Guest Blog: What is a Tweet Seat?

The online theatre community has been a-bubbling over the past few weeks with the discussion of a relatively new social media feature to the West End: The Tweet Seat. Whilst it’s great that this has started a debate, I can’t help but feel that not everyone has a full grasp of what a Tweet Seat actually is.

At its most basic, a Tweet Seat is a chair in the theatre on which a person has permission to tweet throughout the show. This seat is positioned away from the eyes of paying punters; usually sat at the back, near the sound desk, to reduce the light emitted from the phone. They are also provided with strict guidelines to follow, such as keeping their phone on silent throughout, and deactivating the camera flash. All angles are covered.

We have spent four weeks in late August/early September testing this feature for the brilliant and ever social media savvy musical, Once; inviting a carefully chosen collection of journos to be our two tweet-seaters a week. The guests were given an exclusive backstage tour, invited onstage for a drink, met the actors and generally spent time soaking up the atmosphere; just with the added element of freedom to tell their many thousands of followers how much fun they’re having.

Across these eight performances, the #OnceTweetSeat hashtag saw nearly 10 million Twitter impressions; with the show’s official twitter account receiving 2.3 million Twitter impressions mentioning @oncemusicalLDN. Compared to the West End musical average over a month, that’s at least a million more impressions in only 8 days. In the final week alone, mentions of @oncemusicalLDN had increased by 644,000 impressions week-on-week, as a result of @whatsonstage and @lifeintheater sitting in, and tweeting from, the #OnceTweetSeat.

I wholeheartedly agree that the use of mobile phones by the general public, during a performance, is not on, and the Tweet Seat shouldn’t lead the less informed to believe that mobile phone use mid-show is a-ok. However, I think it’s darn important to stress that this feature being installed in every theatre is most definitely not on the cards. When it is used, it’ll be for specific performances and carefully managed to ensure that the paying public aren’t affected.

Social Media never stops evolving and always throws up new opportunities that can be transferred and adapted to work in the theatre industry. We always look to innovate and aren’t scared of trying something new if it has the potential to benefit a client and help give even more exposure to a much loved show.

Please be assured; the Tweet Seat isn’t out there to ruin your experience. It is simply another potential device in the marketing campaign of a production and works to help a new audience discover a show that they may have previously not realised was for them.

Matt Hamm is Social Media Manager at theatre marketing agency Dewynters. You can find him on twitter @MattyMedia.