Future-proof An Online Show

Someone told me they know online entertainment’s going to be over soon as everyone gets vaccinated and the world opens up again. I know they weren’t talking about Netflix, or Fortnite, or Instagram. They were talking about entertainers that were shoehorned into Zoom meetings so they could keep on going and maybe brighten up some virtual gatherings.

People are doing really good things online right now. They will keep on finding success online. There are people doing bad things online and finding success too. There are people who will stop as soon as possible. On a personal level, if we like making online entertainment, or we think we could like making online entertainment in the future, we have stuff to do.

Online entertainment will grow every year. There will be fans, there will be money.

Lump in with the successes

We can see that we’re in the same industry as anyone else and that industry is thriving or dying. We could say restaurants are dying because more restaurants fail than succeed, or we could say restaurants are thriving by looking at the reports of the top restaurants. If we make an online magic show, we can say we’re in the same industry as Freddy Smoke (fictional name) who has gone bankrupt in the past year doing terrible Zoom shows, or we can say we’re in the same industry as TikTok and we can figure out how to thrive with them.

Lean in

There are independent creators dabbling in various forms of online entertainment. They hear that it could be good, so they dip a toe. If we want to do this, we can commit and we can win. Once we know what we want, we can get there thru trial and error. If we don’t don’t look toward the future, we won’t improve as much as is necessary to make this thing work.

Get Stage Time

Many people are pulling back now. This is the time to get out more. Get more time in front of audiences. Try more stuff out. Get more experience. The entertainment world is bloated with education and anemic in experience.

Improve things

We gotta figure out how to advance in interactivity, marketing, and understanding our audiences’ needs. Two things to work on…

  1. Make it more mass appealing — Lower ticket prices, more tickets sold
  2. Serve a small audience better — Higher ticket prices, more satisfied fans

Written for folks who want to attract and energize groups

Scot Nery is an emcee who has helped some of the biggest companies in the world achieve entertainment success. He's on an infinite misson to figure out what draws people in and engages them with powerful moments.

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