there were anything I could say I know well, spreading too thin would definitely be it.

In our effectual ideation exercise this week was a spontaneous brainstorm of combinations, problem solving, and outlandish creativity. Staying true to the principles effectuation, we generated ideas and concepts for our coming startups based loosely off of what we have. Be it contacts, skills, talents, or experience, this proximodistal method insures we are laying groundwork on something (hopefully) concrete: ourselves. The ideas sprawl outward from us.

I’ve observed that those involved in the arts generally have wide and varying skill sets and experience to boot, so the mishmash of concepts was to be expected. I believe we had ideas ranging everywhere from arts integrated parking structures to stilt walking to build self-esteem. This was a joyous and fast-paced exercise that produced much humor and excitement for our ventures to come.

In reflection though, exercises like these make me wonder about how to reign in such a varied and diverse team. This exercise was a testament to just how different our backgrounds, views, goals, and future are. I know this should be a good thing. I should be ecstatic to have so many different viewpoints all coming together to create something. The more heads solving, designing, and perfecting, the better, right? The more varied viewpoints, the more opportunities seen, right?

Yet I can’t shake this feeling that a team this varied will all be pulling in different directions. How thin can you pull and spread an idea before its unusable? Fear is far too great of a term… I am simply anxious to see what comes. This class has too many success stories for the model to be flawed. I am sure my anxieties will be quelled soon enough.

 

I just need to get used to reaching into the third jar.

 

…and as always, thanks for reading! 

Will VI

 

Take the Plunge!

This quote is in the beginning of one of our class textbooks, Effectual Entrepreneurship[1]. I have held this Mark Twain quote in high regard since I first heard it in my high school days. It inspired me to join The Academy Drum and Bugle Corps in 2010, a decision I am incredibly grateful for today. A huge part of who I am today came from that time in my life. I also thought of this quote when I made the decision to go to graduate school. I did not want to live my life wondering, “what if?” I am excited this textbook used that quote. It created a great first impression and caught my attention for the next 62 pages of the assigned reading.

Effectual Entrepreneurship comes with great advice for life in general. It encourages you to be entrepreneurial with your life. Pictured with this quote from the class reading[2] is my best friend who took said plunge last year. She aspired to leave civilization and travel the world to experience the incredible wonders of nature. This entailed leaving the security of her full-time job, moving out of her house, selling most of her belongings, and living out of her car for the next eight months. She was worried, because she was afraid this would make her less marketable when she is ready to rejoin the work force. Her parents were extremely against her plan, thinking she was throwing her life away. Her friends and family were constantly worried for her safety. Almost every important influence of her life was discouraging of her plan, but she took the plunge. Like an entrepreneur, she carefully planned out her finances and trip route to control and minimize risk as much as possible. Although her trip ended up having a few unexpected turns, she came out of it with a new sense of independence and self-discovery. She ended her trip in Seattle where she planted new roots and landed her dream job in sustainability. She took that plunge, and many doors opened for her. Although she did not create a venture, she went on an ADventure and was a successful entrepreneur of her life.

After all the class readings, entrepreneurship is starting to sound less scary, risky, and dangerous. I can’t wait to try taking the plunge in this class! We as a class consolidated our inventory of means and unveiled a lot of great opportunities. I had no idea how many of us were musicians. It just never came up in conversation. I still do not have the slightest idea of what sort of arts-based venture to launch for this class, but at least I now know where to start.

Paraphrasing Linda Essig in class: There are no bad ideas, just ideas that have not been implemented.

 

~Jennifer

 

[1] Read, S. (2011). Effectual entrepreneurship. London: Routledge.

[2] Ibid

What Are You Willing to Lose?

I value my left hand, and you should value yours too.

As Effectual Entrepreneurship outlines, there is a popular entrepreneurship thought exercise where participants are offered the opportunity to reach into one of three jars and keep what they get. If the player pulls a red ball, they will win a prize. The first jar contains an even split of red and non-red balls, the second contains balls, and the third contains anything at all.

The passage on this exercise concludes that entrepreneurs would implicitly choose the third jar, due to their affinity for the unknown.

Upon completing the exercise with my classmates, we upped the ante within the confines of the experiment. There could be gold bullion in the third jar. There could be scorpions. I mentioned there could be sulfuric acid.

We talk a lot about risk when we talk about entrepreneurship. The key factor is learning to mitigate that risk and consider it uncertainty. As the book states, “You can either control your environment or be controlled by it.” It strikes me that these 3 jars are an environment I cannot control and am a slave to the game it plays. In other words, not a situation I’d want to find myself in.

Sure, I agree with the adage that high risk (or should I say high uncertainty?) means potential for high reward, but entrepreneur or not, it can’t be a good business practice to partake in activities where the risk far outweighs the reward. The prize for a red ball will not be a new left hand. If I reach into the third jar, I won’t be greeted with a voucher for transplant surgery. There is no reward I am willing to gamble my left hand for, because no matter what the prize is, it cannot be worth my appendage.

Yes, I am taking this thought exercise too seriously. I’m holding on to a fringe and making my decision solely upon that, but I truly believe it is this kind of thinking that will better prepare us for controlling the future. That third jar probably won’t horrifically damage my body, but if has that potential, how could we use that to our benefit? Could it be weaponized? How and to whom do I sell a mystery death jar?

 

Could we get NRA support?

 

…and as always, thanks for reading! 

Will VI

 

Read, Stuart. Effectual Entrepreneurship. Abingdon, Routledge, 2011. pg. 22-23