“You know, if we all agreed to stop putting critics’ quotes in our ads, they’d lose their power over us, and we could just sell our shows on what we think is best about them.”

I will confess to having made that statement, or something along those lines, more than once when I was the public relations director at Hartford Stage. Thinking back on it now, I can attribute it to a) youth, b) feistiness and c) naïveté. Remember, of course, that this was the pre-internet era, when reviews didn’t linger forever online, but genuinely became inaccessible 24 hours after they appeared in print. And of course, there was no persuading absolutely every  other theatre in the area that this was viable, and without unanimity, it would fail.

No one took me terribly seriously (though at the time, I certainly did). At the same time that I was attempting to jumpstart my radical approach to arts marketing, I was also guilty of some exceptionally creative “Frankensteining” of words from reviews for the express purpose of trumpeting them in ads. Because that was what was expected, I freely engaged in hypocritical acts because, well…paycheck.

More than two decades later, it seems that Broadway marketers may be moving towards my way of thinking after all. As evidence, I give you three screen captures from video advertising for three current Broadway shows:

Finding Neverland ad on Times Square video screen

Screen grab of Curious Incident tv ad

Screen grab of Something Rotten! tv ad

Look, ma, no quotes! Apparently it’s now enough simply to plaster the logos of media outlets on an ad to suggest that their critics have been positively disposed towards the show being sold. I’d say the truth is more variable.

Without going back and rereading the coverage in every outlet represented in these images, I’m willing to give The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time the benefit of the doubt, because the reviews were, as I recall, pretty terrific, and because the show has given equal weight to each outlet it represents. There’s a certain understatement at work.

I give the Something Rotten! ad credit for some subtle humor, because while it offers up The New York Times logo, a bit of animation that lobs a tomato at it, and obscures it, because the Times wasn’t actually all that keen on the show.

The Finding Neverland logo parade seems fairly disingenuous, because its New York Times review wasn’t positive, yet it dominates to screen. Did the Times write about the show? It certainly did. Does the screen say that they liked the show? In point of fact no. But I suspect that they’re trading on the fact that the presence of the Times logo might fool some people into thinking the show was endorsed by the paper, which may not be an absolute ethical lapse, but it’s certainly willfully misleading.

This isn’t to say that quotes have disappeared from ads, and even the examples above pull out some specific quotes on their own, separate from these logo parades. In the case of Fun Home, their ad is almost entirely glowing and attributed review quotes, with some award nominations thrown in as well. What they’re avoiding is any mention of what the show is actually about, which is a shame, but a sign of our still unenlightened times, in which the content of the show may be perceived as possibly limiting its commercial appeal.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlpNv60eGyU

I know of critics who will on occasion, when they think their writing has been inaccurately represented in ads, reach out to productions and make their feelings known. In such cases, especially with major critics, I would imagine those concerns receive due attention, since no one wants to be party to a souring relationship with a critic. But in these cases, the question is whether the folks who police trademark usage for each outlet have noticed these examples, and whether they are concerned enough to suggest – or enforce – that, in some cases, their logos may be getting used to imply an endorsement which doesn’t necessarily exist.

For those who decry the shrinking space for arts reviews, or who find star rating systems too reductive, it seems we’re in the process of moving on to the next iteration – exploring how to dispense with opinion entirely, in favor of implied endorsement, warranted or not. My youthful activism has come around to a more mature realism: we need as much writing as possible about the theatre, and that doesn’t mean just feature coverage, but criticism as well. If we work to marginalize critics through marketing, we may boost a show here or there, but at the end of the day we’ll be worse off for having done so.

In a week when flaws in Rolling Stone’s reporting of a culture of rape on the University of Virginia campus created national headlines, the lapses of a single cultural reporter at the Wall Street Journal doesn’t seem to amount to a hill of beans. But it’s a story that is much buzzed about in theatrical circles, and perhaps throughout the field of the arts, with implications much greater than Joanne Kaufman’s self-appointed role as a serial “Broadway bolter,” who has accepted who knows how many complimentary tickets only to depart frequently at intermission.

In a column last week, Kaufman declared:

I’m embarrassed by how unembarrassed I am to admit that the very next night, I took early leave of “The Country House,” and the following night of “It’s Only a Play.” If only. Don’t ask me what happened during the second acts of “Matilda,” “Kinky Boots,” “Pippin” and, reaching back a few seasons, “Boeing-Boeing” and “Billy Elliott. ” Really, I have no idea. But I am nothing if not cosmopolitan in my tastes, or distastes—French farces, English musicals set in gritty industrial cities, and American entertainments involving Charlemagne ’s Frankish kin.

I happen to believe that, for the regular theatregoer, there’s nothing wrong with leaving a show at intermission. You paid for the right to be there and if you’re miserable, it’s probably to your benefit and the benefit of the rest of the audience if you depart. It’s your right (so long as it’s not done mid-scene, which is far too disruptive) and frankly the rest of the audience and the actors are probably better off without your repeated loud sighs, your ongoing dialogue with the person you came with, or your snoring.

But anyone who is attending in a professional capacity, let alone someone with complimentary tickets, has to stick it out – because it’s their job, or simply good manners as a guest. If not, the tickets have been accepted under false pretenses and the individual’s credibility is damaged, if not destroyed.

Now it’s important to note that in my circles, both personal and online, there seems to be little sympathy or tolerance for Kaufman’s recurring disappearing act. Other journalists have shot verbal arrows at her on Twitter, as have theatre professionals from every discipline in the field. She has been the subject of nothing less than ongoing ridicule, and she’s likely to be a longtime theatre punchline. Publicist Rick Miramontez (a friend and professional colleague) has had a blog post in which he calls out Kaufman go viral, in part because he lays bare her failings and also because many assume that p.r. people will kowtow to the media at all costs.

Miramontez wrote, as part of declaring that he would no longer invite Kaufman or provide her with complimentary tickets:

I couldn’t help but feel a bit like a chump for having accommodated the woman so many times over the years.  Certainly every audience member, paid or comped, has the right to form whatever opinions they might about any production they see, but I don’t think it’s too much to expect those who attend on press tickets stay for the duration.   Would a fine art writer only peer at half a canvas before deciding she’s bored and it’s time to move on?  Does a music reporter think he can make an informed decision on an album if he only listens to a couple of tracks?  Why would we accept such sheer laziness from our theatrical press?

Since others have effectively demolished Kaufman’s questionable professional ethics, I need not rehash them further. But let me go a step beyond.

Unlike bloggers with their own sites (say for example, me), journalists don’t simply write something and have it magically appear in print or online. There’s at least one editor and a copy editor who has seen the piece, and at a paper like the Wall Street Journal, probably more. So it’s important to note that Kaufman was not writing in a vacuum, but rather with the tacit approval of every staffer at the WSJ who got a glimpse of her piece. It’s more than a bit worrisome that no one at the paper apparently saw anything wrong with either Kaufman’s actions or her almost gleeful confession of her ethical gaffes. Frankly, why did this piece run at all?

While her piece was opinion rather than reportage, surely average readers may now wonder about the veracity of other WSJ writing – and that’s a shame, because I know many arts reporters at the paper and know them to operate with the highest integrity and profound respect for the arts. While I haven’t asked him, I can’t help but think that Kaufman’s actions are particularly galling to the WSJ’s drama critic Terry Teachout, especially as many accounts of the “Broadway bolter” incorrectly identified her as the WSJ’s theatre critic.

Should it be up to publicists to put Kaufman on the straight and narrow? Even if she does start paying for tickets, will her bosses only permit her to attend with a minder? Will she become a culture writer only on works of 90 minutes or less, since that’s all she can tolerate? Perhaps she’ll need an ankle bracelet so they can be certain that she stays for the duration.

In a moment of sympathy, I’m willing to suggest that perhaps Kaufman, and her editors, fell prey to aping the lingua franca of the internet: snark (see prior paragraph as an example). Maybe the flip, contrarian tone was an effort to mimic the style of bloggers and tweeters. But in the august, conservative WSJ, it stuck out like a sore thumb – and while it may well have tapped into a new audience, it did so only to be met by significant derision. It seems that, for all of the angst surrounding critical arts coverage in general, Kaufman had truly crossed a bridge too far by slamming work she hadn’t even bothered to assess in full. If anything, she proved that there is still a place and desire for arts journalism, but that she may have no place in it.

On the same subway ride during which I read Kaufman’s piece, I also read an essay by Tim Walker, who has recently been let go from his position as theatre critic for London’s Sunday Telegraph. Understandably troubled by the ongoing culling of arts critics in London (an issue in the U.S. as well, and a concern I share), he cites a conversation about criticism he recently had:

One leading impresario told me he looked around at the motley crowd that had turned up to sit in judgment on one of his productions and he realised he didn’t know a single one of them. “They were young, spotty, out of their comfort zones and clearly exhausted, having been diverted at the last minute from other tasks at their hard-pressed media organisations,” he lamented. “Honestly, after all the work we had put in on our side, and all the investment, it felt like a slap in the face.”

The conventional wisdom is that readers of theatre reviews are migrating – along with the advertising – to online, but who, honestly, can name an internet critic who has the authority of, say, the Guardian’s Michael Billington? Or – until he also joined the exodus – the Telegraph’s Charles Spencer?

While he has given himself the cover of quoting someone else, Walker seems to side with his unnamed commentator. He also mimics someone in a vastly more significant situation, namely the prosecutor in the Michael Brown case, who repeatedly spoke of the failings of social media before revealing the wholly inadequate results of the grand jury findings. Two decades after the advent of general internet use, nearly a decade after the advent of social media, one can no longer make the case for journalism, or any endeavor, by slamming the reality of how we communicate now and continuing to proclaim the superiority of the “mainstream media.” Walker’s legitimate concerns about the state of arts criticism are undone by condescension, just as Kaufman skewered herself with her own glee over her risable actions.

Arts journalism is no different from any other facet of journalism today in that many of the old structures are falling and the future is evolving at an exceptionally fast pace, chewing up both practices and people in the process. But the bottom line is that if you find the rug pulled out from under you, it won’t serve the field to have you bemoaning the new and ever-changing normal; if you still have a platform, use it to imagine a better, sustainable future. And by all means, if you have a platform, use it professionally and ethically, lest you go out on a limb and saw it off behind yourself.

I realize I’m writing this blog post for a very specific subset of readers, but after nine months of writing my “American Stages” column for London’s The Stage newspaper, I have a request of those cited in the title.

Now mind you, I’m prepared to stipulate that many of you still may not be aware of the column, despite my own efforts and the efforts of the folks at The Stage to promote it. So if you’re reading this and thinking, “What ‘American Stages’ column?,” allow me to direct you to the index of the columns thus far. I’ll also agree that the column is somewhat New York-centric and probably east coast-centric. But there’s a reason for that.

None of you are sending me press releases. Not even theatres I’ve called in the past and asked for material for use in this very column.

Perhaps I should have been more explicit in asking for releases. So I’m writing this instead. Now before you all deluge me with material on every single thing you do, including grants you receive, ‘best of’ lists you appear on, one night only readings and the like, let me take a page from Wall Street Journal critic Terry Teachout, who is quite clear about what he’s likely to be interested in and when you’re barking up the wrong tree.

So here are my rough guidelines:

1. I’m not a critic. “American Stages” is meant to highlight work that might be of interest to readers in the British theatre community, but I don’t review shows. I do like to see as much as I can, but there’s no correlation between my seeing a production and my featuring it in the column.

2. I am committed to representing interesting work around the country. Because of the curation of arts stories that is a significant part of my Twitter feed, I often surface interesting productions worth writing about on my own. But Twitter is a rush of information, and there’s no guarantee that I’ll be seeing your tweets when you happen to send them.

3. I’m looking to highlight new work or major productions that might prove interesting to UK readers. The fourteenth production of one of the most produced plays in the country isn’t likely to get in. Neither is your Christmas Carol. But even with new work, it needs a hook beyond “a new play,” so think about tipping me to something that might cause theatre pros across the pond to take an interest.

4. If there’s an English, Irish, Scottish or Welsh hook, make sure I know it – whether it’s a playwright, actor, director and so on. It is a London publication after all.

5. Because the column is online, even though I’m writing with a certain focus in mind, remember that it can be shared as widely as you and I both like. There’s no paywall and no geographic limitation to who can read it.

6. Photos are helpful (if they’re good photos) and videos are sometimes even better. While there’s typically only one main photo a week, I can embed several videos with my copy, and I’ll use everything from trailers to interviews to musical numbers to humor.

So far as I’m aware (and by all means, feel free to correct me), there’s no other UK outlet with a regular column dedicated solely to US theatre news. Sure, big stories like Kenneth Branagh in Macbeth get covered in international media as they happen, as do the Tony Awards. But new musicals in San Diego? Not so much. So use me, because I want to showcase the entirety of US theatre, within my word limit and my fortnightly schedule.

As an aside, I write a second, monthly column for The Stage’s print edition, which unfortunately I can’t share online effectively. I’m writing specifically about aspects of the business of theatre in those pieces, and I eventually post that material to my website (though I’m far from up to date). But new initiatives and thematic stories are my bailiwick there, and can showcase trends and innovations wherever I may learn of them.

As some of you may know, I used to be a publicist in not-for-profit theatre. I’m all too aware of the challenges posed by the explosion of online outlets in how you do your jobs and you can’t give one-on-one service to every writer out there. So add me to your national list using howard AT hesherman DOT com. I’ll let you know if it’s too much (or too little). Frankly, if I was still a publicist, I’d be all over me about “American Stages.”

Mind you, there’s only so much one can squeeze into a TV spot, but the ad I just watched managed the following in its voiceover: 1) play title; 2) key award nominations; 3) names of three lead actors; and 4) quotes from reviews. The name of the playwright, and the director, photos of the stars (not in costume), the logo for the not-for-profit theatre that produced it, and ticket ordering information appeared on screen. The piece runs only 15 seconds.

Now this is a Broadway show and it’s Tony season, so I could simply chalk this ad up to awards fever. But it’s just another in a long line of theatre marketing tools that I see which constantly manage to skirt what strikes me as a rather important element in theatrical communication: the plot.  TV time is precious, but that’s not the case in brochures, press releases and even radio spots, which are far more likely to be deployed by the majority of theatres in the country. Yet sometimes the plot is nowhere to be found.

Theatres skip over plots for one of two reasons: a) their show is a revival of a famous classic work and it’s assumed that everyone likely to be interested already knows what it’s about, or b) the theatre doesn’t actually want to say what it’s about, even if the play has never been seen before. In both cases, the decision is ill-advised.

For a classic, it may well be true that a significant portion of the likely ticket buyers already know not only the plot but the ending of Othello, A Doll’s House or Death of a Salesman. But cloaking the show solely in its author’s name and adjectives about its greatness leaves out anyone who happens to have not seen it before, and may be looking for clues as to whether it will interest them. Indeed, we forget that the great works of literature may be daunting to the uninitiated, so by bypassing even a bit of plot description, we skip the opportunity to cultivate new patrons or place the seemingly archaic work within a context that might appeal to a modern audience.

It also pays to remember that this applies to relatively recent works as well. For example, Children of a Lesser God won the 1980 Tony Award for Best Play and the lead actress in the film version won an Oscar in 1986, but how many 25 year olds know the piece? We must always be thinking of new patrons – whatever their age – not just endlessly mining the so-called “avids.”

As for avoiding the plot, the motivations can be varied. Perhaps the actual storyline could be seen as off-putting (deranged barber murders customers and his landlady bakes their remains into pies; boy blinds horses) or vague (two hobos wait endlessly for someone to show up). But skilled copy writing can put those stories into a larger and perhaps more enticing context without ever being untrue or misleading. It’s when we employ only adjectives that we’re dropping the ball; plays (and all stories) are rooted in nouns and verbs, that is to say people and action.

Even when the work in question is brand new, and there’s concern about revealing too much, it’s a mistake to say nothing; your gaggle of adjectives will less effective, since there’s no outside affirmation (as might eventually come from reviews), there’s just you trying to tell potential patrons what they’re going to think of the show if they come. (I refer you to my guides to clichéd marketing-speak and the true meanings behind it in Decoder and Decoder II.)

I’m not advocating lengthy recountings and I recognize that very often, a cursory précis of a story can be reductive; I’ve seen many authors (and artistic staffs) bridle at simplifications. But marketing and communications are not reviews or dramaturgy or literary criticism; they should be as accurate and appealing as possible, but they can’t be all-encompassing. And they must appear. The play may be the thing wherein we’ll catch the king’s conscience, but we’ve got to get him into the theatre first.

My friend Frank Rizzo of The Hartford Courant apparently spends a good bit of time listening to NPR. On more than one occasion, it has caused him to have little eruptions on Twitter. His frustration is caused by the repeated refrain of, “That’s a very good question,” from a presumably wide variety of guests.

Now I have no idea which NPR station Frank listens to, or which programs, but I don’t doubt his characterization at all. I am quite certain that he hears this all the time, and not just on NPR. We all do, though we may not even realize it.

“That’s a very good question” is a ploy that media coaches teach interview subjects to use; I imagine a number of people have simply picked up the phrase for their own use, through the very repetition that has Frank riled. Following a question from a moderator, a fellow guest, or perhaps an audience member in a town hall setting, “That’s a very good question,” along with its cousins, “I’m so glad you asked me that” and “I’ve been giving that a great deal of thought,” does two things at once.

The first thing it does is buy time. Only the most verbally dexterous can immediately formulate a perfect answer to a complex inquiry, so “TAVGQ” is a reflexive placeholder, preventing dead air or the dreaded, drawn-out “ummm…,” while an answer, or perhaps a diversion to a less fraught topic, develops in some other portion of the brain. In confrontational situations, it prevents the moderator from scoring points by pressing the topic in an available gap before the guest even replies to the original question.

Secondly, The Phrase That Shall No Longer Be Spoken also flatters whomever has asked the question, because it praises their interrogatory skill and, even if it doesn’t fool them, it shows the listeners or viewers what a sympathetic, considerate person the interviewee can be.

And so, with decades of experience, I’d like to offer new conversational placeholders during media opportunities, to allow the gathering of wits, and which in many cases can serve to redirect a troublesome dialogue.

1. “You’re brave to broach that. Who among us hasn’t confronted that issue and been afraid to talk about it openly?”

2. “Before I answer that shrewd query, I’d like to make certain that you don’t need to put quarters in the meter.”

3. “I was just discussing that at home this morning and it’s amazing that you thought to bring it up on the very same day. Incredible. Psychic.”

4. “I’m so glad we’re going to get into that, but first, may I try on your gorgeous jacket?”

5. “That was such a concern of my late mother’s. I have her picture here somewhere.”

6. “Bill, George, Barack and I have been grappling with that for some time, but not one of us has managed to summarize it as clearly as you just did.”

7. “Before I go on, I have to tell you that your voice is mesmerizing. Do you sing?”

8. “I’m sorry, I was distracted by the image of us in the monitor. Looking at myself next to you makes me think I should stick to radio and print, don’t you think?”

9. “That really is one of the essential questions of modern life, but unfortunately I can’t elaborate on it due to national security.”

10. “Wait! What’s that over there? Oh, sorry, I thought I saw a bat. You were saying?”

Study these phrases and learn them well, and one day soon, you can speak to the media skillfully, taking control without ever lapsing into the predictable.

You’re welcome.

When I first heard it, it sounded strange to my ear. I wondered whether Charlie Rose had just misread his teleprompter, whether some young segment producer had written an introduction without being sufficiently steeped in theatre terminology, or whether it was simply a typo. But as my initial surprise wore off, I found I rather liked the word, and wonder whether it could brought into common usage in the arts.

Allow me to set the scene before going forward.

Having a moderate degree of interest in this week’s barrage of stunts by television’s network morning programs, I was doing a bit of channel surfing to see how the Katie Couric (ABC) vs. Sarah Palin (NBC) counterprogramming might be working, and whether CBS had anything up its sleeve as well. At one precise point, to give you a picture of the ethos of the three programs, Good Morning America had a interview with Camille Grammer directly opposite The Today Show’s visit with Tori Spelling, while CBS This Morning had a feature on what the 1940 U.S. Census reveals. In this particular atmosphere, I didn’t expect to find anything that might make me think deeply about theatre.

So when Charlie Rose, on the CBS program, began introducing an interview with Candice Bergen in conjunction with her role in Broadway’s The Best Man, it was jarring to hear the production described as, “a renewal.” Not revival, not revisal, not reinvention, not revisitation, not refurbishment. Renewal.

I’ve decided I like it.

Now there’s an argument that could be made for avoiding any of these qualifiers about plays or musicals, but there seems to be a deep desire to distinguish new work from that which dates back over some period of time, so I’ll leave that alone for today. Revival is the default mode; musicals which have been altered, whether in part or substantially from their original texts may be called revisals. The other “re’s” I’ve cited above are used on occasion, but they’re not standard terminology, in conversation or in marketing.

Yet whenever I’ve spoken to a director about staging a work which previously received a substantial production or productions some time ago, be it a decade or a century or more, they all say some variation of the same thing when asked about their work with it: “I treat it like it’s new.” Whether the creator(s) are alive or long dead, directors talk about working with the authors, collaborating with them, be it Shepard or Shakespeare. Yet the word revival carries with it, to me, a whiff of the grave, more resurrection or resuscitation of something dead than reinvigoration of something awaiting only light and air.  Yes, I’m parsing these words closely, perhaps pedantically, and through my own associations, but in a field that trades in words, their meaning and their implied or inferred (if not intended) message is tremendously important; I’m quick to challenge obfuscation or misdirection.

So I find renewal a very optimistic word, because while acknowledging history, it seems very forward looking, and indeed may reflect precisely what theatre artists hope to achieve when they look to past work for today’s repertory. It may even be goal setting: that when such works are undertaken, they should be renewed for both the participating artists and audiences, so that they are more than mere replication of something from the past, but are instead made relevant.

Do I expect this to fall readily into common parlance among our peers? No, that optimistic I’m not; it would require endless repetition. But having inveighed against the “er vs re” debate regarding the very name of our field, here’s an “re” usage I’d like to think we can all get behind when the opportunity presents itself or necessity arises.

So whether this morning’s usage was intentional, ill-informed or simply a slip, I salute Charlie Rose and his team. Renewal is refreshing.

I should note that I have not yet seen The Best Man and that nothing in this post should be construed as any comment upon that production.

As a result of fairly assiduous Twitter use, I have a very respectable score on Klout. However, now that Klout is about to start factoring in FourSquare activity, I have begun “checking in” these past few days, though I registered at least a year ago and find it somewhat juvenile (Badges? I don’t need no stinking badges). I am one of the select 10 million (an oxymoron to be sure) who has secured a Google+ account, however thus far I have made but a single post, comparing the coming Facebook/Google+ wars to the VHS/Beta wars of some two decades ago. I make only the occasional Facebook post, but at least I no longer restrict my friends to those I met in school. I keep up on LinkedIn, but only connect to people with whom I have genuinely worked, to maintain the integrity of the platform. My PeerIndex score is lousy, due I believe, to a tech error (reported, unresolved) that leaves out the vast majority of my Twitter activity. I’ve largely given up on Quora, because the questions being posed in the areas where I have some expertise are predominantly: a) subjective, b) silly and c) reminiscent of the Monty Python “How To Do It” sketch which offered simple instructions on things like how to be a gynecologist. I captured one of the free Spotify accounts earlier this week due to a car company promotion (I already forget the brand, and I don’t own or intend to buy a car anyway), although I have listened to only a single song.

Enough?

Let me also remind you that these are all personal accounts, as I’m in a job transition. So all of the above is either building my personal brand, providing fun as I decompress from a series of stressful jobs, or completely wasting time that I could be using more productively.

If this is what I’m facing, I can’t help but wonder how arts organizations are wading through the developing, churning world of social media, since every week seems to produce a new site or app designed to revolutionize how we relate to each other, be it as individuals, businesses & patrons, artists & audiences, and so on.

Traditionally, arts organizations haven’t been early technological adopters, largely because of a lack of internal expertise and the high cost of entry. I am old enough to remember Hartford Stage’s first fax machine (a wonder), first computer network (so much better than electric typewriters), first Mac and desktop publishing software (which we discovered didn’t actually design things for us) and first computerized ticketing system (somebody else’s headache, but terrific). But that technological adoption, in the latter half of the 1980s (e-mail became a standard while I was at Goodspeed Musicals), seems slow by the standards of today.

One significant factor in today’s more rapid adoption is that of cost. The most prevalent tools of communication at the moment, many name-checked above, are free. If you’ve got a computer and internet access (and for real convenience, a smartphone as well), you’ve pretty much got what your organization needs to jump into the fray.

But the challenge is deciding whether to do so or when to do so. Certainly if a promising new service appears that requires you to secure your company’s name from squatters (remember the domain name rush that characterized the spread of the internet itself?), it should be done right away. But beyond that, there needs to be a certain amount of wait and see.

If your organization has an in-house IT department (now the norm at large not-for-profits), there are probably one or more technologically savvy individuals forever lobbying every department about a new tool that can make their work more efficient, from the newest in collaborative CAD programs to online donation systems. Development, marketing and p.r. departments are watching social media in particular, both to give the organization an edge and to show the public that the organization has an edge.

But it has generally been acknowledged that just as freedom isn’t free, neither is social media. The cost is one of time and brainpower: does the organization have someone on staff who has the conceptual and technical savvy to figure out how to best use the cascading platforms? Can the organization afford to give over a portion of the time of an existing staffer to that pursuit, or to hire someone to focus exclusively on this area? Is the cost-value equation favorable for being active and meaningful on multiple platforms? What is the ultimate goal for the organization?

I am hardly the first person to pose these questions. Indeed, my Twitter feed is bombarded by advice — and solicitations to pay for advice — on how to best utilize these resources. In fact, I’m pretty stunned by the number of people who proclaim themselves as social media experts or gurus, in a field that is, in terms of widespread awareness and usage, maybe six or seven years old. I’m not being dismissive of true experts and explorers, as I’ve spoken with some very shrewd folks, but just as companies paid a fortune for their first websites because the practice of building them was so new, I fear the ratio of people with true insight to those who merely post a lot on Facebook poses risks for less sophisticated groups who feel they may be missing an important trend.

So I want to offer a single piece of pragmatic advice about adopting a new platform or, as the once dominant MySpace has shown, when to abandon one. That advice is to analyze, in a full organizational survey, why you’re doing it. What do you hope to achieve? Can the platform conceivably do what you want? Has it reached a tipping point where more than just first-adopters are playing with it?

As an aside, I should say that in most cases, the leaders of large organizations are ill-equipped to make these decisions, because they haven’t the time to understand these new forms of media themselves. They know how to search on Google, they can click on the link for a funny YouTube video, they may have a personal Facebook page, but their jobs don’t afford them the time to delve deeply into these areas. Indeed, I fear that many of them feel they are above it; at a recent LORT conference, I did a show of hands survey of managers asking how many knew their organizations were using social media, and how many had their own presence. Many hands appeared for the first question, but few remained up after the second. Yet these platforms are not just “for the kids,” and they certainly shouldn’t be relegated to intern-level responsibility, as is so often the case. This will change over time, as succeeding generations will take social media as simply the norm, not innovation.

Social media, like it or not, is transforming how people relate to each other, to the businesses they frequent and the organizations where they participate and which they may support. It is ignored at its own peril, but it is also embraced, if not with danger, then with caution.

While adopting a child is significantly more profound on many lives, adoption of social media platforms demands some marginally equivalent level of self-scrutiny and awareness. Otherwise, your organization will find itself making errors in public perception and in allocation of resources. And as we’re learning again and again, we post, tweet and share at our own risk. If a twitter revolution can ostensibly bring down a dictator, think what could happen if you use it wrong – or it turns on you, like an ungrateful child.

P.S. Those who found this essay online probably find it to be obvious, or old news, precisely because you’re far enough into the social world to be ahead of the thinking herein. But perhaps you have some discussion to provoke within your organization, or someone to persuade. Maybe this can help.

This post originally appeared on the 2amtheatre website.